The London Society was invited to attend the launch of the new Draft London Plan and its public consultation in July, where we heard directly from the Greater London Authority (GLA) about its ambitions for the capital, the challenges it is attempting to address and the choices London now faces.
The Draft Plan sets out how London could grow and change towards 2050 and is intended eventually to replace the current London Plan, adopted in 2021. It could influence decisions about where London builds new homes, how existing neighbourhoods grow and the future of the Green Belt, town centres, industrial land and London’s skyline. The current 2021 Plan remains London’s statutory planning framework while the new Plan goes through consultation and examination, with the public consultation open until 5pm on 15 October 2026.
Many of the choices contained in the Draft will already be familiar to London Society readers and members. Through our articles, podcasts, talks, debates and visits, we have been exploring where London should build new homes, what good housing and regeneration look like, how we balance retrofit with redevelopment, what happens when housing competes with industrial land, and how growth affects the infrastructure and everyday services on which London depends.
The publication of the Draft London Plan brings many of those conversations together. Between now and the end of the consultation, we will draw on what we have already learned, invite experts to examine particular areas of the Plan and ask our members, subscribers and readers for their views, helping to inform The London Society’s response to the consultation.
We begin with ten of the changes that we think could have the greatest impact on how London looks and feels.
The 2021 and 2026 Plans share many of the same ambitions, including more homes, affordable housing, sustainable transport, environmental improvement and better use of London’s land. The significant difference is how the new Draft proposes to accommodate the growth London needs.
The 2021 Plan relied heavily on brownfield development, Opportunity Areas, town centres, transport-accessible locations and smaller-scale intensification, while maintaining strong Green Belt protection. The 2026 Draft retains a brownfield-first approach but concludes that this alone will not be enough.
It plans for 558,000 homes between 2027 and 2036, against a government-assessed need figure of 850,000, and proposes to maximise brownfield development while opening up new sources of capacity, including some Green Belt and accessible industrial land.
At the launch, the GLA said it still expects around 90% of housing delivery to come from brownfield land. It also presented the 558,000 figure not as the full extent of London’s housing need, but as a target it considers more realistically deliverable given current constraints including viability, infrastructure and public investment.
The most important change may therefore be less about any individual policy and more about the spatial bargain London is being asked to make. The Draft proposes intensifying the existing city as far as realistically possible, while no longer assuming that London’s existing urban footprint can accommodate all of its future needs.
Here are ten of the changes that could have the greatest impact on everyday London.
The Draft introduces a framework for plan-led development on Green Belt land where London’s needs cannot be accommodated within the existing urban area, representing a significant change from the strong Green Belt protection underpinning the 2021 Plan.
The debate is more complicated than simply whether London should build on or protect the Green Belt. If new neighbourhoods are created, their success will depend on where they are located and how questions including transport, density, biodiversity, public access, schools and other infrastructure are addressed.
The London Society has already been exploring these issues through our housing programme, including our discussion in Enfield about housing growth and the future of the Green Belt. The Draft Plan gives us an opportunity to develop that conversation further by considering what good new London neighbourhoods should look like and what Londoners should expect from them.
Green Belt development may attract more attention, but changes within London’s existing neighbourhoods could ultimately affect more people’s immediate surroundings.
The Draft proposes stronger mechanisms for developing smaller sites, including a London-wide small-sites design code. This could mean more homes around stations and town centres, infill development and redevelopment of underused plots. Individually, these changes may be relatively modest, but collectively they could gradually transform parts of suburban London.
This brings questions of housing numbers together with neighbourhood identity and quality. As London grows through thousands of smaller interventions, the design of new homes, public realm, local services and infrastructure will help determine whether that growth strengthens or diminishes the qualities people value about where they live.
The Draft plans for 558,000 homes between 2027 and 2036 while acknowledging a government-assessed need figure of 850,000. Understanding the difference between housing need, theoretical capacity and actual delivery will be an important part of understanding the Plan.
Identifying land for housing does not mean those homes will necessarily be built. Viability, infrastructure, affordable housing funding, construction capacity and wider economic conditions all affect delivery.
Our housing events and articles have already been exploring the gap between housing ambition and reality, from Enfield to the City of London and through our wider What Good Looks Like programme. We will return to the housing numbers in more detail during this series, including the wider question of what is actually preventing London from building the homes it needs.
The Draft retains a strategic ambition for 50% affordable housing but proposes changes to the threshold approach, including geographically differentiated Fast Track thresholds for private land.
The change reflects one of the central tensions in London’s housing debate. Lower thresholds could potentially help stalled developments move forward and ultimately produce more affordable homes in absolute terms, while there is also a legitimate concern that they could reduce affordable housing contributions from developments that might have supported more.
The impact will therefore need to be judged not simply by the overall number of homes delivered, but by how many are genuinely affordable and who is ultimately able to live in them.
