Derby Housing Market Area

Information about the current joint working of the Derby Housing Market Area.


The Derby Housing Market Area (HMA) covers the districts of Amber Valley, Derby and South Derbyshire plus Derbyshire County Council. The HMA contains the principal urban area of Derby, the sub-regional centre of Swadlincote, the market towns of Alfreton, Belper, Ripley and Heanor villages, and rural areas. Erewash Borough Council forms part of our neighbouring Greater Nottingham Housing Market Area.

The HMA boundary is logical and helpful for planning policy purposes as it follows local authority administrative boundaries and reflects real life functional relationships.

Why are we working in this way?

The partners recognised the need for some sort of joint working on the strategies, given the functional relationships (especially housing markets and travel to work patterns) across the area. Derby City is currently contained within its administrative boundaries. It is felt that preparing separate but aligned core strategies will enable timely progress and achieve a sufficient level of consistency, as a politically pragmatic and achievable option.

The key role of the HMA partner arrangement is to:

  • align planning documents and policies

  • share expertise

  • jointly commission technical studies

  • ensure future housing is located on the most sustainable appropriate sites and is of the highest design standards

  • ensure future development is supported by appropriate services and infrastructure, including green infrastructure

  • guide the investment of the 2008-11 Growth Point funding to support housing growth

  • oversee the Local Investment Plan (LIP) developed with the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA).

What we have done so far

  • January - March 2009 - Core Strategy Issues and Ideas Consultation  

  • January - May 2010 - Core Strategy 'Issues and Options'

  • December 2010 - Localism bill introduced to Parliament

  • February - March 2011 - Localism Community Engagement Phase 1.

  • July - September 2011 - Options for Housing Growth Consultation.

Derby HMA Newsletter and Core Strategy Update

Together with our partners in the Derby Housing Market area, we have produced a newsletter which includes information about important changes to the planning system and feedback from our recent consultation on 'Options for Housing Growth'.

The need to reuse brownfield land and reduce the number of empty properties was raised as an issue by many people in the consultation, so we outline in the newsletter what actions we are taking to address these important matters. We also include an update on the timetable for drawing up the three local authority Core Strategies. The newsletter can be viewed in the related documents section below.

Other HMA joint working activities

Our joint working has also included the development of the Local Investment Plan (LIP) with the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA).

Related documents

The following documents are in Portable Document Format (PDF). You can download software to view PDF documents for free from the Adobe website (opens in a new window)

Information on other websites

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