LDN Weekly – Issue 156 – 13 January 2021
CARS, CALL-INS AND CLADDING
As our dear city faces a state of emergency, the usual January horizon-scanning takes on a somewhat more desperate tone, with every prediction accompanied by a monumental shrug of the shoulders. Who knows what this year will hold? No seriously, who knows? Can they get in touch?
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LCA Board Director and LDN Editor Jenna Goldberg  A STATE OF EMERGENCY?Last Friday, the Mayor declared a ‘major incident’ in response to evidence that the rapid spread of the virus has ‘left the NHS at risk of being overwhelmed.’ It is clear that, as per Sadiq Khan’s press release (and the discussion at yesterday’s Extraordinary London Assembly Plenary session), health and other frontline services in London are facing pressures just as bad and on many metrics worse than those seen during the peak of the pandemic’s ‘first wave.’ Fundamentally, declaring a ‘major incident’ is a cry for help by local or regional authorities hard-pressed to tackle a crisis, due to a shortage of resources or expertise. It was previously invoked by City Hall in 2011 following widespread riots, in 2016 after the Croydon tram crash, and in 2017 following the Grenfell Tower fire as well as the Westminster Bridge and London Bridge terror attacks. The Mayor and London’s boroughs have accordingly written to the Prime Minister with a list of ‘asks’, for more money, better information-sharing and stricter social distancing measures. The declaration succeeded in gaining traction in the media and in eliciting a chorus of agreement from public agencies in London. However, it remains unclear whether it has produced any additional support for the capital in the days since, particularly as authorities up and down the country face similar challenges and several neighbouring areas have also declared ‘major incidents,’ most recently including Buckinghamshire, Sussex and Surrey. The Government is meanwhile focused on getting its monumental, nation-wide vaccination drive off the ground – on which note, we are especially pleased hear that two of our clients, namely ExCel London and Harlequins FC, are contributing facilities for use as vaccination centres. MAYORAL CALL-INS LATESTFollowing reports in the press in September, GLA documents have now confirmed that the Mayor did call-in a major Southwark scheme in August last year. The proposed development, by CIT Group, was rejected by councillors in June over concerns about its ‘excessive height, scale and massing’. The application, for the delivery of a new 20-storey building, with office, retail and medical floorspace as well as a café and community space, has been amended since it was first called in. The amended version includes new healthcare floorspace ‘to accommodate the specific requirements of the future healthcare occupier’, more affordable workspace and the retention of a non-designated heritage asset which had previously been earmarked for demolition. The height has not been changed. A date for the public hearing has not yet been set. Separately, the CEO of developer Inland Homes has written an open letter to Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick demanding that he provide a timetable for making a decision on the proposed Master Brewer development in Hillingdon. The 500-home scheme was rejected by the Council in 2019 and then called-in by the Mayor and approved. However, Jenrick has issued a holding direction on the planning application. In his strongly-worded letter, Stephen Wicks called the lack of timetable ‘wholly unacceptable’ and said that the delay is ‘seriously endangering’ the project. BOROUGH PLANNING LATESTMeanwhile, in the boroughs:
Looking ahead, we’re expecting significant movements on the planning policy front in central London. On 14 January, the City’s Court of Common Council is set to consider changes to the City Plan 2036, while Camden Council’s meeting scheduled for 18 January will see councillors debate the future of the borough’s high streets and the creation of a 15-minute city. CAPITAL OF HOUSEBUILDING?In mid-December, the Government executed a u-turn on its ‘mutant algorithm’ for the allocation of local housing targets. But what does that mean for London? The Government’s response to the relevant consultation indicated that England’s largest urban areas, including the capital’s boroughs, will be shouldering the weight of additional housing supply needed for the Government to meet its 300,000-new-homes-a-year target. Planning experts have since then been poring over the numbers and the results are now in. A recent Planning Resource piece offers a handy summary of analyses by DLP, Lichfields and others. In brief, London as a whole will be expected to deliver nearly a third of the nation-wide target, or 93,579 new homes annually. For comparison, the current London Plan identified a minimum target of 42,389 new homes a year, while the latest Publication draft of the draft new London Plan identifies a ten-year target that produces an average of 52,287 annually. The gap is large and stark. As for individual boroughs? Some fare worse than others. To cite one example, DLP estimates that Enfield’s new requirement, according to the new standard method, is 4,397 new homes annually, which compared to 798 in its adopted Local Plan makes for a jaw-dropping difference of 451% - while its ten-annual target in the new draft London Plan averages out to 1,246 annually. One wonders how national, regional and local authorities will even begin to align and implement these targets in the context of limited land supply, a rather wobbly market and a planning reform drive with no clear end in sight – and especially as most homes are not even built by the public sector anyway, meaning that delivery is not actually in councils’ direct control in most cases. PEOPLE MOVES
