Agenda item

This report provides further detail on the process to be followed in preparing the new Local Plan and the likely key issues a new Local Plan for the borough will need to address.

Matt Paterson, Assistant Director for Spatial Planning, gave a verbal update on the New Local Plan for Hammersmith and Fulham. It was noted that this will need to provide for the development needs of the borough, including housing and employment needs, for the 15-year period from 2025/26 to 2040/41. The update provided details on the process to be followed in preparing the new Local Plan and the likely key issues a new Local Plan for the borough will need to address.

Key aspects of the update included:

• The key stages in preparing a New Local Plan:

1.    Evidence gathering, Draft Plan Stage, Pre-Submission Draft Plan Stage, Conformity with London Plan, Submission to the Secretary of State, Independent Examination in Public.

2.    The Inspector’s Report and Adoption of Local Plan.

3.    And following the implementation of the Local Plan, the Council must monitor the performance of the policies and prepare an Annual Monitoring Report.

• Key matters for the Local Plan including:

1.    Housing need and land supply.

2.    Taking action on climate change mitigation and adaptation.

3.    Supporting town and local centres as they adapt to change.

4.    Increasing employment and jobs.

5.    Protecting heritage and designing high-quality safe, accessible, and inclusive communities.

6.    Increasing biodiversity and the quality of open spaces.

7.    Reducing the need to travel and promoting sustainable travel and

8.    Securing new social and community infrastructure.

The Chair, Councillor Rory Vaughan, thanked Matt Paterson for setting out the framework and timeline for the development of the new Local Plan.

Councillor Adam Peter Lang commented that the Local Plan was a complex overarching framework which integrated the Council’s other plans and policies, such as the innovative Industrial Strategy. As such, he said it was important that residents understood how their feedback would be used in consultation phases as the New Plan developed.

Councillor Adam Peter Lang asked about Hammersmith and Fulham’s housing targets, as set by the London Plan, in comparison with other London boroughs. In response, Matt Paterson confirmed that every London borough had a very different housing figure to each other. Hammersmith and Fulham’s strategic housing requirement was very high, as a local Authority in Hammersmith it was much higher than elsewhere, and this was primarily based around housing affordability. Historically, Hammersmith and Fulham had been penalised as its housing was not affordable and therefore the borough needed to provide more. In Matt Paterson’s view, the borough had reached a crossroads in that it relied heavily on the turnover of land on brownfield sites coming forward to meet its housing targets and the borough only had a finite number of brownfield sites.

Matt Paterson explained there were a number of strategies such as the Industrial Strategy, Cultural Strategy and Open Space Strategy, and the Local Plan did take account of all of these. It also looked at how the Council could implement them through the Local Plan to deliver growth and change over the next 15 years.

As a long-term resident, Councillor Liz Collins asked how officers intended to balance the delivery of the Local Plan with the social implications of what had occurred in the borough over the last 30 years. In response, Matt Paterson explained that the Council

had a strategic housing requirement and a number, but then officers used the Housing Strategy to deduce the mix of housing that was required. So, to address social inequality, the needs of the Housing Strategy were fed into Planning Policy.

Matt Paterson remarked it was a balancing act between how much more housing could be accommodated in the borough due to the unaffordability of housing and high land values. And the tension that at a time of high land values, this also drove considerable benefit for the Council through developer contributions.

Councillor Ashok Patel summarised his understanding of how the Local Plan came into being, followed by a public consultation. He asked who the stakeholders were and which interest groups were going to be involved. His question stemmed from trying to understand what the aim of the London Plan was, such as the redistribution resources to local authorities in London. In relation to the public consultation, he felt that if this was just 6 weeks, and the consultation period fell over the summer holidays, then the consultation period should be reviewed.

In response, Matt Paterson confirmed that the Council did not have to abide by the 6-week period and it also intended to do a considerable amount of informal work to augment the formal consultation. As the Local Plan would affect every resident in the borough, everyone would have a vested interest in it. Matt Paterson provided details on which groups would be consulted, and the work being done with Digital Services to turn the three-hundred-page Local Plan into bite sizes (as well as facilitate feedback) so it was more accessible to residents / interest groups. He provided details on the consultation process with the Mayor of London, Secretary of State and how the Local Plan addressed the borough’s growth and development needs for the future.

Councillor Jackie Borland commented that how the Local Plan was packaged for public consultation was very important. She said the scope and potential impact of a project like the Local Plan was overwhelming. She urged officers to think about the importance of communities and have these in the forefront of people’s mind, rather than simply aspire to hitting housing and density targets.

In response, Matt Paterson explained that the Council recognised those points which was why Spatial Planning had been moved from the Economy Directorate to Place. This meant that everyone who was responsible for communities had been drawn together under the Place umbrella.

Councillor Rory Vaughan highlighted the influence of government planning strategies, and asked how the timing and ramifications of these would impact on the Local Plan. In response, Matt Paterson confirmed that there was no perfect time to action a local plan review as it was inevitable that something would happen in the course of the next two and a half years which would prompt the Council to reassess its direction of travel. The Mayor of London for example would be formulating his Plan, so the Council would need to be mindful of those proposals.

Matt Paterson underlined that it was important that as the Council progressed its Local Plan, this was evidence based. He explained there was scope to depart from National policy and the London Plan if there was local evidence to support the Council’s position. Closing the item, the Chair, Councillor Rory Vaughan, highlighted that the Committee would be interested how other strategies fed into the Local Plan. And how diverse factors such as: land availability, health implications and infrastructure, the timetable and consultation period, as well as National Planning Policy and the London Plan would all feed into the process over the next couple of years.

Resolved –

That the Committee to note and comment on the report.