London calling: the big change in the next London Plan
We are living, as the ancient Chinese curse puts it (which is apparently neither ancient nor Chinese), in interesting times:
As you may just about have heard, the Reform party has the swept the nation, leading #planoraks everywhere to ask the obvious question: what do Faragians think about planning? Well… we don’t know. We just don’t know. You can scour their last manifesto - that will take you all of 2 minutes. They want to “fast-track” brownfield sites [Doesn’t everybody? Ed]. They want more infrastructure [Don’t we all? Ed.]. Beyond that? Tumbleweed. Where is Nigel on the great questions of our time - NDMPs, grey belt, strategic planning, the Habitats Regulations. Time will tell.
In a dramatic break with the convention that normally sees national planning reforms dumped on us around Christmas Eve, in the fresh blushes of spring, we welcomed to the stage the Planning and Infrastructure Bill 2025. Or… #PIB. Does that work? [I don’t see it catching on, Ed.]. As ever - the main thing - the hyperlinks:
Soo much more to come on #PIB. But for now, to keep things light, and to give you a sense of quite how tough planning reform is proving even within the Labour Party, let alone outside it, check out some of these proposed amendments. Some from Labour MPs. Including the old classic: the “3rd party right of appeal”:
That one - as I explained here - really takes the biscuit. It would bring the planning system to its knees (which is kind of the whole point). It’s intellectually dishonest. And it’s crumbles on even a moment’s thought. Thousands of major planning applications are granted every year. Thousands. Almost every single one of those involves (i) people who have lodged objections, and (ii) arguments about whether and the extent to which the scheme accords with the development plan. This amendment is a recipe for chaos. And what party did it come from? Labour (the back of the back benches, to be clear, but still).
For grey belt watchers everywhere after my last blog post on the topic, the appeal decisions are coming thick and fast. Just to give you a couple from my own desk:
In April, an Inspector allowed an appeal for a mixed residential, commercial and recycling scheme in Hersham near Walton-on-Thames, Elmbridge, in the metropolitan green belt. What’s worth noting in particular about this one is that originally it was refused on green belt grounds. Then, before the inquiry, the Council conceded and accepted permission should be granted just on account of the advent of “grey belt” policy.
Also in April, an Inspector allowed a full application for 173 homes at Daws Heath in Castle Point, Essex. The message from this one (as per my last blog) - town ≠ village.
I was banging on, in that last blog post, about a pre-PPG “grey belt” decision in Beaconsfield, and wondering whether the outcome would be different in our post-PPG world. Well, turns out we’ll now be able to find out. Because the decision has just been quashed by the High Court with the consent both of the Secretary of State and Buckinghamshire because “as the Inspector’s decision failed to consider and address whether the site was compliant with the Golden Rules, the decision also appeared not to consider the effect of paragraph 158 NPPF, and therefore obviously relevant material considerations were not taken into account."
An important new Court of Appeal judgment on the meaning of the retail sequential test: here. And another on making sure the draft 106 is on the planning register: here.
A big-time appeal decision for the former Stag Brewery in Richmond: here. Where the Inspector accepted that 7.5% affordable housing provision was the maximum possible, and accorded with local and London-wide policy.
Those topics are chunky enough to fill many blog posts. But I want to tell you about something else. London. Which is, as the Clash said, is very much calling.
Let’s talk for a minute about our capital city - the place which for 20 years now is where I’ve called home. Tiring of it means you’re tired of life. Apparently. But I don’t think Samuel Johnson ever had to take the Northern Line on a Monday morning. He’d tire of things pretty quick after that, I’m guessing. Here are some key stats:
1 in 8 of UK-ers live in London.
Almost 1 in 4 of the £££ our country generates comes from here. If London were a country, it’d be a top-20 world economy (bigger than Sweden, Belgium, or Argentina).
And we are very much intending it to grow. Almost 1 in 4 of the new planning permissions for housing this Government now targets are supposed to come forward in London - that’s 87,992 every year out of the 370,408 annual total. Put another way: unless London hits its targets, we’ve no shred of a hope of getting remotely close to the overall target. Full stop.
So. Will it hit its target? 88,000 homes a year. Eek. Doable? Well, not at any point since before the 2nd world war:
The current London Plan was adopted in 2021. It targets 52k homes a year spread across all 35 of London’s Boroughs. Well below current local housing need of 88k. And, as the chart above shows you, even that target isn’t being met. Not by a long shot. So… there’s a lot of work to do in London. On unlocking designated Opportunity Areas, on funding for transport improvements, on funding affordable housing properly, and making schemes viable in a world of soaring construction costs.
But let’s spend a moment on another of the key reasons that London isn’t getting anywhere near its target: the Metropolitan Green Belt.
