On the Ground
Policy is abstract until it has an address. This is reporting from the places where the numbers turn into buildings: the schemes going up, the decisions made in committee rooms, the towns and villages reshaped by a target nobody local chose. The system seen from the field, not the spreadsheet.
How a parish council objects to housing under the new framework, and the ground that still works.
The tilted balance has gone, and with it the argument most objections were built around. What replaced it hands a parish council two things it did not have before, and takes away one it relied on. A practical guide to which ground is worth standing on now, and which is not.
Speculative sites and allocated sites under the new framework, and why allocation moves the boundary.
From 17 August 2026, housing outside a settlement is decided by category rather than by weight. Land that is allocated, or that has permission, counts as part of the settlement before anything is built. This is what that does to a speculative application on the edge of a Cotswold town, and to the 150 homes at Lechlade.
The tilted balance is not a verdict, and how some councils have beaten it.
When the Wern was lost on appeal, it read like proof that a town council fighting speculative housing is wasting its breath. The law says otherwise, and so do councils that have won. But only on particular ground. A guide for town and parish councils in districts with no five-year housing land supply.