Housing and Urban Form: Tensions in the London Plan Examination in Public
LSE London
LSE, Knowledge Exchange and Impact fund

Mayor Sadiq Khan’s proposed London Plan is now more than halfway through its formal Examination in Public (EiP). The Plan is the Mayor’s most important policy instrument. The EiP is a (very) extended process that allows public discussion of questions such as the feasibility of the Plan’s housing targets; how these relate to the Mayor’s affordability priorities; density and built form; and the relationship between development inside and outside London. The core issues around housing and land use are highly political, and the fundamentals remain disputed. LSE researchers, particularly the LSE London research group, have worked extensively on these issues over the last few years. One of LSE London’s objectives in this project is to ensure that this body of LSE research is taken into account during the EiP.

LSE London is participating in this process in several ways:

• We gave comments on the draft Plan and the related Housing Strategy at the consultation stage last year. Click here to read the Draft London Plan consultation – LSE London response
• We have submitted written evidence on ten of the most critical issues that the Plan addresses.
• We have so far held five roundtables for participants and knowledgeable specialists covering four of the most fundamental topics and a session taking stock on where we are on contested matters at the mid-stage of the process. We are publishing summaries of the discussions and conclusions on the web.
• We have taken part in nine of the public sessions and hope to take part in two more on viability at the end of the EiP process in May. We have written several blogs about how the discussion has gone in these sessions, the most important areas of dispute, and the solutions put forward.

Our coverage of the EiP (so far):

Introduction

• Whitehead, C.M.E. (23 Jan 2019). About the ‘Housing and Urban Form: Tensions in the London Plan Examination in Public’ project.

Written Evidence

• All in One Document (Access PDF here).
• Gordon, I. (23 Jan 2019). Matter 1: Sustainability appraisal. GLA.
• Gordon, I. (23 Jan 2019). Matter 10: Overall spatial development strategy. GLA.
• Gordon, I. (23 Jan 2019). Matter 11: Overall spatial development strategy. GLA.
• Gordon, I. (23 Jan 2019). Matter 16: The Wider South East and beyond. GLA.
• Whitehead, C. (23 Jan 2019). Matter 17: Housing requirement. GLA.
• Whitehead, C. (23 Jan 2019). Matter 18: Housing strategy. GLA.
• Whitehead, C. (23 Jan 2019). Matter 19: Housing supply (SHLAA) and targets. GLA.
• Scanlon, K. (23 Jan 2019). Matter 24: Affordable housing. GLA.
• Gordon, I. (23 Jan 2019). Matter 39: Density. GLA.
• Mace, A., Gordon, I. (23 Jan 2019). Matter 65: Green Belt/MOL. GLA.

Roundtables

• Whitehead, C.M.E. (23 Jan 2019). Roundtable 1: What is to be done?
• Whitehead, C.M.E. (6 Feb 2019). Roundtable 2: Governance and the interaction between the GLA and Local Authorities.
• Whitehead, C.M.E. (23 Oct 2019). Roundtable 3: Housing delivery and densities: tensions in the (New) London Plan.
• Whitehead, C.M.E. (23 Oct 2019). Roundtable 4: Affordability and feasibility.
• Whitehead, C.M.E. (5 May 2019). Roundtable 5: Taking stock.

Sessions

• Gordon, I. (24 Jan 2019). Day 1: Legal and procedural Matters: SA, Equalities, and HRA [M1-M3].
• Gordon, I. (29 Jan 2019). Day 4: Overall spatial development strategy [M10-M13].
• Whitehead, C.M.E. (9 Feb 2019). Day 7: Housing requirement [M17].
• Whitehead, C.M.E. (18 Feb 2019). Day 9: Housing supply (SHLAA) and targets [M19], part 1.
• Whitehead, C.M.E. (18 Feb 2019). Day 10: Housing supply and targets [M19], part 2.
• Gordon, I. (7 Mar 2019). Day 11: Small sites [M20].
• Scanlon, K. (15 Mar 2019). Day 13: Affordable housing [M24].
• Gordon, I. (25 Mar 2019). Day 16: Density [M39].
• Mace, A. (18 Apr 2019). Day 22: Green Belt and Metropolitan Open Land [M65].

Final Event Discussion

• Gordon, I. (10 Oct 2019). Conflict or cooperation? Looking back at the EiP .
• Gordon, I. (12 Oct 2019). Relationship Counselling: London and its boroughs, neighbours and central government.
• Gordon, I. (14 Oct 2019). Discussion: taking the issues forward.
• Gordon, I. (16 Oct 2019). For a stronger EiP we need stronger and more open political engagement.

Other outputs:

• Gordon, I. (17 May 2019). The Need to Get Debate about the Mayor’s London Plan into the Public Arena.

• And we will do our own assessment of the EiP’s Panel decisions.

This page will be updated to reflect our work for this project.

—

All of our blog entries for this project can be found here.