The Court of Appeal has recently quashed the High Court ruling which removed the small site exemption on affordable housing provision.

Planning Practice Guidance was yesterday updated to reinsert passages of guidance stipulating that the affordable housing contributions “should not be sought from developments of 10 or less, and which have a maximum combined gross for space of no more than 1000 sq. m”.

The PPG update also restores guidance on the controversial vacant building credit, which is intended to incentivise brownfield development on sites containing vacant buildings and the mechanism, where a vacant building is brought back into use, or is demolished to be replaced by a new building “the developer should be offered a financial credit equivalent to the existing gross floorspace of relevant vacant buildings when the local planning authority calculate any affordable housing contribution which will be sought”, the updated PPG says.