Comment
Wandsworth begin consultation on new Local Plan
Following the Mayor of London issuing his Publication Draft of the New London Plan, which has now received Secretary of State sign off, Wandsworth joins Enfield and Lewisham in the list of London Boroughs issuing new Local Plans for consultation in early 2021. Public consultation on the ‘Pre-Publication’ version (Regulation 18) of LB Wandsworth’s Local Plan is now open until 1 March, following the previous round of consultation on the Issues Document back in December 2018.
See our previous comments on the London Plan here.
The Publication Draft of the London Plan sets a target for Wandsworth of 19,500 additional homes to be provided over a ten year period (2019/20 to 2028/29). This represents an annualised average target of 1,950 new homes per year and a 7.5% increase over the previous target in the 2015 London Plan. This reflects the increasing need for new homes in the borough, with its population set to rise to around 353,100 by 2030 and 8,800 households on Wandsworth’s Housing Register.
The plan also recognises the valuable role that industrial land plays in the borough and accepts the existing supply of industrial land is insufficient to accommodate the scale of demand, particularly following the large amount of Strategic Industrial Land (SIL) previously released around the Nine Elms and Battersea area. Therefore in line with the Mayor’s industrial land strategy, new SIL is proposed to be designated at Summerstown, as part of the ‘North Wimbledon / Garratt Business Park’ shared between Merton and Wandsworth boroughs.
In June 2020 Wandsworth published the borough’s COVID-19 recovery plan, the ‘Smart Growth Plan’, which seeks to support local centres where a sense of community and place has thrived during the pandemic. The Smart Growth Plan focuses on five objectives:
- To be the greenest inner London borough
- To deliver the best start in life
- To promote aspiration for everyone through sustainable, ambitious growth and regeneration
- To ensure businesses thrive and town centres are vibrant and culturally rich places to go, shop and enjoy
- Enabling people to get on in life
These objectives are carried forward into the draft Local Plan, and, building on the place making goal the plan introduces a new focus on this, with place-specific area strategies proposed. These focus on key areas of growth and regeneration in the borough, utilising opportunities where increased capacity and density present significant opportunities to enhance places and bring benefits to communities. These area strategies identify key site allocations and are expected to provide 15,200 homes, or 74% of the ten-year housing supply, for the following parts of the borough:
- Wandsworth Town
- Nine Elms
- Clapham Junction and York Road/Winstanley Regeneration Area
- Putney
- Tooting
- Roehampton Regeneration Area
- Balham
In July 2019, Wandsworth Borough Council declared a Climate Emergency and pledged to work towards making the council carbon neutral as an organisation by 2030, and carbon zero by 2050. The Local Plan plays a key role in delivering this, with key policies on sustainable design and construction, energy efficiency, zero and low carbon development, renewable energy and decentralised energy networks; reinforcing the importance of taking a holistic approach to tackling climate change.
The consultation on the plan runs until 1 March 2021, with Wandsworth targeting submission of the ‘Publication’ version of the new Local Plan to the Secretary of State in spring 2022 and subsequent adoption by summer 2023. For further information or to discuss specific aspects of this article please contact Luke Sumnall or Freya Turtle.
3 February 2021