Our protest to the Mayor on 7 January (text below) must have shamed them into a re-think. The consultation was yesterday extended to 13 February. Thank you.
Dear Sadiq (copied to Assembly Members in the Planning Committee) 7/1/26
We wish to register our outrage at the unacceptable consultation timetable on the Integrated Impact Assessment Scoping Report, and request it be extended for 3 weeks.
As you know, you are legally required to consult on a draft of how to evaluate the impact of a new London Plan. The London Plan team began consultations on a new London Plan in 2023, at which point we requested consultation on the IIA scoping. We have repeated this request several times in the intervening two years, and submitted extensive evidence on this matter in response to ‘Towards a new London Plan’ last June, when we asked “is inclusion an illusion?”
We were reassured that there would be consultation on the IIA scoping “later this year”. We learnt only yesterday that just such a consultation purportedly began on 19th Dec 2025, running for 6 weeks, with a closing date for comments 30th January 2026.
None of us or our extensive network of community groups were notified of this consultation – indeed I spoke to CPRE London this morning who were completely unaware. It would appear from their website that the London Forum of Civic & Amenity Societies remain similarly uninformed.
To slip out under cover of the Christmas break such an important consultation does not demonstrate a commitment to equalities. To slip it out without even notifying many of London’s longstanding networks and organisations runs counter to your claim on the landing page for this consultation: “I want to forge a new consensus on planning that’s fit for 21st century London”.
This is particularly inauspicious given our previous experience in 2019, when the Panel of Inspectors at the Examination in Public were persuaded by us that the draft IIA was of such inadequacy that the London Plan team were required to produce additional appraisals of the impact each and every policy in the draft plan.
We share your aspiration to forge a new consensus, and urgently request that you extend this consultation by 3 weeks in order to cover the time wasted by failing to inform London’s communities of this important consultation and thereby reaffirm your commitment to equality, transparency and consensus.
Yours sincerely. Michael Ball, Just Space Co-ordinator