Live Economic Land Availability (ELA) interactive map and dashboard
We monitor the availability of land, starts and completions for all economic development uses (non-residential uses) and updates this information at the end of each quarter as part of the ELA.
This information has now been added to an ELA interactive map and dashboard. This allows all our data and boundaries on current and completed economic development sites to be viewed, filtered and exported as spatial and table data.
View the ELA interactive map and dashboard
External link
What the ELA monitors
ELA uses
The categories of uses that are monitored in the ELA are:
- Offices
- Industry (include storage and distribution)
- Waste (waste processing uses)
- Retail (shops and financial services)
- Food and Beverage (restaurants, cafes, pubs/bars and hot food takeaways)
- Leisure (indoor leisure uses such as cinemas, gyms, soft play facilities, galleries, museums)
- Mixed Commercial (planning permission which allow buildings to be used for a range of retail, leisure and community uses under planning use Class E)
- Hotels (including all visitor accommodation)
- Community uses (including health and education uses)
- Other (commercial development not included in the above categories)
Size Thresholds
The ELA monitors all planning permissions for economic development uses providing at least 500 square metres of additional floorspace and allocations of land for economic development uses without planning permission at least 0.25 hectares in size. Planning approvals and sites falling below these thresholds are not monitored but this approach captures the vast majority of additional floorspace created in the district.
Types of development
The ELA monitors the following types of development meeting the size threshold:
- New buildings
- Changes of use between above categories
- Extension of buildings
Developments that do not create additional building floorspace meeting the threshold, such as open storage uses or car parks are not monitored
Using the ELA tool
View and filter screen
The 'view and filter' screen of the ELA tool has separate tabs for 'current supply', 'completions' and 'metrics'. The search button (magnifying glass) can be used to search by address or ELA site number if known.
Current supply
Current supply includes all ELA sites that are allocated in the Local Plan and/or have an extant planning permission for economic development uses that have not yet completed, including sites that have started (under construction). These sites are shown on the map. More details for each site can be viewed by clicking on the site.
The data can be filtered according to use type:
- status (allocation, outline or full planning permission or under construction)
- estimated delivery timescales
- geographical area (for example ward, settlement)
- centre type
Filters can also be set for the floorspace capacity and land area of the site.
Completions
Includes all sites with completion records (including partly completed sites). Some sites have multiple completion records where buildings have been developed in phases across different quarters or years. These can be viewed individually by using the arrows on the pop-up box. The data can be filtered by use type, status and geographical area. The quarter/year of the completion can also be filtered, and multiple years can be selected as necessary.
The historic data on completions uses data available from our monitoring systems varies according the specific uses as follows.
- Industry, offices and waste uses: monitored since 2003-04
- Retail, food and beverage, leisure and mixed commercial: monitored since 2012-13
- Hotels, community and other uses: monitored since 2021-22
Though some of the completion data on hotels, community and other uses has been backdated to include some completions from before 2021-22, this exercise is not complete so caution should be taken with comparing data across different years.
Metrics
This screen provides further information on the combined current supply and completions in relation to set metrics. For general employment (industry and waste uses) and offices, the metrics measure the plan period supply for the period 2012-28 which includes a combination of the current supply and completions since 2012. We uses this data to assess the adequacy of supply against the requirements set out in Spatial Policy 9 of the Core Strategy.
This screen can also be used to filter data for different uses or combinations of uses and for specific geographical areas as required.
Table and data export screen
This screen allows ELA table data to be viewed or exported to a CSV document format to be viewed in Microsoft Excel or similar software products.
There are options to filter data by use type, status or geographical area on the right of the screen. The tool displays all data relating to the ELA sites matching that query (or all records if no filter is added) selected on the right of the screen. To export this data, click on the four circle 'action' symbol to the top right of the table. This allows the table data to be exported to a CSV file or as boundary data (in a GeoJSON format) which can be imported into specialist GIS systems.
This facility is available for the current supply, completions and plan period supply data (see view and filter section above for details). Use the tab on the top left of the screen to toggle between these views.
Spatial data export screen
This screen allows ELA data to be filtered and exported for specific geographic areas defined by the user.
Under 'Select using spatial filters', there are three options:
Return features within full extent of the map
This filters the data to all ELA sites that can be viewed on the screen. Click 'apply' to return the query results. Clicking the 3 dots to the right of the query drop down box presents a number of options including export to a CSV or GeoJSON file format.
Only return features that intersect with the shape drawn on the map
This filters the data to a boundary created by the user (rectangle or polygons options can be clicked to do this) and returns the ELA sites that lie within that boundary. A buffer can also be added to the shape by applying a search distance. Results can be accessed in the same way as set out above.
Only return features that have a spatial relationship with features in another layer
This filters the ELA sites against other spatial datasets such as retail centre or the HS2 safeguarding area and selects the results that lie within.
This option is available for the current supply and completions only.
Updates to ELA sites
The site data in the ELA is updated at the end of each quarter (we aim to do this within one month). This update relates to factual planning information and site progress only and includes:
- new planning permissions for ELA uses that create new sites or provide updated information for existing ELA sites (this could include splitting a site where a planning permission relates to part of a site).
- new development starts and completions
- existing planning permission that have expired - sites are removed from the current ELA unless they are allocated in the Local Plan.
- non-ELA planning permissions on existing ELA sites (usually residential schemes) – such sites are made 'unavailable' and not shown in the current ELA because the permission indicates the intent of the landowner to pursue another use and the permission indicates the suitability of that use.
The ELA is not updated to reflect any other suitability or availability factors associated with the site. This is to ensure the ELA data provides a consistent and factual supply position which is only updated by planning approvals or implementation of approvals. The suitability and availability of allocated sites was determined through the adoption of the allocation documents in the Leeds Local Plan (the Site Allocations Plan and Aire Valley Leeds Area Action Plan) and this position is considered up to date.
A full review of suitability, availability and deliverability of sites will be undertaken to support the update of the Local Plan proposed to be include in the scope for the
Leeds Local Plan 2040. This will review the suitability of sites against current/proposed national and local planning policy and involve a consultation with landowners/developers on the availability of existing sites. There is also be an opportunity
submit new economic development site options to be considered in the update, as part of the call for sites.
Whilst every reasonable effort is made to keep the data up to date and live, some of the data sources which we use to monitor starts and completions are either incomplete or lag. In such cases, we will update completions by backdating them to the relevant quarter which may result in revisions to earlier quarters. Updates will be backdated until the data for the previous financial year is published in the Authority Monitoring Report (AMR). At that point the earlier completions will be recorded in the most recent financial year. We aim to publish the AMR within 9 months of the end of the financial year.
Further guidance
We will prepare further guidance on how to use the ELA tool within the guidance tab on the tool itself (see top right of each screen) but this 'beta' version of the tool has been made available to view and use.
We are open to suggestions about additional spatial queries that could be added to the existing filtering options. We will endeavour to add these to the tool subject to the relevant spatial datasets being available to us.
If you have any queries or suggestions about the ELA tool, email
location.intelligence@leeds.gov.uk.
