First reactions pasted together.
There is also a blog post gradually emerging here.
[GLA published Towards A London Plan on 9 May 2025 and the deputy mayor for planning, Jules Pipe, spoke about it at a joint meeting of the London Forum, London Society and Bartlett on 13th May. London Society write-up linked here.
13 May Michael Ball
Jules Pipe is an oddity: in his speech he appeared loathsomely supine about the prospects for progress, but when it was put to him that Towards a London Plan admitted that (i) the 880,000 homes target is being imposed by govt, (ii) housing growth relies upon huge amounts of govt funding for major transport infrastructure and for any affordable housing offered by developers, and (iii) market housebuilding, even to these unachievable targets, won’t solve the affordability crisis alone; but that the document was ultimately dishonest in not admitting that Planning alone won’t solve the affordability crisis, that we need for rent regulation and other powers – he shrugged and sort of agreed, although he suggested Sadiq had lost interest in rent regulation… But in private senior officials admit that at a recent meeting with Sadiq and the permanent secretary to the Treasury (who had dreamed up the targets, they were convinced), to their horror they realised that the Treasury naively believed market housebuilding would simply reduce house prices (do they not read their own OBR report?), and that Sadiq could make little headway on breaking through this ideology, and that to some extent this review of the LP was fundamentally just trying to play ball with Starmer in order to get a big slug of govt capital…
What a mess. The Head Boy has had quicksilver poured into his ear and now fully signs up to planning being the problem and anti-planning being the solution; so senior prefect Sadiq plays along with this in order to get some significant public funding to ameliorate the crisis, and enable the same old song to keep on being sung. Meanwhile, we are the frogs, being gently boiled.
(can be quoted)
14 May Duncan Bowie
Had a difficult exchange with Jules Pipe on housing issues . He was taking the line that planning had to enable private investment so no point in keeping/ introducing policies that were seen as ‘burdens on developers’. so basically accepting development led planning rather than plan-led development. Completely failed to recognise that pushing high density just makes affordability worse and pushes up land costs. Very depressing and Jules got so many basic facts about planning framework and policy wrong. Ian Gordon also pointed out most of Green Belt is outside London boundary.
(Duncan agrees to. be quoted)
12 May Michael Edwards
My view is that the whole GB issue is a fog of greenwash designed to distract the chattering classes from the elephant in the room: the Mayor like Starmer has bought in to the entire build build build fantasy and threatens to instal yet another Plan to do yet more damage, further embed the rentier economy and the intra-regional and inter-regional inequality machine. I doubt if my objections will have any more impact than Martin [Crookston]’s.
(quotable)10 May on Bluesky
Good scrub bad scrub not the point. Mayor and @jonnelledge.bsky.social both wrong: still sticking to the interpretation that more total supply can fix affordability May 10, 2025 at 7:20 AM Everybody can reply
17 May Michael Jubb LFCAS
It became ever-clearer during the meeting that the whole London Plan is going to be driven by the Government requirement to plan for building 880k homes over the next ten years,, even if it seems increasingly clear that the target is unrealistic, for reasons utterly different from the planning regime. And if we are to get anywhere near the targets set by the Government, there will still need to be public investment in transport and other infrastructure.
It also becomes ever-clearer that at the heart of the housing crisis is the failure of Governments to invest in providing housing, and instead providing huge indirect subsidies to private landlords. Relying on developers and their investors to provide social housing and other ‘affordable’ products is simply mad. It puts developers in the driving seat, puts up prices for those people who can afford to buy, and doesn’t provide nearly enough of the kinds of housing that most people need and can afford. That these policies have been in place for over 40 years is madness on stilts
The London Plan will be at best an exercise in trying to mitigate the impact of the 880k target. And it must be repeated again and again, as Mike Kieley said, that the target has nothing to do with need, nor would it, even if achieved, have more than the most marginal impact on rent or purchase prices. There are mechanisms to assess housing need, and they are not being used, which is a disastrous failure of policy.
Mitigating the impact of the target is emphatically a worthwhile exercise; but let us be clear that that is what the new London Plan will be about.
michael edwards 