Mansfield District Council is preparing to identify new housing sites as part of its Local Plan Review, with land needed for thousands of additional homes across the district by 2043.
A report going before the council’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee (Place) on Thursday 25 June says the district’s total housing need for the 2023 to 2043 plan period is 9,900 homes, based on the Government’s standard method of calculating local housing need. With a 5% buffer added, to provide choice and competition in the land market, the total figure rises to 10,395 homes.
The report says existing commitments, including sites with planning permission and remaining allocations in the adopted Local Plan, account for 7,072 homes. Of these, 6,511 are within the Mansfield urban area and 561 are in Warsop Parish.
Once a windfall allowance of 720 homes is taken into account, the council says a further 2,603 homes still need to be planned for. An additional 10% contingency has also been added to that residual requirement, bringing the total number of homes to be found through new allocations to 2,864. The report says this is intended to make the plan more robust in case existing commitments do not come forward, are delayed, or are delivered more slowly than expected.
The Local Plan Review will guide where new homes, employment land and supporting infrastructure should go across Mansfield district over the coming years. It updates the adopted Local Plan, which covers 2013 to 2033, and follows a Regulation 18 draft consultation held in May 2025.
The council’s current spatial strategy is to direct most development to the Mansfield urban area, including Rainworth, Pleasley and Clipstone, as well as sustainable greenfield sites on the edge of the urban area. Market Warsop is identified as the district’s second largest settlement, while more limited growth is proposed for the Warsop Parish villages of Church Warsop, Meden Vale, Warsop Vale and Spion Kop.
According to the report, officers have reviewed comments received during the Regulation 18 consultation and are proposing that this broad strategy remains unchanged, subject to the outcome of the Sustainability Appraisal. The draft Local Plan Review currently seeks to maintain a distribution of 90% of housing growth in the Mansfield urban area and 10% in Warsop Parish, although the report says this may need to change depending on the availability of suitable and developable land.
The committee is not being asked to approve specific housing sites at this stage. Instead, members are being asked to note the updated housing requirements, the proposed method for assessing potential housing sites, and the next steps in preparing the Local Plan Review.
The report explains that the council has completed its Housing and Economic Land Availability Assessment, known as the HELAA. This assessment identifies a long list of sites that may be available or potentially suitable for housing or employment development. However, the report makes clear that the HELAA does not allocate land or make policy decisions. Site selection is described as a separate process, involving planning judgement and assessment against strategic, environmental and sustainability considerations.
Potential housing sites will be assessed against a range of criteria, including heritage impact, landscape sensitivity, highways and access, flood risk, ecology, green and blue infrastructure, natural resources, contamination, deliverability, viability, proximity to services and facilities, and comments made during consultation.
The report says the criteria are not weighted against one another but will be used to inform a qualitative assessment of each site. Officers will also consider whether sites fit with the Local Plan’s spatial strategy and whether they can help provide enough deliverable land in the first five years of the plan, as well as developable land for later years.
Existing housing allocations in the adopted Local Plan that do not yet have planning permission are also being reviewed. The report says any allocations that are no longer considered deliverable or developable should no longer be allocated for their intended use. That review will consider updated technical evidence and any changes in site availability since the current Local Plan was adopted.
Before preferred sites are included in the next draft of the Local Plan Review, they will be subject to further testing. This will include highways modelling to assess the potential impact on the road network and identify any mitigation needed, an Infrastructure Delivery Plan to set out what supporting infrastructure would be required, and site-specific viability assessments as part of the wider plan viability work.
The report says the preferred sites will be available to view as part of the Regulation 19 consultation, which is expected to be presented to full council for consideration in September 2026. If approved, the draft plan would then go out for a six-week consultation.
After that consultation, the Local Plan is expected to be submitted to the Secretary of State in December 2026 for examination by the Planning Inspectorate. Adoption of the reviewed plan is currently anticipated in autumn 2027.