Londoners go to the polls tomorrow to decide who will be running the city for the next 4 years. But what’s the difference between the candidates on planning?

Londoners go to the polls tomorrow to decide who will be running the city for the next 4 years. But what’s the difference between the candidates on planning? DHA’s Patrick Reedman takes a look at the race.

 

Is Sadiq Khan a shoo-in for another term? The mood music suggests yes. But what is the current Mayor actually saying about planning?

 

Well, unsurprisingly, it’s all about affordable housing delivery and another ’40,000 new council homes by the end of the decade’.

 

But there’s also a little bit of substance in Mr Khan’s manifesto which suggests how he might help deliver some of this – one of his key pledges is to create ‘new Land Assembly Zones and Development Corporations’.

 

The plan is clearly about large-scale strategic top-down planning and the idea of ‘Land Assembly Zones’ goes back to the heady days of 2018 and the Mayor’s paper Capital Gains: A Better Land Assembly Model for London.

 

The 2018 Capital Gains paper proposed various initiatives for incentivising land assembly by the Mayor and the Boroughs. With ideas to devolve Compulsory Purchase powers to the Mayor in a more streamlined regime, giving local authorities the power to create strategic ‘Zones’, which show a commitment from Councils to exercise Compulsory Purchase Orders (CPO), as well as ‘additional planning powers’ to freeze land values and avoid making planning decisions which increased land value.

 

The legislation required to make Land Assembly Zones work to the extent envisaged in 2018 needs legislation in Westminster, not City Hall. That might only be forthcoming if Labour win the next General Election and command a majority. Changes to CPO powers have been mooted by the Labour Party, but could be a controversial subject as, ultimately, it is about the Government interfering with private rights. Mr Khan clearly has an appetite for more of that in London, not less.

 

But what about the other candidates? According to the Evening Standard today the polls are narrowing and the election is hotting up, with Susan Hall (Conservative Candidate) just a ‘mere’ 10 points behind. Susan Hall does make pledges on planning in her manifesto (alongside scrapping the ULEZ… which is mentioned …more than a few times..). Those pledges centre around building ‘low rise’ family homes, supporting the build to rent sector and, perhaps unsurprisingly, protecting the ‘vital landscape’ of the Green Belt. In terms of practical commitments, there is one; and that is that Susan Hall will lend out GLA Officers to the Boroughs to help clear their planning backlogs; it’s not like they’ve got much to do at the GLA these days is it?!

 

There are other candidates of course, including Rob Blackie for the Lib Dems, Zoe Garbett for the Greens, a Reform UK Candidate, Count Binface and some other outsiders, too many to name, but seemingly nobody polling close enough to have any chance of influencing planning in London.