One senior architect working on a site in Camden, who wished to remain anonymous, said they had experienced planning permission strategies where developers had secured a site and later reduced the affordable housing quota.
“Every architect gets dragged through this,” they said.
“Developers and planning consultants develop planning approval strategies where they apply for a use change to a more lucrative rent like a commercial office, or a reduction in affordable housing.
“It happened to us recently. We didn’t know this was the developer’s plan until they told us after we got the original planning permission,” they added.
Monk said: “There’s a clear pattern to how Camden’s housing crisis is being managed: developers promise affordable homes to win planning permission, then come back years later saying the numbers no longer work, while those same developers keep posting hundreds of millions in profit.”
Monk called Landsec’s revised affordable housing plan for the O2 development “a stitch-up”, adding: “Camden needs new homes, but outsourcing that need to volume housebuilders isn’t working. Camden Council needs to get tougher with developers.”
James Slater, Camden’s cabinet member for planning, said the council had a “robust planning system”.
He said it was “deeply disappointing” when a planning inspector overturned the council’s refusal to reduce the number of affordable homes at Camden Goods Yard.
He added: “At the O2 Centre, we have carefully scrutinised the developer’s proposals and sought to secure the maximum possible number of genuinely affordable homes.”
Ballymore, the developer behind the Camley Street project, was asked if it planned to decrease the number of homes at the site. It declined to comment.
