A newly published planning report has highlighted West Northamptonshire Council’s (WNC) inability to demonstrate a five-year housing land supply, despite having thousands of homes in the pipeline.

All local planning authorities are required to show that they have approved enough planning applications to meet the government’s house building targets for the next five years. If they cannot, a ’tilted balance’ is applied to all future applications, which means planning decisions are weighted in favour of approving new homes unless the harm clearly outweighs the benefits.

WNC’s planning policy committee heard on Tuesday August 4 that the authority had identified a 4.3 year land supply as of April 2026 – down from the 5.5 years which was predicted in 2025.

According to the council, one year of housing supply in West Northants currently equates to around 2,600 homes – or 13,000 over five years. WNC said it was only able to evidence around 10,000 homes in “deliverable sites” up to 2031.

Planning Policy Committee meeting in One Angel Square Credit: Nadia Lincoln LDRS

placeholder image — Planning Policy Committee meeting in One Angel Square Credit: Nadia Lincoln LDRS

The council was recently successfully challenged over its five-year housing land supply at a planning appeal. Planning officers previously warned that the council could face an increase in speculative planning applications as a result of not meeting delivery targets.

Despite narrowly missing out, WNC reported that it had a pipeline of a further 15,000 units set to come forward which would fall outside of the five-year timeframe and therefore do not count towards the council’s supply. It added that many of these from a planning perspective are ‘ready to go’ if developers came forward with reserved matters applications or built out at a faster pace.

Councillors raised concerns that the planning team were “chasing a rainbow” with the housing targets, as the responsibility falls on the local authority to evidence the delivery of developments, but there is no incentive for developers to engage with the process and share information which could prove when their site would come forward.

The head of planning policy told the meeting that officers had started a piece of work on how to improve their five-year-supply moving forward, including looking at the pace applications are determined and any infrastructure constraints that stop sites being built.