The good news is Reading is now considered one of the twenty most populated areas of England. 

Or, if you look at it another way, that's the bad news because it puts us in the "35% urban uplift" Club - a policy measure applied to the 20 most populated urban areas in England as part of the national planning policy.

Our companion urban areas are: Birmingham, Bradford, Brighton and Hove, Bristol, Coventry, Derby, Kingston upon Hull, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Newcastle upon Tyne, Nottingham, Plymouth, Reading, Sheffield, Southampton, Stoke-on-Trent, and Wolverhampton.

It increases the local housing need figures by 35% in these areas¹ This uplift is designed to support the effective and efficient use of land and densification within towns and cities, aiming to make the most of brownfield land and existing infrastructure to sustainably densify existing urban areas and their peripheries. Or, in other words, making the area more crowded with higher buildings.

The aim is to help the government get to its national housing target of 300,000 net new homes per year.

It's important to note that the urban uplift figure is not calculated with any consideration of local housing need or capacity, but is instead used to address the failure of the standard method to meet the national housing target.

Cynically you could claim that this is gerrymandering, since almost all of these areas return Labour MPs. It also keeps homes away from NIMBY Tory voting constituencies.

The impact of the 35% urban uplift in Reading is significant for local planning and housing development. The policy has increased Reading's housing requirement from 689 dwellings per annum to 883, representing an increase of 194 dwellings per annum or a 28% increase.