The Mayor has an extended report of opposing any loosening of present improvement restrictions, placing him probably at odds with new nationwide authorities coverage
Sir Sadiq Khan has introduced a full-scale overview of the capital’s Inexperienced Belt in response to what he stated have been considerations about “an impression being provided that it’s a ‘wild west’ with regards to inexperienced belt land” and its availability for constructing on.
The shock announcement got here throughout Thursday’s Mayor’s Query Time session at Metropolis Corridor in response to London Meeting members (AMs) quizzing Khan in regards to the impression on the capital of the federal government’s new nationwide planning coverage, which relaxes earlier restrictions on Inexperienced Belt improvement and units a difficult 88,000 new houses a yr goal for the town.
Khan has beforehand rejected such a overview, regardless of the inspectors who scrutinised his present London Plan, the blueprint for improvement throughout the town, suggesting that his refusal to contemplate any constructing within the capital’s protected zone might forestall him assembly his housing targets – a view more and more shared by planning specialists in addition to builders.
However the Mayor stated he wouldn’t be abandoning his “brownfield land first” strategy to figuring out land for improvement, prioritising already-developed websites even whereas going through a brand new authorities goal considerably increased than his personal of 52,000 houses per yr.
The overview, he assured AMs, would focus strictly on the federal government’s new requirement to establish what it has known as “gray belt” land in areas the place native targets can not in any other case be met. Gray belt, he stated, citing the brand new coverage, was tightly outlined as land inside the Inexperienced Belt that had already been constructed on or that didn’t strongly meet the Inexperienced Belt functions, that are to test unrestrained sprawl, forestall city areas merging into one another and protect the settings of historic cities.
A pan-London overview, Khan prompt, could be a technique to counter “the impression being provided that we are able to go to the Inexperienced Belt first, or that it’s a ‘wild west’ with regards to the Inexperienced Belt”. He continued: “We don’t need speculative builders considering they will begin shopping for up Inexperienced Belt in and round London that for many years has been the lungs for residents on this nice metropolis of ours.”
“I can perceive having a dialog about Inexperienced Belt land if it was the case that each piece of brownfield land had been used,” Khan stated. “You possibly can have that dialog then, but it surely’s not the case that we’re at that place. That has been a priority and one of many the explanation why a ‘brownfield first’ strategy is the suitable one.” Builders failing to implement planning permissions on brownfield websites also needs to be topic to a “use it or lose it” coverage, he prompt.
Any overview can be controversial. Some 22 per cent of Better London, solely in outer London, is designated as Inexperienced Belt. Greater than half of that complete is in simply three boroughs, Bromley, Havering and Hillingdon, with important tracts additionally in Enfield, Redbridge, Barnet and Croydon.
An early check of the federal government’s new coverage – and of the Mayor’s stance – will come subsequent week, when Enfield Council’s new native plan, together with proposals to de-designate a part of the borough’s Inexperienced Belt to permit greater than 9,000 new houses to be constructed on it, goes earlier than an unbiased planning inspector for scrutiny.
In its formal response to the proposals, Metropolis Corridor has argued that the proposed Inexperienced Belt launch, totally on already-developed websites at Chase Park and Crews Hill, doesn’t meet London Plan necessities, and that every one brownfield choices had not been exhausted.
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