93 authorities now operate under the Presumption – but your local plan policies do not collapse with them

The 2025 Housing Delivery Test places 93 of 301 authorities below the 75% threshold, triggering S3 Presumption. That is a significant cohort, and many practitioners are asking whether every housing policy in those plans now carries very limited weight. It does not. The Presumption and the Annex A(2) material-inconsistency test are separate mechanisms with different consequences, and conflating them produces bad advice.

What the Presumption actually does

S3 sets the decision-making framework when development plan policies are absent, silent or out of date. The HDT consequence is narrow: delivery below 75% over the three years 2022/23 to 2024/25 places the authority in Presumption. That affects how applications are determined where those policies do not provide an answer, but it does not rewrite the weight of policies that do.

The question of whether an individual policy carries very limited weight is governed by Annex A(2), which turns on material inconsistency with the national decision-making policies in the August 2026 Framework. A plan adopted in 2020 may contain policies that remain entirely consistent with CC1, HO7 or N3 as now expressed. Others may not. The decision-maker must assess that policy by policy, and the authority's HDT score is not the test.

The 154 authorities above 95% are the tactical contrast

Of the 301, 154 delivered at 95% or above and face no HDT consequence. A further 19 sit in the 75–84% buffer band, requiring a 20% land supply buffer but nothing more. The 35 between 85% and 94% must prepare an action plan. The Presumption group is substantial, but not universal, and our refusal data across 22,637 decisions in the last 90 days shows a 13.5% refusal rate with no step-change at any HDT threshold. Authorities continue to refuse applications, and the courts continue to uphold refusals, where material plan policies are engaged and consistent with the Framework.

The five-year insulation under Annex A(3)

Annex A(3) offers a distinct protection: where an authority demonstrates five year supply with the appropriate buffer and HDT delivery above 75%, a local housing need figure higher than the adopted requirement is not evidence of unmet need for S5(1)(j) purposes, for five years from adoption. That applies to 208 authorities not in Presumption, and it matters because S5(1)(j) is a route to justify development outside settlements. The interaction between supply, delivery and the standard method is now more textured than simply checking whether the plan is less than five years old.

Do not advise on inconsistency you cannot see

You hold the policy code and title – CC2 is mitigation of climate change, HO8 is providing affordable homes – but not the wording. You cannot state that a specific local policy conflicts with a national one unless you have both texts in front of you. What you can do is flag that the Annex A(2) test exists, explain what it requires, and leave the decision-maker to apply it. A sentence claiming that every housing policy in the 93 Presumption authorities now carries very limited weight would be wrong in law, and to this readership it would discredit everything else you say.

What to do this week

- Review your pipeline in the 93 Presumption authorities. The tilted balance applies, but do not assume every policy opposing your scheme is downgraded – assess material inconsistency with the August 2026 codes on a policy-by-policy basis. - Check Annex A(3) eligibility for strategic sites outside settlements. If your authority shows five year supply, delivers above 75%, and adopted its plan within the last five years, the standard method excess is not unmet need for S5(1)(j). - Stop citing paragraph numbers. The Framework in force has 131 policies across 19 chapters, each with a code. S3, HO7, F5 – learn them, because every paragraph reference now dates your advice. - Do not conflate the two tests in client briefings. Being in Presumption does not trigger the very limited weight consequence. One is about the decision-making framework when policies are out of date; the other is about inconsistency with national policy. They are not the same thing.