Two documents vital to future planning for schools and housing have been released by Highland Council.
The joint publication of the Housing Land Audit and School Roll Forecast provides up to date forecasts for housing delivery and school rolls across the Highland Council area and will be used to monitor, implement and share details of the actions needed to support future housing growth.
Aligning the documents will provide accurate monitoring of infrastructure and development and allow the council to prioritise capital investment decisions, the local authority says.
Both documents are available on Highland Council’s website.
The School Roll Forecasts identify the expected pupil rolls for each of the primary and secondary schools across Highland over the next 15 years.
The forecasts, which are updated annually, incorporate a wide range of factors including the programmed rate of housing development (from the Housing Land Audit), population changes and school placing requests.
These are used to identify school roll pressures and capacity issues in future years, and are a key element in the prioritisation of capital investment in schools.
The Housing Land Audit 2018 is an assessment of the housing land supply available in the Highland Council area as at 1 June 2018.
The audit identifies a programmed supply of 6145 houses for delivery across the region in the five years to end of May, 2023.
The following five years to 2028 offers potential for a further 3651 homes.
The audit concludes that continuing to build in large developments like Tornagrain, Stratton, Ness Castle, Ness Side and Torvean will ‘ensure major available capacity is located in the areas of highest demand around the Inner Moray Firth area should changing market conditions demand this.”
This year the council has introduced a new ‘storymap’ presenting this information and regularly updated house completions at highland.maps.arcgis.com.