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SHMA Consultation

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Welcome to the Cumbria Housing Group Strategic Housing Market Assessment consultation.  

The Cumbria Housing Group (CHG), through the Research & Information Group (a sub-task group of the CHG), has been preparing county-wide Strategic Housing Market Assessments (SHMAs) for each district local authority area in Cumbria. In total there are 20 SMHAs covering Cumbria’s six district areas.

The CHG is inviting feedback from interested parties on the contents of the draft SHMAs before final publication in autumn 2009.

PLEASE NOTE: The Barrow Strategic Housing Market Assessment is still being drafted and will be completed shortly.  Once available, consultees will be advised of its availability, where practical by email, and the consultation date will be extended accordingly.  In the meantime, if you have any queries, please contact the Housing Manager, Colin Garnett on 01229 876462.

Based on Ordnance Survey map material with the permission of the Controller of Her Majesty's Stationary Office. Crown Copyright. Unauthorised reproduction infringes Crown Copyright and may lead to prosecution or civil proceedings. Cumbria County Council. Licence No LA076546. 2006.

How to respond to this consultation

Using our online forms you can share your comments with us in two ways:

1)     By providing feedback about individual SHMAs for each of the 20 areas in Cumbria, and/or

2)     By providing general feedback on the Executive Summaries which bring together the key information from the SHMAs from each of Cumbria’s 6 district authority areas.

You are welcome to combine these approaches, for instance providing specific information about a particular SMHA as well as general feedback on the area Executive Summaries. Alternatively you may just wish to give general comments on a single Executive Summary.

There are two separate online forms, one for specific SHMAs and one for the Executive Summaries. Links to these forms can be found on the bottom right of this page, beneath the links to the various SHMA documents. Once you have completed and submitted the form you will be given the option to return to this page to complete additional forms. 

Consultation ends:  5:00pm on Friday 11th September 2009.

More information about SHMAs

The preparation of Strategic Housing Market Assessments (SHMAs) for each of the identified Housing Market Areas is a requirement of national government planning advice contained in PPS3 – Housing. The purpose of the 20 Cumbria SHMAs will therefore be to provide a crucial evidence base to support the future delivery of new housing and economic development in Cumbria for each of the six districts’ and the Lake District National Park Authority’s emerging Local Development Frameworks and other strategies. It is important that this evidence base is credible and robust, and that it has been shared with the relevant stakeholders. It is for this reason that we are consulting stakeholders on the SHMAs.

Each SHMA contains a wealth of information covering: 

  • demography and household types; 
  • national and regional economic policy; 
  • employment levels and structure; 
  • incomes and earnings; 
  • dwelling profiling; 
  • stock condition; 
  • shared housing;
  • cost of buying or renting property; 
  • overcrowding and under-occupation; 
  • vacant dwellings, second homes; and 
  • housing requirements of specific groups.   

In preparing the SHMAs, we have also worked with our economic regeneration colleagues at Cumbria Vision to develop a series of economic scenarios, from which five future housing scenarios, including two that identify an upper and lower limit to possible housing requirement, have been produced. Based upon the SHMA evidence and other local evidence, each Local Planning Authority will be in a position to then to choose the levels of new housing provision and the policies appropriate for their area. 

As a consequence, each Local Planning Authority should be able to set out in their LDFs the likely overall proportion of households that require market or affordable housing, the likely profile of household types requiring market housing, and the size and type of affordable housing required. It is also intended that the local SHMAs should be used to inform future housing policies set in the Regional Strategy for the North West (RS2010) and local housing strategies.

Questions and hard copies

If you have any queries regarding specific aspects of the SHMAs, or you wish to receive a hard copy of the SHMA Summaries and submit your comments by post, please contact the following District Housing Officers, who will be able to arrange for copies and the relevant form to be sent to you:

Angela Harrison – Allerdale Borough Council Tel: (01900) 702662 
Email: angela.harrison@allerdale.gov.uk

Colin Garnett – Barrow Borough Council Tel: (01229) 876462 
Email: cgarnett@barrowbc.gov.uk

Jeremy Hewitson – Carlisle City Council Tel: (01228) 817443 
Email: JeremyH@carlisle.gov.uk

Kate Skillicorn – Copeland Borough Council Tel: (01946) 598399 
Email: Kate.Skillicorn@copeland.gov.uk

Lee Walker – Eden District Council Tel: (01768) 212489 
Email: lee.walker@eden.gov.uk

Julie Jackson – South Lakeland District Council Tel: (01539) 797773
Email: J.Jackson@southlakeland.gov.uk

We look forward to receiving your comments.