Several boroughs including Tower Hamlets, Haringey and Kensington and Chelsea have made changes to boost building that have not angered locals
City Hall must learn from the failures of Croydon’s small-site redevelopment experiment when looking to solve London’s housing crisis, a new report warns.
Between 2019 and 2021, the South London borough implemented a radical Suburban Design Guide which made it much easier to demolish two-storey detached or semi-detached homes and replace them with three-storey blocks of flats rising to four storeys on corner plots.
While this small site policy led to a significant increase in supply, creating a net additional 520 homes per year, it was politically disastrous, with voters furious over the erosion of local character and aesthetics, turfing out the Labour Mayor in 2022.
With the first draft of the new London Plan, which directs development regulations across the capital, due this summer, the Mayor of London is under pressure to come up with a strategy to built 88,000 homes per year.
However, to avoid his own political consequences in future, policymakers should heed Croydon’s drawbacks and instead look to Chelsea, Tower Hamlets and South Tottenham for inspiration around how to intensify housebuilding without enraging local residents, according to a new report from Create Streets seen by the LDRS.
In all three area, clear design rules have enabled additional homes to be created and for the underlying policy to endure politically, the author says.
Haringey Council’s decision to allow Victorian terraced houses to add up to 1.5 storeys, subject to a strict design code ensuring that the extensions harmonise with the design of the existing building, has had mass take up, with more than a fifth of 1,000 eligible properties undergoing such a change.
The change, implemented in 2010, was even praised by Sir Sadiq Khan, who told the London Assembly in 2022: “Haringey’s ‘Extensions in South Tottenham’ SPD shows that these codes can be used to effectively support and encourage new development that is predictable, replicable and of a high design quality.”
In Tower Hamlets, guidance introduced on building mansards – a four sided addition to a roof that maximises loft conversion space – last year saw applications rise nearly sevenfold, success rates increase from 27 per cent to 93 per cent, and 300 bedrooms being added overall.
The report added: “Again, a strict design code was used insisting that new mansards ‘fitted in’. There has been no notable political resistance and the policy remains in place.”
In Chelsea, a slightly different path was taken. In 2024, a Local Development Order (LDO) – which allows local authorities to grant planning permission for certain development forms across a defined area without the need for individual applications – was applied to 12 homes on Redcliffe Road, allowing them to build mansards within a certain framework. Half of the homes have already started construction.
In each of these cases, the crucial difference to Croydon was not simply that more development was allowed, but that it was allowed within a tight visual code that made the uplift legible, repeatable and locally acceptable,” the author said. “The backlash failed to follow and the policy has ‘stuck’ unlike in Croydon.”
The use of comparable Mayoral Development Orders (MDOs), like Sir Sadiq Khan has done in Oxford Street, could therefore “help London move from case-by-case discretion towards clearer, rules-based permission on strategically important sites.”
The recently passed English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill would also drop the requirement for local authorities to apply for and approve any MDO, “making them a more powerful planning tool for the GLA”.
However, to be effective, secondary legislation would need to be laid to ensure MDOs “would be a London-wide analogue to LDOs, led by the Mayor rather than by an individual borough”.
Nicholas Boys Smith, the founder of Create Streets and the author of the report, said: “The lesson from Croydon is not that people oppose housebuilding. They don’t. People oppose ugly developments which scar their sense of home.
“The public are perfectly willing to support gentle density and new homes when they are attractive, predictable, and fit into the street they already know and love. New development should make old places better, not worse.
“Britain already has the legal tools that can pre-approve well-designed homes, reduce planning risk and support local builders and homeowners. No legislation is required. This would allow us to create more homes without sacrificing local character. We must now use these existing legal tools to grow our streets in ways that people love and which respect their character.”
Maurice Lange, an analyst for Centre for Cities, told the LDRS that the GLA would do well to implement the more successful elements of the Croydon model in the next London Plan. “There is no way London will hit their 88,000 targets without building on both large and small sites,” he added.
A spokesperson for the Mayor of London told the LDRS: “The Mayor is determined to do everything possible to increase housing delivery across London, including making the most of brownfield land, small sites and regeneration opportunities in the right places.
“The draft London Plan is being published soon and will set out a long-term, evidence-based framework for how London can meet its housing need while supporting jobs, infrastructure and sustainable growth.”
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