In 2015 Just Space members decided the time had come to write a Community-led alternative London Plan in order to distill the work done over the course of many years’ involvement in London planning issues.
The community-led alternative Plan is a set of policy ideas written by 62 groups and organisations and comes from a wealth of knowledge and expertise as well as direct experience of the issues. For example, policy on housing and green space written by London Tenants Federation members is very different from the same policy steered by the property developer lobby.
Evidence and consensus were gathered through meetings, workshops and conferences over many years, with almost total agreement on the shared common ground.
Avoiding a corporate planning style, the document took the form of an illustrated tabloid newspaper and was launched at the Just Space community conference at City Hall in February 2016. People took copies away and distributed thousands of them.
Read the tabloid version HERE
In the summer of 2016 we produced an extended A4 version of the Plan and distributed it to GLA planning officers and all London Assembly members.
Read the later A4 version HERE
In August 2017 we submitted to the GLA a short version of the Community-led Plan as part of the options and “Strategic Objectives” being prepared by the London Plan team.
Read Short version HERE
We launched 4 new chapters (drafts) on 20 January 2018
• Land Reform Just Space Land reform chapter draft & Land policy chapter slides
• Industrial Strategy Just Space industrial strategy chapter draft
• Social Impact Assessment Social Impact Assessment draft chapter
• Health Just Space Health Policy chapter draft
For details and video of the conferences leading to the community plan, scroll down the London Planning 2015-18 menu to the bottom.
Later: in 2020 when the Covid 19 pandemic began and we all experienced (eventually) the start of lockdowns, we could no longer meet as local groups or London-wide gatherings. We held a lot of very small and carefully-prepared zoom meetings on crucial themes, especially the lockdown and pandemic impacts and this led us to the publication of A community-led recovery plan for London which is the latest synthesis of our groups’ demands and ideas. The London Assembly Planning committee devoted an entire meeting to community presentations of this plan in 2022. [ video ]
Since then we have started discussing our approach to the next London Plan which will start in 2024, calling for the future to be very different from the past.