Unpicking the London Plan
Teresa Borsuk,
Andrew Beharrell and
Patrick Devlin of Pollard Thomas Edwards examine what it says about housing, the circular economy, and tall buildings
What do you need to know about the new London Plan? For a start, it’s a weighty tome, 542 pages in all. That’s about 24 hours of uninterrupted reading. The plan has been four years in the making since its first draft. Sadiq Khan has been desperate to publish it before next month’s mayoral elections, ultimately accepting amendments by housing secretary Robert Jenrick. Broadly, these include a reduction in the number of homes to be delivered annually (down from 65,000 to 52,000); restraining growth across the city and the green belt; promoting ‘gentle density’ development in town centres; reducing protection of industrial sites; allowing more car parking spaces in outer London; and only allowing tall buildings to be developed in ‘suitable’ locations as defined by local development plans.
By Thomas Lane2021-04-15T05:00:00+01:00
Contractors have long been the dirty boys of the building industry and at the back of the field in the race towards net zero. But things are changing on construction sites, and some of the biggest polluters are taking significant steps to reduce their carbon footprint
Last year sales of petrol and diesel cars slumped by 39% and 55% respectively while sales of electric cars leapt by 185% to take 6.6% of the market, up from 1.6% in 2019. This transformation is being driven by a combination of the ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030 and a bigger choice of electric cars with better range.
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Planning applications for tall buildings in London dropped by almost a third last year, according to the latest annual tally of high-rise construction activity.
New London Architecture’s 2021 Tall Buildings Survey found that last year in the capital work started on just 24 buildings of 20 storeys or more – down from 44 in 2019.
The round-up acknowledges the impact of covid-19 on the construction sector, but points to a “rebound in developers’ confidence” after the initial economic shock of the pandemic.
According to the data, planning applications for tall buildings fell by 27.1% overall – with the vast majority of proposals submitted during the second half of the year, suggesting optimism began to return after initial fears that the pandemic would trigger a profound economic collapse or a permanent shift in demographics.
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Planning applications for tall buildings in London dropped by almost a third last year, according to the latest annual tally of high-rise construction activity.
New London Architecture’s 2021 Tall Buildings Survey found that last year in the capital work started on just 24 buildings of 20 storeys or more – down from 44 in 2019.
The round-up acknowledges the impact of covid-19 on the construction sector, but points to a “rebound in developers’ confidence” after the initial economic shock of the pandemic.
According to the data, planning applications for tall buildings fell by 27.1% overall – with the vast majority of proposals submitted during the second half of the year, suggesting optimism began to return after initial fears that the pandemic would trigger a profound economic collapse or a permanent shift in demographics.
Words by Will Jennings
In a 2015 a promotional film launching a luxury residential development in central London, a somewhat psychopathic protagonist of the drama stood in his penthouse overlooking a night-time skyline to a solemn voiceover: ‘To look out at the city that could have swallowed you whole, and say “I did this”; to stand with the world at your feet.’
It was only six years ago, but in an intervening period that has reckoned with Brexit, Grenfell, rising inequality, an eventual recognition of climate breakdown and now Covid-19, this kind of vertigo-inducing luxury seems of a different age. However, a newly published report by New London Architecture (NLA) suggests it is still very present.