The first thing to say about the Metropolitan Green Belt is… it’s huge. Properly huge:
It is by far and away the biggest of England’s 14 green belts. Stretching out from Southend in the east all the way to Reading in the west. From Tunbridge Wells in the south up to the fringes of Milton Keynes. We’re talking over 1/2 a million hectares of land spanning Greater London itself along with 13 counties. An area a 1/4 of the size of Wales, over 3 times bigger than London itself. You get the idea. Big.
Now, most of the Metropolitan Green Belt is way outside London itself:
But just over 35,000 hectares of it falls into the outer Boroughs of Greater London. That accounts for about 22% of the city's total land area (more than half of which is in just three outer London Boroughs - Bromley, Havering and Hillingdon). So, again… a lot.
In addition to that, there’s a further 10% of London which is Metropolitan Open Land, which the London Plan says “is afforded the same status and level of protection as Green Belt”. Spread, as you’d expect, toward the outer Boroughs:
So. The Metropolitan Green Belt has - for many decades - been the most enormous strategic planning issue for London to grapple with. And luckily, London has for 20+ years had just the right kind of strategic planning vehicle to deal with it: the London Plan. The kind of strategic plan all of us will be getting soon if the #PIB provisions have their way - more of which in future posts.
So the challenge is there. The imperative is there. The vehicle to address it is there. And yet… the London Plans of 2004, 2011, 2016 and 2021. Did they do any strategic reviews of the green belt? Or the MOL? Did Ken, Boris or Sadiq step up this particular plate?
Nope.
Indeed, last time around, the examining inspectors said that “the inescapable conclusion is that if London’s development needs are to be met in future then a review of the Green Belt should be undertaken to at least establish any potential for sustainable development.” Did it happen then? Nope.
Individual Boroughs - some of them, anyhow - have done their own bits of green belt reviewing over the years. But the green belt’s a strategic, trans-LPA boundary policy. It always has been - going back to Patrick Abercrombie’s Greater London Plan 1944. Or even earlier - the rather more modest idea for a slim “green girdle” in the 1929 report of Raymond Unwin of the Greater London Regional Planning Committee. The green belt itself - which now looms so large in the English psyche - it all started in London. It was a London idea. And it’s a London-wide idea. Not just Hillingdon or Bromley or Havering but everywhere.
So let’s just cut to the chase: when actually was the last time there was a full-scale strategic review of Greater London’s green belt? Or its MOL?
Never.
It has never happened.
Enter stage left: the consultation on the next London plan which runs until June: here. Lots in there. But what do you need to know? On this topic:
The intention for the next plan (full draft plan in 2026, targeted for 2027 adoption) is to deliver 88,000 homes a year over 10 years. 880,000 homes (which, the consultation notes, will need planning permission to be granted for many more than 880,000). This is, as the Mayor says in the foreword, “more than we have every built before” and represents “an extraordinary challenge”. Housebuilding in our capital has to more than double. 🤯
That might sound extreme. But, as the consultation explains, London’s in an extreme position. Over 183,000 Londoners are homeless and living in temporary accommodation tonight. In addition to the moral shame of that situation, it’s deeply expensive. It is, costing boroughs about £100m a month. And the estimate that if housing affordability was improved by one per cent, this would create an additional £7.3bn GVA over 10 years. Our persistent under-delivery of the homes we need is making all of us poorer.
Getting there will require - in addition to the “brownfield first” approach we have already - a strategic green belt review to identify, among other things, London’s “grey belt”. On which see this.
The Mayor’s focus includes large-scale development (10,000+ homes) in green belt areas which have good public transport access. And golf courses - watch out for those! The Mayor tells us that “some areas of MOL, such as certain golf courses are not accessible to the wider public and have limited biodiversity value. This undermines the purpose of the designation. These areas could be assessed to understand whether they should be released from MOL.”
Back in December 2020, I was moaning in the FT about how we need to have, but were not then having, a “frank, grown-up conversation about the future of England’s green belt”. Well, blimey charley, we’re having one now. For my money, it’s not overkill to say that the outcome of the Mayor's once-in-a-generation green belt review and its translation into the next London Plan will be critical, absolutely mission-critical for (a) this Government’s wider housing programme, and (b) our shared national prosperity for the next couple of decades. No pressure, then 😊.
In the meantime, I hope you’re keeping well #planoraks, and are enjoying this glorious sunshine. I’m celebrating a particular mile-stone-y kind of birthday this month, so am feeling… old. This is also my first official missive to you as a Kings Counsel, so I thought you might get a kick out of seeing the just-slightly-OTT outfit which (thank heavens) I will never ever have to wear again. But it made for a memorable day out (and thank you to the brilliant Russell Harris KC for the loan of that cracking wig!). My wonderful practice director Mike Gooch is on the left, and my super clerk Jonathan Barley is on the right. Go on. Have at it. Laugh until your hearts are content. And in the meantime, whatever else you do, try your level best to #keeponplanning.
