Greening Issues in Planning Policy

The Council is also embarking on a new Local Plan which will be looking forward to at the very least 20 years. A key thread running through the new Local Plan will be sustainability. Evidence will be sought to inform new policies, in particular to test if the targets or measures set out in existing Local Plan and the emerging new London Plan can be taken even further.

Additional information:

The Review we are considering covers the following

Baseline/context

Review existing policy context and evidence by other local authorities and the GLA.

Consider the context of the Council's Climate Emergency.

Energy and carbon footprint.

Review the effectiveness of the existing policy requiring zero carbon homes and understand what standards (including passive home) can be achieved on-site, considering:

design issues (including fabric, materials, glazing and optimal home size);

energy efficiency, insulation, how to reduce the demand for cooling (air conditioning)/heating, and different heating sources;

historic context (conservation areas and listed buildings);

different house typologies;

different type of development (domestic, commercial and mix-use);

different scales of development (major, minor), new development, conversions and refurbishments (retrofitting).

Provide a detailed list of what developers need to include in their assessments supporting the planning applications.

Identify how these standards could also influence other topics in the Greening SPD.

Provide a ballpark carbon savings figure if all conservation areas were to be retrofitted.

Living with extreme weather

Provide best practice and practical guidance on how buildings and spaces between them should be designed for thermal comfort (for residential and non-residential development).

Wellbeing

Provide guidance and best practice on how to achieve biodiversity net gain and implementation of the Urban Greening Factor considering different site typologies.

Smart city

Provide recommendations on how technology and innovation could help implementation of these measures.

Safety

Review safety issues of all recommended measures.

Implementation and recommendations

Consider different timescales to implement measures: short, medium and long-term.

Review the costs of these measures to understand if they are feasible.

Make recommendations, based on the findings about the preferred options to meet the existing policies.

Make recommendations on future policy development to go beyond existing policy requirements.

For additional infromation please contact Patricia