The Draft identifies some accessible industrial land as having potential for housing, while recognising that London must still find space for industrial growth elsewhere.
Industrial land accommodates much of the less visible activity that keeps London functioning, including deliveries, repairs, manufacturing, construction, food distribution, storage and waste services, alongside a growing range of advanced industries.
The London Society has recently been exploring this through our work on London’s industrial economy and places such as Park Royal. The Draft gives that conversation new significance because releasing accessible industrial land for housing could change where these businesses operate, how far they travel and the relationship between the homes London needs and the services required to support them.
The Draft gives London’s town centres and high streets a stronger role in accommodating housing growth and adapting to economic change. It also revises the strategic approach to different parts of central London.
This could mean significantly more people living in places traditionally dominated by shops, offices or other commercial activity, bringing the housing debate together with wider questions about the changing role of London’s centres.
The balance between homes, work, retail, culture, tourism and nightlife will influence whether these places remain lively and useful throughout the day and week. This is particularly relevant as London continues to adapt to post-pandemic changes in working patterns, shopping and the use of central London.
The Draft proposes a London-wide definition of tall buildings at 30 metres and above, with buildings of 100 metres or more treated as “metropolitan scale” and directed towards identified clusters.
This could create greater strategic consistency in how London manages its skyline, while boroughs would continue to identify appropriate locations for tall buildings.
The consequences extend beyond the distant view of London’s skyline. Taller and denser development can affect heritage, infrastructure, public space and the experience of the city at street level, making the quality of what happens around and between buildings as important as their height.
The Draft strengthens London’s approach to whole-life carbon and requires greater consideration of whether existing structures can be retained. However, it does not introduce a blanket “retrofit first” rule and recognises that retaining a building should not necessarily prevent a site from being used more intensively where that is appropriate.
The London Society has been exploring this tension through recent articles, podcasts and visits to retrofit and reuse projects across London. The Draft brings it more explicitly into the strategic planning debate by requiring decisions to balance the carbon benefits of retaining existing structures with the pressure to provide more homes and economic activity.
This is an area where simple answers are unlikely to work for every building or site, and one we will explore further during the consultation.
The Draft introduces a stronger policy focus on accessible green space and areas where provision is currently lacking, linking questions about development more directly with the quality of the places in which people live.
As London becomes denser, access to good green space is likely to become increasingly important. The issue is not simply the amount of green shown on a planning map, but whether people can easily reach and use good-quality parks and natural spaces as part of everyday life.
The success of intensification will therefore depend partly on what happens between the buildings, including the quality and accessibility of the public and green spaces that support daily life.
For the first time, the Draft includes a dedicated strategic policy for data centres, reflecting the growing physical demands of AI, cloud computing and the digital economy.
Although these technologies can feel intangible, they require buildings, land, electricity and supporting infrastructure. Their growth therefore creates another demand on the finite resources and space available within London.
We have already begun exploring this through our work on data centres and London’s less visible infrastructure. The Draft Plan brings these issues into a wider conversation about how London accommodates the systems needed to support a changing economy alongside homes, businesses and other essential infrastructure.
Taken together, these changes point towards a London that could become denser within its existing neighbourhoods, more willing to consider growth at its edges, more flexible about where homes and industry go, and more deliberate about questions ranging from tall buildings to embodied carbon and digital infrastructure.
These choices are closely connected. Building more homes has implications for transport and public services, while releasing industrial land affects logistics and employment. Greater density increases the importance of parks and public space, affordable housing policy influences who benefits from growth, and decisions about demolition and reuse affect both carbon emissions and development capacity.
The significance of the new London Plan therefore extends well beyond the planning profession. Its policies could influence what is built, what is retained and how Londoners experience their neighbourhoods for decades to come.
If you would like to explore the new London Plan in more detail, you can read the full Draft London Plan, find out more about the consultation or submit your own response. The consultation closes at 5pm on 15 October 2026.
The GLA is also running consultation events and online sessions to help Londoners understand the proposals and take part.
This is the first in a series of London Society articles exploring the Draft London Plan before the consultation closes on 15 October 2026.
Over the coming months, we will revisit many of the issues we have already been examining across our wider programme, invite experts and practitioners to contribute different perspectives, and connect the policies in the Draft Plan with real places and projects across London.
We also want to hear from you. Throughout the series, we will invite our members, subscribers and readers to share their views on some of the choices facing London, helping us understand what matters to Londoners and informing The London Society’s response to the consultation.
You do not need to be a planner or planning expert to contribute. If these proposals could affect your neighbourhood, your housing, your local high street, the green spaces you use or the way you experience London, your perspective has a place in this debate.
Follow the series, join the conversation and tell us what you think. Together, we can make sure that Londoners’ experiences of their city are part of the discussion about what it becomes next.
