More than numbers: Homes that work for London

Tuesday 20 October 2026

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Director
Orms

More than numbers: Homes that work for London

Miranda MacLaren, Chair of NLA’s Housing Expert Panel and Director at Orms, reflects on a year of panel discussions and shares its response to the GLA’s draft London Plan, setting out recommendations to unlock delivery, support family homes and protect long-term housing quality.

Reflecting on a year chairing the NLA Housing Expert Panel, I share our response to the GLA’s draft London Plan, and the changes we believe could unlock delivery without compromising housing quality.

It has been an enjoyable year chairing the NLA Housing Expert Panel, working with an enthusiastic group of experts. Our discussions have reinforced one thing: there is no shortage of passion in the housing sector. The challenge is translating that commitment into delivery.

At our final meeting of the year, we agreed our comments on the GLA’s draft London Plan. It felt a fitting way to bring together our work: identifying what could unlock development while ensuring the homes we build are places people can thrive.

We welcome ambitious housing targets, a brownfield-first approach and clearer frameworks for site optimisation and building heights. But success must be measured by more than unit numbers. Size, tenure, accessibility, location and long-term quality matter too.

Fund the homes London needs

One of our principal recommendations is that affordable-housing grant should be based on habitable rooms rather than units. Funding by unit numbers can favour smaller homes; a room-based approach would better support family homes where local evidence demonstrates need.

We also ask the GLA to test the evidence behind differentiated affordable-housing thresholds. Recognising local viability is important, but the approach must not reinforce spatial inequalities or enable under-delivery in outer London. Public investment remains essential: viability testing alone cannot deliver enough genuinely affordable homes.

Make room for families

We want greater transparency around the Strategic Housing Market Assessment and its assumptions about housing size mix.

The GLA should test whether its methodology places excessive emphasis on one- and two-bedroom homes, and whether this could shape development expectations and land values in ways that make larger homes harder to deliver.

Family housing should not become predominantly a social-rent offer. London needs different home sizes across market, intermediate and low-cost rented tenures, including affordable options for key-worker families.

Give temporary housing a clear policy home

Our principal strategic request is a dedicated London Plan policy section for emergency and temporary housing, supported by guidance and shared funding and delivery arrangements.

Families need suitable accommodation with access to schools, services and support networks. These needs deserve explicit policy attention, rather than indirect references within other housing categories.

We also seek clearer distinctions between student accommodation, shared living, supported housing and older persons’ housing, with guidance and management requirements reflecting their different purposes.

Protect quality as policy becomes more flexible

We recognise the difficult delivery context. However, flexibility must not allow multiple concessions to cumulatively erode housing quality.

For play, we propose replacing the fixed area metric with robust qualitative requirements for safe, accessible and well-maintained playable landscapes—not reducing children’s opportunities to play.

Taller housing needs guidance on outdoor space, reliable lifts, communal facilities and children’s independent access to play. Independent design review, post-occupancy evaluation and enforceable commitments should support any performance-based approach, alongside scrutiny of maintenance costs and service charges.

Turn ambition into lasting outcomes

Regeneration must protect residents through suitable rehousing, clear return arrangements and affordability guarantees, aligned with resident offers and the Mayor’s estate-regeneration guidance.

We also ask the GLA to test policies together on representative schemes, assessing their combined effects on viability, delivery and quality.

Turn ambition into delivery

For me, the message is clear: we need a Plan whose requirements are ambitious but workable, so they unlock much-needed homes rather than make delivery unviable. Inaction is not cost-free: it adds to pressure on housing costs and leaves even more people facing homelessness. We must respond with urgency, while taking a long-term view, supporting innovative new development alongside retrofit and reuse to create safe, sustainable homes that can adapt as people’s needs and circumstances change.

We need a Plan that embraces every route to a good home and acts urgently for those without one.

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Miranda MacLaren

Director
Orms