Where the presumption in favour
of development applies
It used to be one answer per council: could your authority show enough housing land, or not? On 17 August 2026 that stopped being the test. Inside a settlement the presumption now applies unconditionally, whatever your council delivers. Outside one, it turns on the delivery figures - and new figures published that same afternoon took the number of failing districts from 59 to 91.
Before and after 17 August 2026
Before, one answer covered a whole district. After, the settlement edge is the line that matters. Hover any district for its figures.
What actually changed
The old Framework asked one question about your council. The new one asks three questions about your site, and the housing land supply position only survives in two of them.
The presumption applies permanently and unconditionally. Permission should be granted unless the benefits would be substantially outweighed by the adverse effects. Your council's land supply switches nothing on and nothing off - a shortfall is now simply a benefit in the balance, not a gateway you have to unlock.
Only the listed forms of development should be approved, and the unmet-need limb is where the delivery figures still bite. A result below 75% means unmet need is deemed to exist - but that alone is not enough. The scheme must also be well related to an existing settlement and of a scale the infrastructure can take.
The outside-settlement policy does not apply here at all. But the identical delivery and supply triggers reappear in the grey belt route, through footnote 41. Anyone concluding that land supply stopped mattering the moment they saw a Green Belt notation has discarded the strongest argument on the file.
Find your district
| District▼ | 2023 result▼ | 2025 result▼ | Countryside now▼ | Change▼ |
|---|
"Countryside now" is whether the delivery limb feeds the unmet-need route outside settlements. Inside a settlement the presumption applies in every district on this list, whatever its result. Click any row to find it on the map.
How we built this
The delivery figures. MHCLG's Housing Delivery Test measures homes delivered against homes required over three years, per authority. The 2023 measurement was operative until 17 August 2026; the 2025 measurement replaced it that afternoon, published four minutes before the new Framework. Both are official, both are Open Government Licence, and we joined them to England's 296 local authority districts by name.
The settlement layer. 7,147 built up areas from the Office for National Statistics, December 2024. These are drawn as a stand-in for the Framework's "settlement", which is what the new policy actually turns on. They cover 14,367 sq km, which is % of England's 130,279 sq km land area.
What the shading means, and it differs by side. Before 17 August, a result below 75% engaged the presumption across the whole district. After, it does not do that anywhere: inside a settlement the presumption applies regardless, and outside a settlement the result feeds the unmet-need limb. So the "before" map shades whole districts and the "after" map shades countryside plus every settlement in the country.
What this map leaves out. There are two housing triggers, not one: the delivery test, and a council being unable to show a five year housing land supply. Only the delivery test is published nationally. Councils evidence their own supply position and nobody collects them, so we cannot map that half. Some districts shown here as not engaged were engaged on supply instead. The real numbers on both sides are higher than 59 and 91.
Two smaller notes. National Park authorities are separate local planning authorities and are not measured by the delivery test at all, so they are outlined rather than shaded - their settlements still get the unconditional presumption like anywhere else. And the Isles of Scilly has no measurement in either year, because its housing requirement is zero.
Boundaries: ONS / OS (OGL). Delivery figures: MHCLG (OGL). The full dataset behind this page is available as JSON.
Which side of the line is your site on?
GapSense reads your draft against the local plan and the August 2026 Framework that will decide it, works out which presumption route applies, and flags the refusal risks before your council ever sees it.