Introduction
Under the Self and Custom House-building Act 2015 (as amended by the Housing and Planning Act 2016), Local Planning Authorities (LPA’s) are required to keep a register of individuals and associations of individuals who are seeking to acquire serviced plots of land in the authority’s area for their own self-build and custom house-building projects.
The Self-build and Custom House-building (Register) Regulations 2016 state that the minimum requirements for entry on the Register are the applicant’s name, address, date of birth, nationality and the number of serviced plot(s) of land they are seeking (either alone or with others) on which to build their sole or main residence. These details are kept on Part 2 of the Register.
Under the Self and Custom House-building Act 2015 (as amended by the Housing and Planning Act 2016), the LPA can request additional information to help understand the nature of the demand and to inform planning, housing, regeneration and disposal of assets. It can also apply affordability and local eligibility criteria according to the Self-build and Custom House-building (Register) Regulations 2016. Under the Self and Custom Housebuilding Act 2015 (as amended by the Housing and Planning Act 2016), these details are kept on Part 1 of the Register. The LPA has a duty to grant suitable planning permission for those numbers on the Register who fulfil these criteria.
As a result of the Self-build and Custom Housebuilding Act 2015 (as amended by the Housing and Planning Act 2016), the LPA is required to publicise the Register, publish headline data in its Authority Monitoring Report and produce an annual summary of the Register Base Periods. The first base period is the date the LPA first established a Register, 31 March 2015, to the 31 October 2016. This is as detailed in the Self and Custom House-building Act 2015 (as amended by the Housing and Planning Act 2016) whereby the first base period must run from the day the register was established to the day before the day on which section 10 of the Housing and Planning Act 2016 came into force. Each subsequent 12 months is a base period.