The GLA’s preliminaries to the production of the next London Plan (due to start after the May 2024 Mayor & Assembly elections) is well under way. Ordinary enthusiasts and campaigners are now permitted to apply for the meetings and the outcomes from earlier meetings are being posted on the same page.
I went to a meeting on Friday 24/11/23 about London’s Spatial Structure. A very white meeting and heavily steered. As we found last time (2016) the planners won’t accept anything as structural unless it shows on the map. Thus the severe structural inequalities which became so evident during lockdowns (and which the Mayor’s lockdown research stressed so well) were ruled out of scope. At the table I sat at there were some interesting exchanges about suburban densification, relations with surrounding regions (no longer taboo), opportunity areas. Nothing on overcentralisation or CR2… Our facilitator didn’t know how to deal with one very dull and verbose man, but otherwise OK.
At the end the chair asked what had been forgotten. I said growth /degrowth /growth of what? and raised some cheers.
On Monday I had a ticket for a session on”inclusive design” but now find I can’t go so have written to them about
Equality Impact
The main point I would have wanted to make is as follows. and I hope you can feed it in to the meeting or the write-up.
This meeting seems to be the only place where equality of impact considerations can even be squeezed in.
Your predecessors very correctly enlisted our network, Just Space, to the scoping discussions on Equalities Impact Assessment for the last London Plan but we really failed to reach any agreements. Then when the Draft Plan and its accompanying IIA appeared we were very critical of how it had been done. The Panel deliberated and considered that the GLA should release the detailed analysis which underpinned it. They did so. We found this almost as weak as the original for a whole variety of reasons and, again, persuaded the Panel.
The panel insisted that the GLA went away and write a serious paper on how each policy would impact on each protected group.
The resulting paper, some weeks later was highly informative, making it clear how in so many respects this plan would be good for richer people and less good, or bad for poor people (and thus many protected groups who share disproportionately in poverty). This was a devastating critique of the plan but the Panel ticked its box for job done and moved on. Had this study been prepared at the proper time —early enough to assist the evolution of the plan— the Plan would have been much fairer.
We are very keen to ensure that this fiasco is not repeated next year. The main aim is to get a better plan which would better serve poorer and minority and disabled Londoners.
A first step would be you discussing this with groups representative of (and run by) the principal protected groups to develop shared understandings of what works for them, drawing also on research evidence. I hope that your efforts last autumn to meet controled and representative samples of Londoners has enabled you to do this, or at least have the necessary database of contacts.
Just Space has not yet put together its positions for the next Plan but we can be sure that these considerations will be to the fore.
Best wishes, Michael Edwards, Just Space and UCL
Note: I hope we can start pooling these notes on the Just Space web site from people who have attended.
michael edwards 