Stafford can show 1.95 years of housing land against a requirement of 912 homes a year. What that does to planning decisions, and the new Local Plan.

Stafford Borough Council’s own figures say it can demonstrate 1.95 years of deliverable housing land. National policy expects five. That single number is the most important fact in Stafford planning right now, and it is the council’s own published position at 31 March 2026, not a developer’s claim.

How the gap opened

Stafford has not built badly. The plan in force, the Plan for Stafford Borough (Part 1), adopted on 19 June 2014, set a requirement of 500 homes a year. Over the fifteen years from 2011 to 2026 the borough completed 9,156 homes against a target of 7,500, an over-provision of 1,656. In 2025/26 alone it completed 719. The council passed the government’s Housing Delivery Test in January 2026 with a score of 139%.

The gap opened because the target moved, not because delivery fell.

Two things changed. First, the adopted plan’s strategic policies passed their fifth birthday on 19 June 2019, which means the five-year supply calculation stops using the plan’s 500 a year and switches to local housing need calculated by the government’s standard method. Following the March 2026 affordability ratios and the December 2024 version of the National Planning Policy Framework, that figure is now 760 homes a year.

Second, from 1 July 2026 the council has to apply a 20% buffer under paragraph 78(c) of the revised Framework, which bites where an authority’s adopted requirement is 80% or less of its current local housing need. Stafford’s 500 is well under 80% of 760, so the buffer applies: 152 extra homes a year.

Put together, the requirement for 2026 to 2031 is 4,560 homes, or 912 a year. The borough’s adopted plan asks for 500. The number it is now judged against is nearly double that.

Requirement against supply

Stafford borough five year housing requirement against deliverable supply, 2026 to 2031 Two bars. The requirement for 2026 to 2031 is 4,560 homes, being 760 a year of local housing need plus a 20 per cent buffer, or 912 a year. Identified deliverable supply is 1,781 homes, made up of 1,004 from strategic development locations, 438 from large sites with planning permission, 238 from small sites after a 10 per cent lapse rate, and 101 from C2 residential accommodation. That is 1.95 years of supply, leaving a shortfall of 2,779 homes. The borough can find 39% of the homes it must show Five year housing land supply, Stafford borough at 31 March 2026. Source: Stafford Borough Council’s own statement. Requirement Supply 2026-2031, 912 a year deliverable sites 4,560 homes shortfall of 2,779 homes 1,781 homes = 1.95 years Strategic Development Locations: 1,004 Large sites with permission: 438 Small sites, after 10% lapse: 238 C2 care accommodation, at 1.8 bedrooms per dwelling: 101 Bars start at zero. The requirement is local housing need of 760 a year plus the 20% buffer the council must apply from 1 July 2026. Source: Statement of Five Year Housing Land Supply at 31 March 2026, Stafford Borough Council. Chart by The Stafford Times.

The supply side is worth reading closely, because it is thinner than the total makes it look. Of the 1,781 homes:

  • 1,004 come from the Strategic Development Locations allocated in the 2014 plan, sites like Burleyfields on the western edge of town. More than half the supply is land allocated over a decade ago.
  • 438 come from large sites with planning permission, after the council contacted developers and applied a 10% discount where delivery was not confirmed in writing.
  • 238 come from small sites, after stripping out permissions granted before March 2021 that have neither started nor progressed, then applying a 10% lapse rate.
  • 101 come from C2 residential accommodation, which is mostly care home bedrooms. The council converts these at 1.8 bedrooms per dwelling, so 181 bedrooms count as 101 homes.

What 1.95 years actually means

When a council cannot demonstrate five years of housing land, the policies in its development plan that deal with the supply of housing are treated as out of date. The presumption in favour of sustainable development in paragraph 11(d) of the National Planning Policy Framework takes over, and permission should be granted unless the harm would significantly and demonstrably outweigh the benefits.

In practice that means three things for anyone in the borough. Speculative applications on land the plan never earmarked become much harder for the council to refuse. Refusals that do happen are more likely to be overturned on appeal. And the borough is in that position for as long as it takes to get a new plan adopted, which is years, not months.

There is one deliberate contrast in the council’s own documents. On Gypsy and Traveller pitches, measured separately, Stafford reports 11.06 years of supply at the same date. The shortfall is specific to general housing.

The new Local Plan

The council is starting again. In March 2025 it stopped work on a Local Plan for 2020 to 2040, because national policy and the housing numbers had changed underneath it. On 3 June 2026 it gave formal Notice of Intention to commence the Stafford Borough Local Plan 2025 to 2045.

The first consultation, on scoping and early participation, ran from 8 June to noon on 28 July 2026 and is now closed, with responses being processed. It asked for views on eight themes: addressing the climate emergency; design, healthy lifestyles and safe communities; nature recovery and biodiversity; protecting landscapes, townscapes and heritage; transport and connectivity; the right infrastructure in the right places; meeting housing needs and delivering the right types of housing; and securing economic prosperity.

The Call for Sites is open now, which is the stage at which landowners put forward land for allocation. Sites submitted to earlier rounds do not need resubmitting. Anyone who wants to follow the plan can ask to be added to the Local Plan database by emailing strategicplanning@staffordbc.gov.uk or calling 01785 619000.

No housing target for the new plan has been published yet. The scoping documents do not set one, and it would be premature to read the 760 standard-method figure across directly: that number is used for the five-year supply test, and the plan’s own requirement gets tested at examination.

The council writing this plan will not be here to deliver it

Stafford Borough Council was due to be abolished on 1 April 2028. Under local government reorganisation, the ten existing county, city, district and borough councils across Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent were to be replaced by two unitary authorities. Stafford goes into the southern one, alongside East Staffordshire, Cannock Chase, Lichfield, Tamworth and South Staffordshire, covering about 683,000 people.

That plan was paused on 7 September 2026. Ministers told council leaders to stop implementing the July decisions while a review takes place, and there is no published date for when it reports. Our report: Stafford council merger paused.

A Local Plan for 2025 to 2045, begun in 2026 by an authority that may or may not still exist when it is adopted, could still be inherited rather than owned by whoever defends it. That is worth keeping in mind when the allocations start to appear.

Looking up an application

Stafford’s planning register is searchable through Planning Public Access on the council’s website, at staffordbc.gov.uk/planning-public-access. You can search by application reference (in the form 18/12345/FUL), address, street name or postcode, and read the documents. The Development Management team is on 01785 619337 and planning@staffordbc.gov.uk.

Sources

Nothing in the new Local Plan is policy yet. Until it is adopted, the plan in force remains the Plan for Stafford Borough 2011-2031, weakened on housing supply by the figures above.