Questions to the Mayor of London – answered at on 17 May 2019.
If the London Plan density matrix is removed, what policies will be put in place to mitigate against over development of a locality which results on local congestion of public transport capacity?
The design-led approach in my draft London Plan requires an assessment of each development site’s context to identify opportunities and constraints that can determine the appropriate built form. My draft Plan is explicit that the density of individual development proposals should be reduced to respond to existing and planned levels of supporting infrastructure, including public transport capacity, where the capacity cannot be sufficiently expanded through the development or through a strategic approach to enhance area-wide infrastructure capacity.
It should be noted that the density matrix in the current London Plan does not mitigate against over-development of a site or locality and that there is nothing inherently sustainable about the numbers in the density matrix. The numbers provide no indication of whether there is enough infrastructure capacity to support the development or not, and they provide no information on the building’s form and whether it will relate well to the surrounding area. The ‘setting’ areas in the matrix cover such large and diverse areas they can’t be used to genuinely ensure the development responds to its context at the site level.