Newport's new plan asks for 431 fewer homes than the last one, and the first four years of it ran 39 a year short of even that

Newport City Council is planning for fewer new homes to 2036 than the plan it adopted in 2015 asked for, and over the first four years of the new plan period it has been finishing them more slowly than either target needs. Its latest published year, 2023-24, beat both. All of it sits in the council's own documents. The replacement local development plan had its first committee consideration as a full draft at the Performance Scrutiny Committee - Place and Corporate, at 12.30pm on Monday 7 September, as item 3. This is the first full draft of the replacement and the last preparation stage before it is submitted to the Welsh Government for examination. Paragraph 2.2 of the report to committee calls it "officer's recommended strategy and framework to guide the future growth of Newport up to 2036 in adherence to the 'Test of Soundness'". Newport grew faster than any other Welsh local authority between 2011 and 2021, by 9.5 per cent to 159,600 people.

Where the homes would go

Newport still has to find room for 3,988 of the 10,911 homes on new sites. Four key sites are proposed to carry most of that residual, the largest up to 2,500 at Langstone Road, Llanwern, with 1,450 of them anticipated by 2036, and 3,210 dwellings across the four inside the plan period. The council's paper works from a rounded key sites total of 3,200 and puts the balance, to come from sites of between 10 and 299 units, at 788. The council's urban capacity study finds the supply of readily developable previously developed land is falling, so the deposit plan is a mixed brownfield and greenfield strategy rather than the brownfield-led one the 2011-2026 plan set out in Policy SP10. The council's own housing figure is drawn from past delivery rates over eight years before Covid, 2012-13 to 2019-20, and two after.

The jobs land is land Newport has already allocated

On employment the deposit plan carries almost nothing new. Its 79 hectares are existing allocations rolled over, on Cover's mapping of all six of the plan's employment sites to allocations in the 2011-2026 plan, against a requirement of 77 hectares, and Policy SP1 sets a minimum of 13,875 new jobs by 2036. That 77 hectares is a 62 hectare baseline drawn from past delivery rates plus a 15 hectare regional uplift. Economic forecasting on its own produced generally negative land needs. The baseline implies 4.1 hectares a year, above every delivery rate the council's own monitoring report records: 2.42 hectares a year on allocated land between 2011 and 2024, against the 1.4 a year the plan predicted, or 3.2 a year counting Newport Docks. The same document carries a second jobs figure: paragraph 9.3 puts the need at 8,640, which is 5,235 below the policy. Cover uses the SP1 minimum because that is the number the policy sets.

What happens next, and what is not yet fixed

Two votes stand between the deposit plan and consultation. Newport's Cabinet meets on 15 September and full council on 29 September, both dates confirmed on the council's own meetings calendar. Neither agenda has been published, so the plan is not yet confirmed as an item on either, though the council said on 4 September that the plan would go to a scrutiny committee, cabinet and full council this month. The scrutiny report says only that the stage "requires approval by Full Council". If both agree, the council intends to start the consultation in October and run it for a minimum of eight weeks, into December, with documents at the Civic Centre and Central Library. Anyone can comment then, including on an individual site such as Langstone Road, and the comments go to the council, which must pass them to the inspector who tests the plan. The council has not yet published the opening date or how to respond, and Cover will carry both when it does. The plan would then go to the Welsh Government for examination in April 2027. Every one of those dates is marked approximate and rests on a proposed second revision to the delivery agreement. Councillor Saeed Adan, the Cabinet Member for Housing and Planning, was one of five people invited to Monday's item.

Correction, 8 September 2026: an earlier version said the plan finds land for 561 more homes than the 2015 plan asked for, setting land supply against a housing requirement. The 2015 plan provided for 11,623, so the new plan finds land for 712 fewer.

Correction, 8 September 2026: an earlier headline said the city "is building" 39 a year short of the new target. That is the average of the plan's first four years. The council's latest published year, 2023-24, delivered 785 homes, above both targets.