Draft London Plan Examination: Can the Mayor’s strateg…

After a week of discussing legal and procedural matters, the second week turned to debating the overall spatial strategy of the Plan, giving an interesting insight into how the rest of the examination may unfold.

London's housing crisis is well documented and, unsurprisingly, much of the Plan is focused on where and how London will deliver these homes. The strategy taken by the Mayor is, however, largely consistent with the strategy of all previous iterations of the Plan, beginning with the 'Compact City' approach introduced by Ken Livingstone in 2004 - protect the Green Belt and optimise output on brownfield land.

The difference, however, is in the detail. The Plan envisages that the majority of these homes will come through identified Opportunity Areas and through the sustainable intensification of land, particularly on 'small sites', with 38% of the total projected need of 660,000 homes between 2019 and 2041 expected to be on developments of under 25 units on sites under 0.25 hectares.

Whilst a consensus emerged in the discussion on the brownfield first approach and the need to optimise development, the ability of this strategy alone to meet housing capacity was heavily questioned by representatives of the development industry, London boroughs and the wider South East authorities.

As argued by Nick De Lotbiniere, Head of London Planning at Savills on behalf of the Crown Estate and Merton College, whilst the small sites initiative is supported, the capacity of these sites has been overestimated and they will massively under-deliver the number of projected dwellings. It is therefore imperative that London Boroughs are left with the option to review Green Belt boundaries and, in exceptional circumstances, release it for housing. This approach would be consistent with national policy, and would be more flexible than the draft Plan's current stance of total protection.

Another option is for the GLA to work collaboratively with authorities in the wider South East, to deliver some of London's housing need outside of its boundaries. For this approach to work, there would need to be some way of quantifying unmet need within London and devising a strategy with these authorities to allocate where the housing will be delivered. However, this strategy, according to the WSE authorities, would signify an entirely new strategy that would need an entirely new Plan. These authorities have various issues of their own, and it was clear that the appetite is not there to pick up London's needs in the current context.

The examination now turns to a detailed assessment of the suite of policies that underlie this strategy, and will delve in to the detail of how need and capacity have been calculated, and how effective the detailed policies will be in driving delivery of housing in London to levels far beyond those that the Capital has historically achieved.