The Next London Plan
If, as Harold Wilson said ‘a week is a longtime in politics’, it is reasonable to feel as though it has been a lifetime since the adoption of the London Plan back on 2 March 2021. Since when, Sadiq Khan has not only won a second term as Mayor of London but is already well into his third term, and Labour has won a general election pledging to ‘back the builders not the blockers’.
Although the change in government brought a welcome end to the animosity between the Mayor of London and the previous Secretary of State, Michael Gove, which often distracted from those genuine questions regarding the Mayor of London’s record when it comes to delivering new homes, the current party political alignment between City Hall and Westminster (the first since 2016) is unlikely to provide the Mayor with any political cover as the spotlight inevitably returns to the Mayor’s record of failing to deliver the number of homes needed across the capital.
With Angela Rayner continuing to double down on the government’s very ambitious pledge to deliver 1.5 million new homes during this parliament, the Mayor will be asked more and more difficult questions about why housing delivery continues to fail in London. Unlike before, he will now of course not be able to shift the blame on to government. Of course, for those of us at the coalface of delivering housing in London, the factors resulting in falling housing delivery are obvious, albeit there is disagreement about which of these factors plays the greatest role. However, it is a commonly held position that part of the blame must fall on the current London Plan, or perhaps more precisely the way in which the policies of the current London Plan are applied by the Greater London Authority and London boroughs.
The Housebuilding in London: London Plan Review – report of expert advisers, commission by the previous government and chaired by Christopher Katkowski KC, concluded that the combined effect of the multiplicity of policies in the London Plan acted to frustrate, rather than facilitate, the delivery of new homes. While other factors - macro-economic conditions (i.e. higher borrowing costs), increased build costs, and stringent fire safety requirements - have impacted housing delivery across the country, the effect of these factors is felt most keenly in the capital where they are exacerbated by the rigid implementation of the policies of the London Plan. The result has been that London has experienced the greatest regional drop in net housing completions (18%) since 2021/22.
Although the current Secretary of State has decided against acting on the recommendations of the London Plan Review, it would be wrong for the Secretary of State or Mayor of London to discard the conclusions and recommendations drawn. Instead, the conclusions of the London Plan Review should be at the forefront of the Mayor’s mind as he begins the process of preparing a new London Plan. If the new London Plan is to increase the delivery of new homes it must learn the lessons of the past, return to its core function as a spatial development plan for London, and resist the urge to set prescriptive policies that either duplicate or contradict those of the London boroughs – those which, when applied rigidly have only frustrated development in the past.
While we hope to see this change in direction from the Mayor of London as the new London Plan begins to emerge over the coming months and years, we are stuck with the current London Plan for some time. If we are to see the short-term increase in housing delivery that is so desperately needed, the Mayor of London must adopt the tone of his ministerial colleagues and ‘back the builders’. While we await the new London Plan, this can be achieved by adopting a more nuanced interpretation and flexible application of those policies of the current London Plan, recognising the that applying the appropriate balance between competing factors is at the heart delivering good quality development that meets the needs of Londoners.