Blaby District, question by question.
The second district, evaluated on the same measures in the same order — and it answers the first question the other way. On the trajectory published with its Regulation 19 plan the Council is marginally above five years. On its own consenting record it is not, and on its own delivery projection the gate opens next year whatever the supply figure says.
What follows is the summary. The full analysis runs to forty-five pages with every source cited, and is sent on request.
Is the gateway open, and will it still be?
That is the position before any site is examined, and it is stated first. The margin is 12.7 dwellings a year, 1.8% of the requirement, and it rests entirely on allocations that do not yet hold permission: committed supply alone returns 3.02 years, and on the apportionment of Leicester's unmet need that the Council's own agreed instruments establish, 3.76.
The two triggers run in opposite directions, and that is what decides a case. On the published trajectory the supply figure rises at every later base date. The delivery measurement falls at each, because the requirement has moved to local housing need and the completions already banked are the lowest in a decade.
| Base date | Published trajectory, 5% | At 20% | Re-timed on its register, 5% | Gateway on supply |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 April 2026 | 5.09 | 4.46 | 4.58 | Shut on the trajectory; open re-timed |
| 1 April 2027 | 5.75 | 5.03 | 5.45 | Shut |
| 1 April 2028 | 5.71 | 5.00 | 5.97 | Shut |
The delivery trigger is where this district's case sits. The 2025 measurement is 86% and carries an action plan. On the Council's own trajectory 2025–26 delivers 254 against the 306 needed to stay above 75%, so the 2026 measurement returns 70.6% and the 2027 measurement 53.5%. Below 75%, Annex D paragraph 12(c) deems an evidenced unmet need to exist — S5(1)(j) engaged on delivery alone, at every base date in the table above.
Is that supply deliverable?
Consent stage governs delivery. Where an allocation carries a live application its phasing gives way to the application's own dates, and every period the register records in this district is slower than the one the chain assumes.
Does the plan distribute soundly?
The emerging trajectory does not meet its own requirement until its tenth year, and the two standalone strategic sites the plan rests its second half on contribute nothing to the first nine.
That last point is the mirror of the Harborough finding. S6(1)(b) of the Framework published on 17 August 2026 asks whether a made neighbourhood plan contains allocations to meet its identified housing requirement; the December 2024 test asked for policies and allocations, and the word has gone. In Harborough the Local Plan gives its two lowest tiers no site to carry. Here every tier is provided for by a named allocation a neighbourhood plan can adopt — but the one made plan covering the Smaller Villages, the Fosse Villages plan, provides for housing by existing commitments and development within settlement limits, and allocates no site. A proposal in Sharnford or Thurlaston conflicting with it does not attract S6. It falls to S3: S4 within the settlement, S5 outside, and where the Council cannot demonstrate five years, S5(1)(j) in terms.
Is affordable need being met?
The assessed need is 536 a year, 157% of the district's standard method figure, and the Council's own topic paper calls it “particularly significant in Blaby”. Across thirty-four published years the district has added 65.4 affordable dwellings a year; the best single year reached 29.3% of that need.
What the Inspectorate has already recorded.
Nothing in this part is our figure. Each entry is what the decision letter records. The last decision in which the Council put five years was 10 November 2023; the first in which it did not was 27 March 2024, four months later, and every decision since has recorded a shortfall.
You have read the summary. The evaluation is the document.
Everything above is stated without its working. The full evaluation carries the arithmetic behind every figure, the trajectory row each was drawn from, and the notes recording what was done to it and what was deliberately left alone.
It is sent on request, to named recipients. We ask who you are because the document cites live positions that move, and we would rather be able to tell you when one has.
- 45pages, covering all four questions and the Inspectorate's record in full
- 28sections across six parts, twenty-seven carrying a table and notes
- 27measures of the twenty-eight on the register, each with its benchmark and basis; the one not carried is stated
- 35substantive applications on the register, 4,344 dwellings, read with the minutes of every Planning Committee since January 2024
- 3schedules of sources — authority documents, national policy and data, and conventions
- 0figures carried from an unpublished source
One trajectory. Read row by row.
Every figure of supply comes from a single document — the housing trajectory published with the Regulation 19 plan, as considered at Full Council on 30 June 2026 — and it is built from the individual site rows rather than the printed annual totals. The rows were cast against the totals in all seventeen years before anything was derived from them, and they agree in every one. Application status is the Council's own register, read to 2 September 2026, with the minutes of every Planning Committee since January 2024.
Published figures are recorded as published, including where they do not reconcile. Where a point tells against the client it is volunteered rather than waited for, and identified as such where it arises. Forty-five pages, twenty-eight sections, three schedules of sources, and no figure carried from an unpublished one.
The method is national.
Nothing in the four questions is particular to Blaby. The sections carry the same names in the same order as in Harborough, so that a reader can lay the two side by side; the one section this district's evidence does not support is omitted, and the omission is stated.
That comparison is the point. One district is short on the face of its own schedule; the other is marginally above five years on the face of its plan and short on its own register. Both turn on the same evidence, and any authority in England can be taken to the same depth. What varies is how much of its evidence base it has published, and that is established before anything is quoted.
Commission this for your authority.
An initial report sets out all twenty-eight measures. It is then kept current — re-cut quarterly, or on request whenever a position moves. Pricing turns on how much of the evidence base the authority has published, so tell us the authority and we will quote.