The Mayor published proposals on this subject to support the suburban densification and small site housing policies in the imminent replacement London Plan and sought responses from communities, boroughs and other stakeholders.
London Forum has summarised for members the content of the draft guidance and it submitted a response by the consultation closing date of 15th January 2021.
The Mayor’s guidance on this subject will become a London Plan Supplementary Planning Guidance (SPG) document in the summer of 2021. The state of all London Plan SPGs is here.
The newer guidance documents listed, particularly the ‘Good Quality Homes for All Londoners’ one, and new policies in the replacement London Plan require considerable work by boroughs’ planning staff to introduce the necessary local policies and guidance.
The relevant replacement ‘Publication’ London Plan policies for that have been extracted – see Policies D2 for infrastructure and D3 for Design, Policy H2 for Small Sites and Policy D9 for Tall Buildings.
Those policies and the guidance above require there to be context and character analyses and design codes for areas and sites in Local Development Plans to control what is allowed to be built and where, including housing types and definition of where tall buildings would be allowed and of what height.
Civic and community groups should be able to work with their local authority to get the required local policies in place. Without them, there is a danger of ‘presumption in favour of development’ resulting in approval of schemes not intended or required.
