In this episode of the Kanda podcast, Simon Gartshore, Deputy Managing Director at Kanda Consulting, is once again joined by Tom Sleigh, Chairman of the City of London Corporation’s Planning & Transportation Committee, for his first in-depth interview on what may be the City Plan’s most critical juncture yet.
Just as confidence was high that the Plan would clear Planning & Transportation Committee and the Court of Common Council before summer, Matthew Pennycook, Minister of State at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, intervened. Despite years of planning and consultation, Pennycook requested the hearing be reopened to reconsider the balance between heritage and growth, and specifically the impact of the Eastern part of the proposed cluster on the World Heritage Site.”
Topics covered in this episode:
- The intervention: when Tom first learned the Minister was reconsidering, and what’s understood to have prompted it at such a late stage
- The relationship with Heritage Bodies: where months of relationship-building with Heritage Bodies leaves this important relationship
- The City’s position: its view on the jelly mould design itself, and what adopting it would actually mean in practice
- Investor confidence: the risk to developers already progressing schemes designed around the jelly mould, and what the intervention signals more broadly for investment in the Square Mile
- What this means for emerging schemes: how developers can proceed with confidence if the Plan is delayed further, and what the current provisions say on height and where growth should be accommodated
- Timing: when the hearing is expected to reopen, how long it will run, and the revised timescale for adoption
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