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Khan rejects plans for New Scotland Yard development
London mayor Sadiq Khan has rejected amended plans for the redevelopment of the former New Scotland Yard building over a lack of affordable housing provision.
BL Developments was originally granted permission to build 268 units at the Westminster site with 10 affordable homes and a contribution payment of £10m by previous mayor Boris Johnson in April 2016.
But the developer later requested updates to the plans which increased the number of new homes by 27, all at market rate and with no further payments. This reduced the proportion of affordable housing at the former police headquarters from 4% to 3%.
Mr Khan has set a target of 50% affordable housing for developments on land sold by public bodies, including the Metropolitan Police and Transport for London.
Inside Housing revealed in March that the Met’s land sales had stalled since Mr Khan’s victory at the London mayoral election in May 2016 while the Met drew up a new strategy to account for the threshold.
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“The scheme put forward for this site is simply unacceptable: it fails to provide the maximum amount of affordable housing that could be delivered on this landmark site, and follows a previous application in which the affordable housing provision agreed by the previous mayor was already appallingly low,” said Mr Khan.
“This is a site which has only recently been transferred from public ownership and sits within one of the most expensive areas of the country. Having carefully considered the evidence available to me, I have decided to refuse permission for this amended application.”
City Hall planners examining BL Developments’ application to increase the number of homes at the scheme concluded it did not deliver the maximum viable amount of affordable housing.
In new supplementary planning guidance released this month, Mr Khan announced that plans for developments on public land with less than 50% affordable housing would be scrutinised by viability experts.
