The London Plan steps forward

The consultation draft of the new London Plan, the first revision under Boris Johnson's administration, was published yesterday (Monday, October 12 2009).  I attended the de facto launch last night, at an RTPI event at which Sir Simon Milton, deputy mayor and chief of staff, set out the primary points of the new draft.

Having led the creation of the evidence base for climate change-related policies in the Further Alterations to the original London Plan several years ago, in which climate change became a central theme for the first time in such a major policy document, I was eager to see what the latest climate change policies would hold.  Chapter 5 of the new consultation draft, which addresses climate change, seems an eminently sensible evolution of the existing policies and learns from the shortcomings of the last iteration.

Most important is the approach to climate change mitigation in new buildings as achieved through reduction of carbon emissions.  Last time round, the policies adopted a three-stage approach:  First, design an efficient building.  Second, supply it efficiently with energy - e.g. use community or district heating.  Third, supply 20% of the remaining emissions with on-site renewable energy.  There was only one problem with this approach, which took the 'Merton rule' to new levels (from 10% to 20%):  Everyone in the development community ignored the first two parts and focused on the third, because that was the only part to which a target had been appended.  This has had the effect of helping to raise the prospects for building-scale renewable energy, but has also proven problematic for many developments, even to the point that public-sector developments have found the on-site renewable energy policy unworkable.

The new approach retains the basic framework of the last Plan, but looks at overall energy use, specifying percentage reductions to be attained over Building Regulations minima (Part L 2006):  44% for the next few years, rising to 55% thereafter, and then on to zero carbon (this is for residential buildings; commercial buildings follow a similar trajectory).  The difference between the current Plan and the draft Plan is that while the old one is prescriptive about method, the new one focuses on results; it doesn't really care how developers achieve those reductions.

I'm pleased to see that the prescriptive policy-making has been superceded by outcome-oriented policy-making.  My prediction is that, as developers, consultants, pressure groups and other stakeholders feed in to the consultation process, we will see that the approach comes in for very little criticism; and that the fights will be over the overall carbon-reduction targets.