Comment on the New London Plan

The London Mayor has released his views on the future of the capital for the next decade. The New London Plan includes strategies for transport, environment, planning, heritage, culture and much more.

You can read the London Plan here

All comments must be received by 5pm on Friday 2 March 2018.

The key housing elements of the plan are:

•The target for new homes is increased from the current 49,000 per annum to 66,000 each year.

•The housing target for some boroughs has been doubled.

•The requirement for affordable homes has been set at 65 per cent of new build.

•Low cost rent homes at to be 47 per cent of all new homes.

•Intensifying land use is proposed in outer London boroughs and town centres. This means an intensification of building (higher and denser) within 800m of a rail or tube station.

Thanks for sharing, Barry

Looking at the document, I see Lewisham is classed as an “inner” London borough, with Bromley (for example) classed as “outer”

That’s right.

All boroughs are being asked to build more. For example, Bromley are currently building at about 400 homes per year and are being asked to build 1,400 homes per year under the proposed plan). Lewisham are currently building 1,400 homes per year and are being asked to build just over 2,100. In addition to this, under the new “small sites” target (these are corner sites at the end of terraces which are empty) Bromley has to build just over 1,000 new homes p.a. and Lewisham 829 p.a.

These may be necessary but they are breathtakingly high targets. Only Harold Macmillan in the late 1950s/early 1960s got anywhere near these numbers - and he had the huge advantages of empty large post war bomb sites, heavy industry leaving the capital at the time and the ability to move significant chunks of the population out to new towns.

Indeed. And the implications on our congested transport networks, schools and hospitals are significant.

I don’t see how corresponding additional public service provision will be funded - especially as most of the new homes will be “affordable,” meaning they will be occupied by households who do not make a net contribution to the Treasury (I say that without passing judgement on those people, many of whom are teachers / nurses etc and provide essential services)

But Chris that’s why we have progressive income tax, capital gains tax and tax on business and their profits etc. The government collects these taxes nationally, and “divvis up” the money balancing up the differences between poor regions and rich, so that they have an equal chance to build and run services. The amount of tax varies from country to country but virtually no countries (except those ravaged by internecine strife) don’t collect taxes. Even a country like China which has much lower taxes, intervenes (admitted in a pretty rough handed way) in the social sphere building massive areas of social housing, roads, hospitals etc.

In London and the south east, fewer and fewer middle class people beneath the age of 50 can afford to own their own homes. And we have people in vital services who can’t afford to live in London. Even if we built a wall around London and allowed no one else in, we’d have a gigantic and increasing housing problem. We have to build very many more homes and quickly.

You make a strong case, and I think the ageing population problem is an obvious motivator for bringing more people to London.

However, that is very much a Ponzi-style solution, since the newcomers will, themselves, age.

I think one solution lies in reducing the number of houses purchased as speculative assets, second homes etc. I think Osborne’s various punitive measures against landlords were perhaps justified for that reason.