20 May: Just Space has responded to the document produced by the Mayor and still considers that the draft London Plan is unsound because the Public Sector Equalities Duty has not been discharged. Our submission is Just Space response to Panel Note 7.3 20 May 2019  There are no plans by the Panel for further discussion on this and we don’t yet know whether other participants have responded to Panel Note 7.

28 April:  As the draft London Plan Examination resumes for its final month of hearings, the GLA publishes its response to our day 1 challenge that they had not dealt properly with the Equality Duty. The panel of inspectors required the GLA to respond by 18th and the results were so big (160 pages) that they didn’t make it onto the web site until 23rd April. The history is in previous posts.

The response by GLA is partly legal argument but mostly the detailed discussion of how city hall expects each of its policy areas to impact (positively and negatively) on each of the 9 “equality” groups specified in the law. We have just 2 weeks to digest and comment on all this material and do urge member organisations to read and evaluate at least what is written in Appendix 3 about population groups or issues which specially concern them. The report is set out in 9 sections, corresponding to the 9 “equality groups”:

On March 12th 2019 the panel of inspectors examining the draft London Plan called on the Mayor/GLA to report urgently on the expected impacts of the Plan on each of the groups in society protected by law.

This follows the Just Space intervention on day 1 of the hearings in which the adequacy of the equalities impact assessment was challenged, the panel’s subsequent instruction that the unpublished details of the analysis should be released and the panel’s invitation for comments on that further material (see our previous post).

Today’s statement from the panel reads:

Today 25 February has been a momentous one for the London Plan, challenged for its entire approach to “affordable” housing and now described as ‘unlawful’ for failing to discharge the Mayor’s duties under the equalities act. Policies which discriminate against poor people, many ethnic groups, disabled people, women… are being air-brushed as positive or neutral.

A surprisingly wide range of organisations, ranging from Just Space, the London Tenants Federation and 35% Campaign to the Council for the Preservation of Rural England and the Highbury Group made independent critiques of the very weak “affordable” housing proposals in the draft Plan, proposals which would fail to meet even the needs identified by the Mayor —overwhelmingly for council housing (low-rent housing)— and would further boost an over-emphasis on housing which few Londoners can afford. Some details are in this afternoon’s tweets @JustSpace7 and a blog post will follow here.

Part of the challenge from Just Space is that the housing proposals fail to satisfy the GLA’s obligations under the Public Sector Equalities Duty. This failure is just one aspect of the systematic failure of the entire plan. After Just Space raised these issues on day 1 of the Examination, the panel of inspectors ordered the release by the GLA and Arups of supplementary tables which had been prepared but not published. These did appear and  participants were given until yesterday to comment. Just Space Written Statement 2019 Mayor’s Additional Equalities Evidence  is detailed and careful, concluding:

43. The effect of the Mayor’s flawed approach has been to produce a Panglossian EqIA (as part of its IIA) which bleaches out any negative effects arising from the policies because it fails to ask the right questions, namely, what is the likely differential impact of X policy on persons with protected characteristics and to inquire after the right sort of information on which to base such an analysis.
44. The Mayor, the Panel and the Secretary of State need to take into account equalities impacts prior to adopting the NLP. However, the flawed approach taken in the IIA is only underscored by the assessment tables which have now been published. These do not correct the deficiencies of the IIA and taken together, the total information provided does not come close to discharging the PSED. Were the plan to proceed on the basis of the current IIA it would do so unlawfully.

The Panel announced this evening that it would now read the submissions and give careful consideration to them. The GLA staff, asked to comment, said that they were satisfied that the IIA was a proportionate and robust exercise. “The Public Sector Equality Duty is at the heart of everything we do, every day.”

The panel’s response is awaited. When further submissions are available we’ll post the links. Later (9 March): six more submissions have been made and are available at https://www.london.gov.uk/what-we-do/planning/london-plan/new-london-plan/examination-public-draft-new-london-plan/written-statements/supplementary-written-statement-matter-2  It is not yet clear when these will be discussed. Without exception these submissions reinforce the detailed statement from Just Space summarised here.

The first 2 weeks of public hearings on the new London Plan have been held and Just Space offers a blog to help people follow the debates. It starts here.

This is the first time that London Plan hearings have ever been so easy to follow. Journalists rarely attend, there is no broadcasting except on a few days, and very few Londoners can afford to sit in City Hall for 35 days. We are very grateful to students at UCL who have been taking and editing notes.

If you prefer to have the full details you can follow the narrative listing page which has links to the individual blog posts for each item.

This is what we wrote when the hearings opened;

EiP begins with warning on discrimination

Tuesday 15 January sees not just a ‘meaningful vote’ in Parliament but the opening of hearings at City Hall on the draft new London Plan. In so many ways the Plan flies in the face of evidence and has avoided exploring the alternatives the city could follow. It looks bad but the panel of inspectors is now asking most of the right questions.

Just Space and the groups which make it up have been submitting their responses to the first weeks of questions posed for the Examination in Public. A new page on this web site puts the panel’s questions alongside our responses (in red) and the timetable: https://justspace.org.uk/hearings-eip-2019

That page will grow throughout the EiP process which stretches through to May 2019 and we’ll add other organisations’ statements and reports on the hearings if we get enough volunteers to cover 33 days.

Bookmark it as a unique resource.

The hearings (Examination in Public EiP) on the draft new London Plan start mid-January. Community groups are busy preparing.

Just Space (with some support from UCL’s Bartlett School of Planning) is holding a series of briefing and report-back meetings for community groups involved and for students and others following the process.  The first was on 26 November. Slides are here [ UCLJS briefing 26 Nov 2018.ppt] and a writeup will follow.

The next meeting is 5 December.  Details on our events page.

For more about the process, scroll down to previous post.

Stop press 7 Nov: presentations for the Technical Seminars 6 and 7 November are now available. Here you can also watch the webcasts of the seminars on both days. https://www.london.gov.uk/what-we-do/planning/london-plan/new-london-plan/examination-public-draft-new-london-plan#Stub-175730

Our notes on 6 November (employment & household projections, housing need and demand, land supply) are here.  On 7 November (Zero Carbon and perhaps Waste to be added) here.

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