City planning

In my opionion London needs to focus on the rural areas more. Especially on the far east such as Redbridge, Barking and Dagenham, and Edmonton. There is a clear correlation where spending is less there is higher crime rate. The developements and facilities in the far areas are absolutely disgraceful, for instance in barking and dagenham where there is an expected population boom, there is not one A&E, there is major shooping centres, the state of roads and facilities for cyclist are next to nothing. In edmonton we have gangs and illegal business that are running. It kinda ironic that  when you go central london, you will not find one litter on the floor but as soon as you go away 8 miles you have a diffferent world. Its time for london to be real, and care abouts is population. Its time that london invest heavier into rural areas, where there will be a next population boom.

In Camden there are places where there is quite a bit of newbuild but it is not clear that sufficient provision is being made for GP surgeries, schools etc to match the increasing population.   Also, need to ensure that there are sufficiently local fire services that can get to fires in time. One hears that developers manage to avoid making as many of the dwellings affordable as they should.. and as others have said, the 'affordable' are not affordable to many of our most valuable workers.

I am do not understand the link between the stated priorities "..ensuring new homes are affordable..." and "..ensuring new developments have provision for vital services." and the green growth and legacy development initiatives. I am very happy to be corrected but I think that most residential development is under the remit of borough councils and not the GLA and Mayor.  Boroughs, particularly Wandsworth where I live, claim to be fostering "affordable" development using a definition of "affordable" that is 80% or so of full market cost. These properties are not affordable to teachers, police constables, fire fighters in the first 10 to 15 years of their working lives never mind anyone working in retail or social care. What London needs is a massive reversal of the cut in council homes to rent that started in 1980's.

So many dirty and derelict sites in Woolwich.  It is OK to build so many tower blocks but how about using some to build little houses with gardens for families ?

Woolwich needs "greening" big time.

The mayor should get on with building the houses for which he has received money from the Government. He talks too much and does not deliver. Why also have so many empty, vacant, or derelict houses in various parts of London not been renovated and improved to provide homes for the people who say they cannot find anywhere to live?

In the world's first National Park City, things are very far from green:

Planning applications for 10 storey buildings along the southern boundary of Burgess Park will result in a Site of Importance for Nature Conservation (SINC) being severely overshadowed. 10 storey buildings in these locations - along Parkhouse Street - will result in a Minimum overshadowing of 36 metres each and every day for 6 months, and an Average of 100 metres for all of 4 months (figures can be independently verified). This is seriously harmful for what is called a "Nature area" in Burgess Park, created by London Wildlife Trust and opened to the public a few days ago.

The first of 3 planning applications - a 10 storey building at 21-23 Parkhouse Street - has been made by Southwark Council itself. So the Council is directly harming what it is supposed to be protecting - according to its own Core Strategy, and according to The London Plan which says that "the strongest protection should be given to Metropolitan Open Land" in planning (Policy 7.17). In Southwark Metropolitan Open Land does not get "the strongest protection". In Southwark not only does Metropolitan Open Land not get any protection - it is being directly harmed by Southwatk Council itself. It is a disgrace.

Burgess Park is in crisis. A crisis being created by Southwark Council itself. The planning applications for 10 storey buildings along the southern boundary of Burgess Park need to be called in by City Hall, please, and they need to be stopped. Planning in Southwark is seriously destructive. Stepped buildings with large terraces - such as nearby Galleria Court on Sumner Road at one end of Burgess Park, or those alongside Barrier Park beside Thames Barrier - would be acceptable as they would not heavily overshadow Burgess Park.

City planning needs to start acknowledging that when new developments are proposed it is not acceptable to replace old trees with new ones. Older trees can be ancient or veteran trees and 1 100year old tree does more for the environment and ecology than 100-1000 newly planted trees. So although planting new trees is a wondrous thing, they should never be considered acceptable as replacement planting.

With trees and with our current rivers and waterways, we need to look after what we already have rather than thinking introduction of something 'new' will be better.

