Affordable Housing Development Control Toolkit

The toolkit is designed to indicate the financial viability of developments in order to act as a starting point to negotiating Section 106 agreements. It is however intended to be only one of the many factors which must be taken into account in these negotiations.

The toolkit, an Excel model, has been developed by Three Dragons consultancy and Nottingham Trent University for the GLA and the Housing Corporation. It is used by the GLA, London boroughs and the HCA to test the viability of residential schemes in relation to London Plan policy and assess whether any social housing grant is required to contribute to this output.

Ordering the toolkit

Copies are available at a cost of £200 + VAT. The toolkit consists of a CD-ROM including the database model, default value and detailed guidance notes. It runs in versions of Microsoft Excel 2000 or higher. It can be ordered using the form below.

Affordable Housing Toolkit CD order form RTF

The guidance note (2011) is also available for download:

Toolkit guidance notes 2011 PDF

The 2011 version of the toolkit

Following a major upgrade in the 2007-8 version (following an independent review carried out by AtisReal and refinements to GLA policy), the 2011 version includes largely incremental changes. The 2011 toolkit is an interim update pending completion of replacement London Plan and the finalisation of the HCA 2011-15 Investment programme.

The GLA Toolkit for 2011 retains an approach which is consistent with previous Toolkit version.

The 2011 Version updates key variables of house prices, development costs and rents. Users are reminded that these are guideline or benchmarks values and that applicants should provide Boroughs with a full set of data in relation to selling prices, build costs and offers from registered providers. Other development costs remain unchanged.

The new Affordable Rent tenure has been taken account of in the 2011 Toolkit. Given the relative newness of this tenure, it is uncertain precisely how housing associations will calculate revenue from it. For the purposes of the 2011 Toolkit version, Affordable Rent is treated similarly to Intermediate or Sub Market Rent.

For appraisal work (as is explained in the Guidance Notes), the user can either input a user-defined figure, or can vary the percentage of open market rent. Government policy suggests this should be no more than 80% of open market rent.

Generally Affordable Rent, when substituting for Social Rent, will generate a higher revenue to the scheme and hence is likely to make it more viable. Doing so of course makes the scheme less, rather than more affordable. Continued work on the affordability indicator has taken place, making it more refined, and the Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) function, in response to feedback, continues to allow greater flexibility with respect to development costs. The printing function, which was raised as a problem, has been sorted.

As previously, the Toolkit contains two key Excel operating files.  It is highly important that all appraisals are loaded from the Benchmark file once it has been loaded into a folder with the Toolkit itself.  This will ensure that appraisals are considered in the context of the Borough in question.

Review of the toolkit model

An independent review by AtisReal of the 2006/7 toolkit's scope and function showed that it was fit for purpose on most major measures, although on others there was room for improvement. The 2007/8 version addresses these limitations, in particular through its ability to phase development and to include more explicitly the impacts of commercial development uses.

Review of the GLA Development Control Toolkit Model by AtisReal PDF