All Eyes on The Secretary of State?

So, the Mayor has given notice to adopt his new London Plan and with that, his response to the Panel’s recommendations. How will the Secretary of State respond? The team at Barton Willmore have collated their views on this here.

At the heart of the issue is London’s unmet housing need. Any student of UK population and human geography will know that London has historically been a net exporter of housing demand, generally to the wider south east. Notwithstanding the various policy interventions of the three mayors to date, annual rates remain stubbornly below requirement.

In his response to the Panel, the Mayor refused to commit to a Green Belt review in the next iteration of the London Plan. In my view there is some planning purity in this response. Why should a Mayor commit a future incumbent to a review or policy position, which his successor might not wish to pursue, either due to politics or circumstances? Whilst the track record to date is for Mayors to have two terms, solving London’s housing crisis and grappling with the conflict arising from a finite supply of land require a long term policy approach.

However, the problem remains. London has a finite supply of land. The success of the Mayor’s approach to employment floorspace capacity has yet to be seen and the ambitions for small sites are ambitious. In the end, we must not forget that the debate as to requirement is often far removed from the rate of actual delivery.

Added to this we have the step change effects of Heathrow expansion. What would be the effect of other changes in the spatial focus of the Government’s funding programme and the much vaunted focus on the North?

The Mayor has published his statement of interventions, but I would suggest that all actions should be in play already?

 So, is the Secretary of State going to intervene? Unmet need from London translates into continued pressure in the home counties and south east. But the absence of a duty to co-operate by the Mayor nullifies the reality of this requirement when it comes to assessing individual authorities and local plan making. The Conservatives pledged to protect the Green Belt in their manifesto so are we really going to see a Conservative Secretary of State force a commitment to review? Unlikely. And the Mayor probably assumes the same.

It is worth bearing in mind the politics of moving forward though. The expectation is that Sadiq Khan will win again and will get a second and final second term, expiring May 2024. However, we have a Conservative government with a large majority with a term running to December 2024. The need to adopt a policy position to meeting London’s housing needs will remain through both tenures with a new Mayor to be elected before the next Government. The Mayor will no doubt claim that he needs to be judged on his new Plan rather than action to date.

It is worth bearing in mind that the housing targets run to 2029, which means we would surely need a review within the next mayoral term if 5-year housing land supply, and all that sits with it, is to be maintained? The current iteration is after all likely to be adopted at the end of this Mayor’s first term.

So, it remains to be seen if the Secretary of State remains silent or expresses conditionality on the adoption of the New London Plan. We should know by the 20 January 2020 but my hope would be for a requirement to work towards meeting a greater proportion of need, either or both through joint working with the home counties and delivering more in London, with an early review. The next four years are going to be interesting.