Obviously making London greener and doing things to make it better is great but why don't we start with stop doing things to make it worse and let's tackle pollution in all it's guises??

While providing more affordable and social housing is the current key priority, actions to change planning and development towards th goal of net zero carbon by 2050 are increasingly important and the earlier they are made the more easily they can be adopted within the relevant industry sectors.

The current approach to redevelopment of existing sites and buildings (predominantly but not exclusively commercial) is usually one of complete redevelopment. This approach is mostly architect and client led and sometimes justified on the improved environmental performance once in use, but this is not an environmentally sustainable approach. Demolition involves dust, dirt and nuisance to neighbouring occupiers and possible loss of character and heritage but most importantly wastes the embodied energy and materials of the existing building and requires the use of new materials and energy to produce a new building. These costs can outweigh any gain in operational performance.

The foundations and structure such as steelwork can be the most resource intensive elements of a building but in the building's replacement will require new resource and energy intensive foundations and structure often not very dissimilar to what was there before. Improvements to environmental performance in use can often be achieved by upgrades to non structural elements fo proposals.

Retrofitting is not always the right solution but the Mayor should change planning procedure to require all major development to carry out a retrofitting and reuse assessment as part of the planning submission. Where one has not been carried out the application should not be validated. These assessments should look to save as much of existing buildings and structure as can be usefully incorporated into the new proposals. This will require sepnding on technical guidance and training to planners and all in the indusrty to refocus their approach. 

If the mayor is really serious about green spaces then he should prevent local councils haphazardly building on them which is increasingly happening just to build new flats and provide profit for the councils to the detriment of our environment!

And allowing unrestricted building including height in existing London properties and gardens by reducing the need for planning permission so that 'anything goes' is scarring our neighbourhoods and creating problems for adjacent neighbours! This need to be reversed.

Also, shopping centre parking charges made by local councils, again for their profit, are helping to kill off local shops and should be stopped as soon we will have no retail high streets in London!

Bank and post office closures are also causing misery. So what about doing something about that?!

A serious green strategy is needed for London. An overpopulated city, with crashing public transport and large pockets of poverty. Just planting trees is not enough. Educate people to leave their gardens green and not convert them into parking spaces. The Victorians built their hosues with plenty of green because they were aware of the bad air quality. 

The use of private cars is still being prioritised over the health and wellbeing of people.

We need to see a much stronger curtail of car access to central London (how insane is it that we still have cars in Regent Street and Piccadilly ? ) , reduce street parking for private cars, coupled with tax incentives for car sharing schemes and increase of pedestrian and cycle only streets.

We have pandered to the car lobby for far too long

I would like to see faster planning approvals which allow developers to get on with transforming land and providing new housing both for buy and rent.  When approval is given then there must be pressure on developers to ensure it is used swiftly and land not banked for profit.

London transport needs to be sorted. Too many buses during off peak times clog the streets of central London and run mostly empty, as opposed to further away boroughs that don't have enough. Trains are far too expensive and not reliable at all. I always find myself going to work and arriving 1 hour early just in case the train is late or canceled, and I have to wait an other 15 - 20 min for another train (which will be too crowded to broad). Boosting housing needs to go hand in hand to accessibility and connectivity with the city (were work is). People can't afford to live near work, so commuters suffer every day on their journey. 

There are far too many people in London.many UNDOCUMENTED.. these people should be rounded up and if necessary returned to their own country.situation as it is encourages illegal immigration.it must be brought under control

I think many of the mayor's spending plans should be put on hold until violent crime is under control

It is vital to control domestic traffic travel and growth.  Charges for street parking need to be properly assessed in financial, economic and environmental terms, and single person use car trips charged to reflect true road usage and environmental impact costs, allocating the derived revenues  revenue to public transport

The first two items are fine but London needs new renewable energy infrastructure. LLDC expenditure should be redirected towards this goal in view of the climate emergency. While accessibility is all well and good it is NOT an emergency.

investment in London transport would be good there always seems to be signal failures. Upgrade technologies and trains so we can have a better service inline with other countries.