Housing Secretary, Michael Gove, has demanded a review of the London Plan by Sadiq Khan, suggesting that it could hold back the delivery of new homes in London.
As a result, the Mayor of London must review the housing policies in the Plan and report back to Gove no later than the end of September.
In February, the government’s review into the Mayor’s London Plan found that housebuilding in general was on a “downwards trend” despite affordable housing delivery increasing. Gove claimed that the capital’s inhabitants were “being let down by the mayor’s chronic under-delivery of new homes in the capital”.
Gove has demanded that Khan reviews two areas of the Plan. The first is industrial land, where 736 hectares of space that could be allocated for housing are “stuck in the planning system” due to what the housing secretary called a lack of flexibility in the mayor’s policy.
The Mayor’s 47 “opportunity areas” also came under fire, with Gove saying that too many of them had seen “almost no progress and others appear to have plateaued”.
The unusual decision to intervene has been met with criticism by Labour’s London Assembly planning and regeneration spokesperson, Sakina Sheikh, who accused Gove of “playing political football with the London Plan” and described his actions as “another inappropriate intervention”.
Sheikh added: “Whilst the planning system has its flaws, especially delays, this has been compounded by over a decade of cuts to local authority planning departments and uncertainty caused by government interference.”
“The government’s last review of the London Plan, published only a few months ago, found no fundamental issues. This latest review seems to be another desperate attempt from the government to do down our capital.”
The announcement of the housing secretary broke on the same day that Sadiq Khan committed to building 40,000 new council homes by 2030, and shortly after his announcement of a £100million housing kick-start fund, aimed at converting market rate homes into affordable housing on sites where the challenging economic conditions have cause progress to stall.
