Large swathes of brownfield land needed to deliver homes in London will struggle to be unlocked without significant extra resources for boroughs, according to a new report from London First.
Opportunity Areas, one of mayor Boris Johnson’s flagship schemes, consist of 38 brownfield land areas earmarked to supply up to 303,000 new homes and 575,000 new jobs.
The report, Opportunity Knocks: Piecing together London’s Opportunity Areas, highlights the main challenges to delivering homes in these areas. These include:
• a lack of experienced senior staff or specialist resources to manage large and complex phased developments in borough’s planning departments;
• a lack of information available to prospective developers and investors about the level of public support required in each Opportunity Area;
• uncertainty over how the required transport infrastructure costs will be met and built on time in Opportunity Areas;
• uncertainty over the required reformation of utilities to enable more timely forward provision of electricity and water infrastructure.
The report recommends that:
• boroughs introduce simpler planning rules across all Opportunity Areas, including rules about CIL and section 106 payments;
• more detailed business plans be created to provide greater certainty for investors and public bodies and to protect Opportunity Areas against the impact of economic and political cycles;
• Opportunity Areas be categorised – green, amber, and red – by the GLA to show the level of support from public sector bodies required for developing each Opportunity Area;
• government support long-term investment in the infrastructure required to deliver additional housing, jobs and economic growth in Opportunity Areas.
Baroness Jo Valentine, chief executive of London First, said: “We will have to invest large sums of public money in transport and infrastructure. We also have to accept that, at the outset, there is very little we can ask of the private sector in terms of social infrastructure and affordable housing if we want to get shovels in the ground.
“If we can summon up the courage to do this, there is a huge prize to be claimed – nothing less than a generational boost to London’s competitiveness as a global city.”
Melanie Leech, chief executive of the BPF, said: “This report is right to recognise that local authorities will struggle to reach government targets if they remain as under-resourced as they are now. A conversation needs to be had about how the lack of skills and funds in local authority planning departments, in particular, can be addressed, and the part that the private sector might play in this.”
