London Plan supplementary planning guidance
The London Plan
The Mayor of London has published new planning guidance as part of the updated London Plan: Spatial Development Strategy for Greater London.
The new guidance insists that developers fund the construction and maintenance of child's play and recreation facilities in any development of over 10 units of accommodation.
The policy sets out a requirement that planning applicants must calculate the likely increase in the number of children living locally, and provide appropriate play facilities; also that the new play provision should be within the development and be in accordance with the local play strategy.
In the briefing downloadable below, two separate documents are described. The main London Plan is a 4.5 MB file and 500 pages long, relevant extracts from it are in the download briefing.
The London Plan - supplementary planning guidance on play provision
The second document is the detailed Supplementary Planning Guidance on Play Provision, this is authored by Tim Gill, amongst others, and gives useful advice to (none expert) developers, councillors and planners about play.
In brief, it sets out a system for estimating likely numbers of children in a development according to the number of houses or flats, and the number of bedrooms in each, than allocates 10 square metres of play and recreation space for each.
Planning Gain - Who gains?
There is also a link to a London Assembly Planning and Spatial Development Committee report on section 106 planning agreements in the capital. The report, Who gains? found that a combination of inadequate negotiation skills, high staff turnover and lack of clear guidelines for developers mean some boroughs are missing out on funding for community infrastructure.
Download the briefing below.
