Updates

On May 22, 2024 a London Forum Zoom event highlighted the lack of policy protection when it comes to developments close to the river Thames. Click here for a summary of the presentations and subsequent discussion.

Click below to see the slides used by the five speakers.

1. Thames Policy Areas – Mathieu Proctor
2. Thames Landscape Strategies – Rebecca Law
3. West London Developments – Philip Whyte
4. Stag Brewery, Mortlake – Tim Catchpole
5. London East and Central – Michael Ball

On 10th May 2024 the DLUHC Chief Planner, Joanna Averley, wrote to local authority planning officers as here with details on reforms to Nationally Significant
Infrastructure Projects, updates on statutory guidance around second staircases and an update on progress on implementing build-out measures for planning permissions.

On 28th May 2024, the Government published a new planning appeals guide.

Sections 8 and 9 cover community participation in appeal hearings.

Some 583 schemes above 20 storeys are planned for the capital, more than double the 270 built over the past decade, according to New London Architecture’s 10th annual tall buildings report.  The report finds demand for office space is driving growth in towers despite slowdown in tall residential schemes. Outside of the City, the scale of towers is decreasing with schemes between 12 and 18 storeys rather than the super tall buildings completed in the last 10 to 15 years such as at Nine Elms or the Elephant and Castle. 37% of Londoners now say they could see themselves [more…]

An architect and veteran campaigner, James Monahan, has launched a judicial review of Camden council’s decision to approve DSDHA’s plans for a “monstrous” 19-storey office tower in Bloomsbury.  Save Museum Street, of which Monahan is a member, have said the plans would damage the setting of the Bloomsbury and Covent Garden conservation areas and the nearby grade I-listed British Museum, Bedford Square and Nicholas Hawksmoor’s St George’s Church.
Read more here.

The cross-party Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (LUHC) Committee report  (May 8th) calls on the Government to:

• invest to build the social homes;
• conduct an early assessment of the adequacy of grant funding allocations and how much social rent is to be supported;
• use land value capture as a tool to support social housing;
• provide social housing providers exactly the same access to funds for building safety remediation as private sector landlords;
• give greater weight to the positive benefits of regeneration so more funding can be made available for regeneration;
• where registered providers face more financial risk, we recommend [more…]
  

There were 36 questions to respond to covering a range of proposals. In summary, we acknowledged that IF implemented sensibly, on a modest scale and for applications with few complications, it could work BUT otherwise it would likely make things worse in the processing of all planning applications – causing a diversion of resources in Local Authorities when many are having problems establishing a full complement of planning staff. We made the point that most large schemes will have been many months, and most likely years in the making. So, reducing the limit from the current 13 weeks to [more…]

The fifth report for the Healthy Streets Scorecard ranks London Boroughs for 2023 on how healthy their streets are according to ten indicators that are explained here.

The results by borough can be seen here.

On 15^th April 2024 the DLUHC Chief Planner, Joanna Averley, wrote to local authority planning officers as here with details on Biodiversity Net Gain on Small Sites, consultation on an Accelerated Planning System, a new draft Planning Performance Dashboard for individual local planning authorities speed of decision-making, Round 2 of the Local Nutrient Mitigation Fund, a register of decisions on all compulsory purchase orders and listed building temporary stop notices and enforcement warning notices.

Earlier Chief Planner’s letters can be seen here.

The House Building Federation conducted a review of progress in house building since the review by Kate Barker for Government in 2004.

They conclude England would have 2 million more homes today if her most ambitious scenario for increasing housing supply had been achieved. The HBF report is here.

HBF seeks better long-term financial footing of local planning authorities and proposes “reassessment of the recent changes to the NPPF is needed.”.

Kate Barker said she was “particularly disappointed by the failure to follow through on the supply of new social rented homes”. She has been appointed head of a new commission [more…]

The Planning Act (Commencement No. 8) and Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 (Commencement No. 4 and Transitional Provisions) Regulations 2024 will largely come into force on 25 April 2024. There are a raft of changes. Two key ones for local authorities are:

Section 115 amends section 171B(1) and (2) of the 1990 Act to extend the time period in which local planning authorities can take enforcement action against unauthorised development in England from 4 to 10 years.

Section 116 amends section 171E of the 1990 Act to allow local planning authorities in England to issue a temporary stop notice that has [more…]

Comments can be made up to 1st May 2024 on a DLUHC consultation on an Accelerated Planning Service for major commercial applications with a decision time in 10 weeks and fee refunds if this is not met.

It is proposed also to change the use of extensions of time and to implement section 73B for applications to vary planning permissions.