Planning inspectors have told Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London to rewrite key aspects of affordable housing policy in his blueprint for the capital, after criticism from the London Assembly.

The London Assembly had warned that if the Mayor forced boroughs to meet rigid local targets for low-cost housing in the capital, without taking into account local circumstances, he could end up with less housing being built than planned.

The panel of inspectors, set up to examine the draft London Plan in public, have now told the Mayor to drop these local targets, so that boroughs have greater flexibility in negotiating the amount of affordable housing on a case by case basis.

Commenting on the recommendation that an extra 30,000 additional homes is sought each year from all sources, Bob Neill AM, Chair of the Assembly’s Planning and Spatial Development Committee, said this was a step in the right direction. The Assembly had called for an increase in the supply of new housing from the 23,000 homes per year advocated in the draft Plan to the figure of 43,000 homes per year.

The inspectors have also accepted a number of other points put forward by the Assembly, including:

• The Plan should be amended to give greater emphasis to the diversity of London’s economy and to stress the importance of small and medium sized enterprises.
• The diverse character of London’s suburbs and the need to tailor development policy to reflect this.
• That the Plan is amended to show how it will co-ordinate with the emerging planning strategies for the South East and East of England regions.

Bob Neill said: ‘There were a number of serious flaws in the Mayor’s draft London Plan and the London Assembly put forward carefully reasoned arguments intended to make it better. I am pleased that the panel of planning inspectors has accepted so many of our points.’