Category: Front Page News

  • Is the Mayor restricting our participation?

    Is the Mayor restricting our participation?

    Just Space and many of its member organisations are seriously frustrated by what seem to be reductions in citizens’ role in the formation of the next London Plan. We have today written to Lisa Fairmaner, Head of the London Plan Team at City Hall, as follows:

    16 September 2024

    Dear Lisa,

    Participation in London Plan preparations

                I am writing on behalf of the Just Space network to express our grave concern at what we experience as a narrowing of the scope for community participation in the next London Plan.

                For some years you and Deputy Mayor Jules Pipe have promised that the GLA would produce a document akin to a Statement of Community Involvement. We appreciate that the law which defines and requires an SCI does not apply to the GLA but that the proposed document would cover the same sort of ground. It continues not to appear and in the resulting vacuum we consider that the GLA is reducing the scope of participation and thus undermining the legitimacy of the London Plan.

                We appreciate that over 7000 people have taken part in the ‘Planning for London’  programme and many of us have been part of that process. However that has been a one way traffic: the GLA has harvested ideas from citizens and businesses but with none of the interaction or openness to scrutiny which is an essential feature of valid consultation. Is the Mayor a control freak?

                We also know that you have the open call for submissions and have ourselves submitted our Recovery Plan for London and our Manifesto 2024. Many other organisations and individuals have presumably made submissions but these are all invisible: none of us can see other submissions or even see who has submitted. This contrasts strongly with the proper consultation for Local Plans, or the EiP process, where all consultation responses are online for public access. This one way traffic of ideas further undermines the legitimacy of the Plan and prevents citizens discovering what developers are urging on the Mayor. So much for transparency.

                Last time around, community organisations (ourselves, plus London Tenants Federation and London Forum) were members of the Steering group for the SHLAA/SHMA process, but now you tell us that the SHLAA has become ‘Land4Ldn’, an online interaction with boroughs or ‘a digital SHLAA’. Land4Ldn’s videos suggest that a simplified density matrix is alive and well in calculating housing units per site. A party will input their preferred number of units and height for a site and subject to some constraints it will immediately appear on the SHLAA. It seems a lot of decisions have already been smuggled through in this process and we are shocked not to have been included in any of the thinking behind the system. We can see no way of engaging in it or advising our member organisations. How can the public participate in this new housing site selection by boroughs? The start date for the Land4Ldn call for sites is in fact today, September 16th.  

    Equally for the SHMA. We are relieved by your statement to Pat Turnbull “irrespective of what the headline need figure is, a SHMA is necessary to understand the breakdown of that housing need.” But your statement needs to be fleshed out in scoping the study so that the central issues of affordability relative to the income distribution and family/dwelling size issues are adequately dealt with. London’s failure to produce the dwelling stock its people need is the biggest failure of London Plans to date. The exclusion of us all from these deliberations is another outrage.

    We are equally concerned about the scoping and execution of the IIA and the performance of the Public Sector Equality Duty in particular. The draft Plan can run into difficulties during examination if these processes are inadequate: your predecessors had to go back and re-work the Equality Impact reporting in two successive rounds after community groups persuaded the 2019 Panel that the original work was inadequate. It is really important that the GLA gets it right this time.

    Our concerns in all this are grave and we shall share them widely in the hope that you will agree to rethink your approach. Should we have a meeting?

    Yours sincerely,…

    Copied to: Assembly Planning Committee, All Party Parliamentary Group London, London Forum of Civic and Amenity Societies, London Tenants Federation, London Housing Panel, Deputy Mayors for Housing and Planning. Please copy it widely and to your members.

    Download a copy of this letter

  • Levelling Up & Regeneration Bill

    Levelling Up & Regeneration Bill

    3 January 2023. This is the name of the Bill going through Parliament which includes the government’s current ideas on planning “reform”.

    Back in 2020 the government held a consultation on proposed changes to the Planning system for England and Just Space did briefings for members and consulted members on a draft before responding formally to the government (and to the parliament which conducted its own consultation).

    In 2020 the government was proposing a number of big changes – crucially

    • calling for all land in England to be allocated by local authorities (LAs) in their Local Plan to one of 3 zones, each of which would be defined by central government. Development proposals which conformed to the specification for that zone would then proceed to planning permission without planning committee or community involvement. 
    • calling for community involvement to be strengthened at plan-making stage. But it would cease at the stage of planning permission (except for schemes in the ‘protected’ zone, including conservation areas).
    • Section 106 and CIL would be replaced by a new Infrastructure Levy designed to cover infrastructure and affordable housing costs. Within the housing element, the first call on the money would be for “First Homes” which were to be cut-price homes for sale. 

    The consultation / white paper produced 4,000 responses and enormous controversies among community groups, local governments, professions, with many attacks on the proposals as a gift to land owners and developers, bad for social housing delivery, bad for democracy, unworkable and so on. We linked many of these responses. including some from Just Space groups.

    Jump to 2022 when the government finally sent a draft law (a Bill) to parliament, combining a reduced set of planning changes with its new idea— Levelling Up. The Bill is thus called the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill. Just Space was busy with other things at the main consultation stage of the Bill (the Committee Stage) and sent an update to members in November. Zoning had been dropped but the government’s aim of minimising community and council powers on individual projects was to be achieved by establishing National Development Management Policies which would take precedence over any local policies and plans. These policies would be written as regulations by ministers after the new law was in force.

    The attached PDF briefing has been prepared for members by Jonathan Moberly, with inputs from many Just Space groups and policy documents. It brings us up to date with the progress of the Bill to the end of 2022. The Bill now passes to the House of Lords on 17 January 2023 and we are hoping to post some further briefing on the potential to influence the Bill during its passage through the Lords.

    The briefing contains links to the Bill itself, many supporting documents and some critical comments. In addition, members may want to look at the report on the debate at the London Assembly Planning Committee, kindly prepared for us by Shibo Chen, and at the web site of the London Forum of Civic and Amenity Societies.

    Michael Gove has launched the long-awaited consultation on revisions to the National Planning Policy Framework – see here. The consultation runs until the end of February 2023 and we hope to provide some commentary to members.

    checked M E July 2025

  • About JUST SPACE

    About JUST SPACE

    Just Space is an informal alliance of community groups, campaigns and concerned independent organisations established in 2007 to act as a voice for Londoners at grass-roots level during the formulation of London’s major planning strategy, particularly the London Plan.

    Everyone is affected by planning but most people do not know how it happens, even though we all experience its effects: housing, parks, transport, pollution, and so on. The aim of Just Space is to improve the public’s participation in planning to ensure that policy and process are fairer towards communities, in a system that is dominated by the interests of property developers.

    The Just Space Network brings together a wide range of groups, some with a London-wide remit (such as the London Tenants Federation), others locally-based community groups (such as Latin Elephant and PlushSE16) and some issue-based, like the London Friends of Green Spaces Network. 

    The Network also has links with some of London’s Universities (UCL, CASS and LSE) whose staff and students provide research that the network can use alongside their own grass roots evidence. See more about student work on the Activity page.

    More on our activities

    Go to the Activity page

    Organisation and funding

    Just Space is run by volunteers with one funded role, the Organiser. We’re always looking for people to contribute their skills or get involved, and welcome any financial help.

    Current funding comes from Trust for London and we also receive funds from UCL The Bartlett through working programmes with students on mutually beneficial projects.

    MEMBERS
    We have over 80 participating groups. Some are core, long-term ‘members’, others are new or taking part in the work we’re doing.

    View our Constitution

    CONTACT Michael Ball, Organiser. Email office @ justspace .org.uk

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