DP9 Board Director Craig Tabb reflects on the NLA Expert Panel on Planning first meeting of the year where they focused on spatial strategies, community engagement. density, and skills.

The first meeting of the fifth cycle of the NLA Expert Panel on Planning began with an overview of the Expert Panels and the New London Agenda, the introduction of new panellists, and a discussion of plans for the year ahead.

Each panellist was invited to give a short introduction about their work and experience. The Chair provided some context and scene-setting in terms of the work of the Panel in 2024 and the desire for its outcomes (summarised in a White Paper) to help to inform the upcoming period of work through 2025. The work in 2024 focused on three themes: enhancing skills and recruitment, boosting youth engagement, and embedding social value.

Lisa Fairmaner, Head of London Plan and Growth Strategies at the GLA, provided a brief overview of the current work on the next London Plan. The GLA is preparing a high-level document – ‘Towards a London Plan’ – which is expected to be the subject of consultation in April-May 2025. It was agreed that, owing to the timing of this consultation, it did not make sense for the Panel’s work during 2025 to focus on the new London Plan. But it was agreed that, of course, the new London Plan will be crucially important for London’s future planning, and, therefore, the Panel should play a role in contributing to its preparation. To enable this to happen, an extra panel meeting will be organised to discuss the consultation document. This will take place in early May 2025.

The Chair provided some initial thoughts on possible topics and focus areas for the Panel to consider through 2025. In particular, this focused on the topic of Spatial Development Strategies, in light of the government’s proposals in this respect (as set out in the recently published Planning and Infrastructure Bill). The government has stated that London’s extensive experience and approach to spatial development strategies should be used as the basis for rolling out to other parts of the country. The Chair suggested that perhaps the Panel could provide a piece of work on the lessons from London – the do’s and don’ts – of strategic development strategies which could offer guidance for other cities and growth locations.

The Panel agreed, in principle, with the above suggestion. The Panel, building and reflecting on this, discussed various associated topics. In summary, these included:

a. The need to achieve optimum development output against the background of the government’s critical need to deliver homes.

b. What is good density? What are the conditions that create good density?

c. The importance of brownfield development and promoting the case for the redevelopment of brownfield sites, particularly in London. The case for London.

d. Showcasing examples of good density and good strategic planning in London.

e. The need to understand how communities, especially young people, interact with the notion of high density. What makes density acceptable to communities?

f.  How to do better at making the link between development density and public / local community benefits?

g. Different aspects of density and thinking about how different policy requirements may impact the nature of schemes e.g. urban greening factor, biodiversity net gain.

h. The need for planning to be seen through a more positive lens. The need to change how planning is perceived. It is often talked about negatively, and the planning system is presented as being broken. Whereas the dial should change on this, and planning should be recognised as being a solution and positive process if the correct resources and skill sets are provided.

i. Thinking about the role of meanwhile development in creating good places and good density as well as the permanent end-state development.

j. Lack of public/community understanding of the front end of the planning process – the plan-making stage.Need better understanding to help create a smoother process at the scheme/planning application stage.

The Chair agreed to take away the various discussion points and comments made by the panellists and to formalise a structure of work for 2025. This would be issued to the panel in draft for their review. It is likely that the work will focus on spatial development strategies, but break this down into a few different themes (such as place-making/density, policy and plan-making, and resourcing/skills).

The NLA provided an overview of their ‘Adaptive Reuse’ research piece. The panel briefing discussed this and provided some headline comments. These were noted and will inform the NLA’s research in due course.