 CLADDING CRISIS CONTINUEDReactions to the ‘cladding crisis’ rumble on, with campaigners, the media and local authorities clamouring for action. We reported as much last week, so what’s new? Over the weekend, The Sunday Times reported on research suggesting that tall buildings aside, hundreds more mid-rise housing blocks, hospitals and schools across England – many built since the Grenfell Fire – are equipped with potentially dangerous cladding. The report also mentioned emerging evidence that the terms of the Government’s Building Safety Fund include conditions banning beneficiaries from speaking to the media ‘without the prior written approval’ of officials, even if ‘disclosure is in the overwhelming public interest.’ Meanwhile, the London Assembly’s Fire, Resilience and Emergency Planning Committee has published a new report entitled Cladding Crisis and its impact on Londoners, which details the heart-breaking predicament of Londoners affected by this issue – and particularly leaseholders. The Building Safety Bill continues to inch its way through the legislative process, though MPs are signing proposed amendments intended to protect leaseholders from paying for the costs of cladding remediation. LONDON PROPERTY PROSPECTSThe new year has brought its usual flurry of editorials, blogs and features about the year past and ‘what to expect’ in 2021. Being dyed in the wool London-watchers, we’ve particularly enjoyed Dave Hill’s reading of the tea leaves on the capital’s role in post-Brexit and after-the-pandemic Britain. With our planning hats on, we thought Ashurst’s ‘top ten predictions on what lies ahead this year’ made for an especially good read. And from a wider property development perspective, Property Week has collected a dizzying array forecasts for 2021 from dozens of senior professionals – including several LCA clients and associates. We’ve also recently read interesting assessments of the particular challenges facing commercial landlords and developers in the City and Canary Wharf, from The Guardian and the Financial Times. In some ways, the challenge is simply one of stamina. In a week when two of London’s biggest retail landlords reported collecting less than half of their tenants’ quarterly rent, one has to ask: who has the pockets deep enough to weather the storm? LEASEHOLD REFORM (SORT OF)Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick issued a surprise announcement on leasehold reform last Thursday, heralding ‘the first part of seminal two-part reforming legislation in this Parliament.’ This first instalment focuses on the issue of ground rents. Jenrick has committed to tabling legislation ‘in the upcoming session of Parliament,’ to set future ground rents to zero and related measures, with other long-mooted reforms to the wider leasehold system to be put forward ‘in due course.’ While the media has focused on his ground rent pledges, the small print of Jenrick’s announcement also includes references to other related issues, including a commitment to ‘abolishing’ marriage value and other ‘prohibitive costs’ that form part of the calculation of the cost for leaseholders when they buy their freehold. The implications of this are far too complicated to analyse in full here. However, freeholders large and small will no doubt be carefully considering what impact removing marriage value from the enfranchisement process, even if it survives a likely challenge under the Human Rights Act, will have on the value of their properties. ABOUT THAT CYCLE LANE...Cycling infrastructure and Low Traffic Neighbourhoods continue to make headlines in London:
A BRIEF NOTE ON ELECTIONSRumours continue to swirl around the question of whether local, regional and devolved administrations’ elections scheduled for this May will be held. We also covered this issue in our last edition, but it has since emerged that the Cabinet Office is now working on potential plans to hold the votes at a later date, with scenarios for holding them in June, July or September. Indeed, many politicians, across party lines, seem to believe a delay is inevitable. While that does not definitively mean that the elections will be postponed, it is now starting to look like a very real possibility. Cabinet Office minister Chloe Smith addressed questions about the election in Parliament only today, asserting that while the Government is still working to the assumption that they will be held in May, they are “keeping this position under review.” There is, however, one election that is now almost certain to be deferred: while the leadership of Croydon Council had promised to hold a referendum on its governance system in May, it now appears to have backtracked, proposing to hold it in October. Council leader Hamida Ali has been cited as justifying the delay by arguing that ‘holding the referendum in October means there will be plenty of time for local people to consider the issues involved and weigh up the merits of the different options.’ Councillors are expected to vote on whether to delay the referendum on 25 January. LDN CONTRIBUTORSRobert Gordon Clark, Executive Chairman and Partner Jenna Goldberg, Board Director Stefanos Koryzis, Research Manager Emily Clinton, Research Executive Mel Webber, Middleweight Designer LCA prides itself on its intelligence-led approach to PR and communications and our dedicated research team monitors London politics, news and issues as it happens. If you would like to know more about LCA or anything in this edition of LDN – London in short please get in touch.If you have received LDN Weekly indirectly and would like to subscribe to receive it every week, please click here to register your details.LDN is put together by a dedicated team at London Communications Agency. The content for each edition is developed from news drawn from the last week from every London local paper as well as the regional and national press, from intelligence gathered by monitoring local, regional and national government activity and from the insight and expert knowledge of the entire LCA team.
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