What’s Halting New Development in Newham?

Since the 2012 Olympic Games, Stratford and the Olympic Park area in London has developed immensely. However, other Newham town centres now look neglected. These four town centres (Forest Gate, Upton Park, East Ham and Beckton) may have received some funding over the years but their overall look has remained unchanged. Tight policies on building heights may well be one key reason why these areas don’t see house prices becoming any more affordable.

The Newham Borough has created an ‘Arc of Opportunity’, which identifies key areas for regeneration. However, in turn, this has divided the borough into areas for development and areas which are unviable for development. The policy defines tall buildings as “6 storeys or more” which are not permitted outside the ‘Arc of Opportunity’. Since most buildings are typical 2 storeys with no free land, the result of this is that no development is viable outside of this opportunity area.

But how can we tell that there is a lack of building? For one, simply by walking and looking at high streets such as Green Street, it is clear that no decent developments have happened. Reviewing the past few years, we couldn’t find any significant planning applications for these high streets. The only exception is a redeveloped site on East Ham high street, which manages to evade the building heights policy due to the site being defined as a strategic site in the Local Plan.

Many in London would argue that a six storey building it’s not especially tall. It’s an odd cutoff point for a town centre. Based on our study, developing a five storey building is no longer financially viable.

In the 2018 GLA’s Consultation Response,  the GLA responded to this ‘tall’ building definition, arguing that:

“the policy effectively restricts most of the borough to 4 storeys and therefore the scope for optimising housing and employment potential is similarly restricted.”

“Suitable and robust evidence is required to justify the height limits set in the matrix. The Mayor is of the opinion that the Tall Buildings 2017 evidence base document does not fully justify the height limits set in the tall buildings matrix. The draft London Plan (para 3.8.1) states that high density does not need to imply high rise, but tall buildings can form part of a strategic approach to meeting regeneration and economic development goals, particularly in order to make optimal use of capacity of sites which are well-connected by public transport and have good access to services and amenity”

The Mayor “strongly suggests that the tall buildings policy and matrix be amended to be less restrictive, particularly in the Urban Newham and the Arc outside Strategic Sites, Stratford Metropolitan Centre and Canning Town Centre areas.”

The GLA report also suggests that using site allocations to identify “sites for tall buildings [...] is likely to restrain development.” Therefore the team recommends “a more flexible policy and matrix approach [that] would allow for the opportunity to develop taller buildings in appropriate places throughout the borough outside the main strategic areas, and enable further scope for housing delivery and employment opportunities.”

When considering documents such as the GLA’s evidence for compliance with needing to publish tall buildings policy or the policy itself, the most important aspect to attend to is the development viability in relation to what is said in the policy. In spite of the GLA’s negative response, Newham’s policy has remained and the Borough has been working towards developing their Arc of Opportunity.

We’ve spoken about the challenge of fragmented ownership on these high streets previously - adding building height challenges to the mix is likely to be enough to effectively prevent development. It begets the question: does Newham really understand the long-term consequences of their policy? Something that policy staff are perhaps not considering is the stagnation that will be felt by local communities. It mirrors the kind of stagnation that is felt when we talk about the economy in the UK.

If you’re interested in learning more about our journey with high street regeneration, please subscribe to our blog or feel free to get in touch. We'll be sharing our ideas on solutions to these problems.

We’re keen to hear from our readers, do you have your own experience with a place that is local to you? How do you feel policy should change?

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