Philip Allin, director of Boyer (London), looks at what the Mayor of London’s ‘Towards a New London Plan’ means for housing and protection of open land in the Capital.
The Mayor of London’s recent consultation ‘Towards a New London Plan’ is many things: bold, overdue, and above all, honest. Fine as these words are, the next challenge is turning this into meaningful action.
The recent consultation is only the start of a long process, with a fully fleshed-out draft London Plan not expected until early next year. The consultation nonetheless signals that the Mayor is beginning to look more positively on ensuring that the development needs of the city can be met in a way that is not only consistent with national planning policy, as set out in the NPPF published in December 2024, but tackles the desperate lack of delivery of levels of housing his government has promised. It accepts that London needs a more strategic approach to land use and cannot rely solely on brownfield land alone; that the Green Belt (and to a lesser degree Metropolitan Open Land) that successive Mayors haven’t had the courage to touch may have to be the answer.
If followed through, it could allow London to address its chronic undersupply of housing for the first time in decades. As the consultation document explains, over the ten-year period, housing need in London is 880,000 new homes – but this would require an annual rate of growth that has not been achieved since the boom of the 1930s.
It will also represent a significant shift in approach and would result in major new development being delivered on land that has hitherto been sacred. This provides a potential pathway to meeting the increased housing requirement as it would allow London to draw upon various sources of supply, both brownfield and greenfield.
To be realistic and ultimately deliverable, it requires a number of factors to fall into place, which are beyond the control of the Mayor, namely the wider economic situation being favourable and all of the London Boroughs, especially the outer Boroughs which have large areas of Green Belt, pulling in the same direction. On the latter, there are noises coming out of some Boroughs that are not aligned to the Mayor’s proposed new strategy, which spells trouble before the idea even hits draft plan form. However, one way in which the Mayor could stamp his authority is to become more muscular in his decision-making by utilising his call-in powers to a greater degree. This seems critical, as otherwise it will be impossible to deliver this new strategic approach and therefore make reversing the current downward trajectory in housing completions that much more challenging.
Meeting housing need is not about concreting over significant amounts of protected open land, which is often the knee-jerk perception from those opposed to development on Green Belt. Rather, it’s about a more strategic approach to land use, recognising that not all protected land contributes strongly- or even moderately – to the purposes for its protection. Where this is the case, it is about having an informed discussion about how the land could be instead used for other purposes that could assist in meeting strategically important objectives.
Of course, it won’t be easy. The political and emotional weight attached to protected land such as Green Belt and Metropolitan Open Land remains strong, particularly at the local level. To succeed, this process will require leadership, genuine engagement and a commitment to good design, sustainability and infrastructure delivery. It will also require a frank conversation with the public about trade-offs: that protecting every piece of open land has a cost, and that with the right safeguards, change can enhance rather than detract from the quality of life. He’ll need to win the hearts and minds of those who are prone to that knee-jerk, and to cut off at the knees the inevitable headlines about his proposals spelling the inevitable devastation of this green and pleasant land.
The current and previous iterations of the London Plan have always provided a strategic framework for the delivery of new development in London, but they have failed to fully meet the needs of the city. The new approach clearly represents a step-change, but it’s too soon to tell before we’ve seen any detail of his proposed policies whether it will succeed where other iterations have failed. It is nevertheless a bold acknowledgement that business as usual is not working, and that the Capital’s planning framework must be capable of responding to 21st-century pressures.
