{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.026832955404383976, 'fraction_numerical': 0.021164021164021163, 'mean_word_length': 5.317422434367542, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Delivering Affordable Housing through Planning: Explaining Variable Policy Usage across Rural England and Wales

The delivery of affordable housing through local planning powers remains one of the most debated and controversial subjects with which policy and practice must grapple. A framework—for promoting the use of planning mechanisms to either reduce land costs or ensure that affordable housing forms part of a negotiated ‘planning gain’ package (i.e. a package of wider benefits, extending from a development, which a local authority may require as the price of planning permission)—has existed across England and Wales since the early 1990s and has attracted considerable attention throughout the last decade. Concern for how the policy operates and is operated has continued unabated since the first government circulars on planning and affordable housing were issued in 1991, with recent research being undertaken by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) (Bishop Associates, 2001), the Department of Transport, Local Government and the Regions (DTLR) (2002) and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (Crook et al., 2001). Academic attention has also been steadfastly focused on the subject, with recent analyses provided by Gallent (2000), Farthing & Ashley (2002) and Whitehead (2002). The majority of guidance and critiques tend to focus on the policy framework itself—with the exception of Farthing and Ashley’s analysis of the capacity of local authorities to negotiate social gains from housing development—and end by speculating on possible improvements, usually resting on increasing clarity in the national framework. Some analyses have examined the impact of regional context on the success of policy, arguing that it is easier for planning authorities to extract gains from development where land values are high and where developers are clamouring to provide new housing (Crook et al., 2001; Whitehead, 2002). Others have focused on local practice in terms of the ability of planning authorities to put in place the procedures that will enable them to capitalise on the current system (Tewdwr-Jones et al., 1998; Carmona et al., 2001). In this paper, our objective is to examine local implementation of existing policy and the willingness and capacity of authorities to use the present system to deliver affordable housing. We are mindful of course of potential changes to the way planning gain from housing and commercial development might be sought in the future with the publication of both English and Welsh planning Green Papers (DTLR, 2001; Welsh Assembly Government, 2001), with their focus on improving the de-