Does London really need to protect industrial land?

Let's build homes near Europe's largest and best-connected rail hub

In the run up to London’s Mayoral Election on May 2nd, we’re sharing sections from Get London Building, Britain Remade’s plan to tackle London’s housing shortage. In the first post in this series, we tackled the issue of density, calling for a New Zealand style upzoning of London’s brownfield land near train stations to cut emissions and rents. In the second, we made the case for building on some of London’s 95 (!) golf courses. In this post, we’re looking at London’s Stragetic Industrial Location restrictions and arguing they’re stopping homes being built in ideal locations.

London needs more homes, yet in some parts of the capital all new development is effectively banned. This land is not protected because it is environmentally valuable. In fact, it is some of the least biodiverse land in London. Nor is it protected because it hosts anything of particular heritage value. Rather, it is protected because it is explicitly reserved for industrial use. Land within short walking distance of multiple tube stations is reserved for Amazon warehouses, car rental drop-offs, and self-storage facilities.

Around two-thirds of London’s industrial land is protected by Strategic Industrial Location and Locally Significant Industrial Site status. The London Plan effectively bans all housing development on such sites and restricts the ability of councils to release land adjacent to industrial sites. The policy is designed to meet London’s “Industrial Need”, which is another way of saying it is there to provide valuable real estate to businesses at below-market rates. Across London, residential land values at existing densities are typically three times higher on a per sm basis than industrial land.

Park Royal Industrial Area, 12 minutes walk from a tube station.

Take the Park Royal Industrial Area, which is a vast collection of warehouses surrounded by 11 underground stations and the Acton Mainline Station on the Elizabeth line. It contains more than 338 hectares of land within walking distance of a tube station and soon the UK’s largest and best-connected rail hub Old Oak Common (10 minutes to central London on the Elizabeth Line). If just the part of this site that was within 10 minutes walk of a tube or train station was developed to Parisian densities (400 dwellings per hectare), it could deliver 135,000 new homes.

To grasp the one-off opportunity presented by Old Oak Common, the Mayor should de-designate all parts of the Park Royal Industrial Area within walking distance of tube or rail stations and use a Mayoral Development Order to permit car-independent development at Parisian densities on the site.

In addition to Park Royal, if we released all the remaining Strategic Industrial Location land within 10 minutes walking distance of a station for development at terraced house density, we could build 157,000 new homes for Londoners.

The arguments for banning development in Strategic Industrial Locations do not add up.

It is true that Strategic Industrial Locations are the workplace for tens of thousands of Londoners, but it does not follow that their jobs would disappear if the site was redeveloped. Some industrial users would move out of London to cheaper parts of the UK, while others would find ways of co-locating with housing as happens already.

Likewise, it is true that having an Amazon warehouse nearer to a population centre will, all things being equal, lead to fewer miles travelled by delivery drivers. Yet this must be balanced against the much larger reductions in household emissions that can be achieved by building dense green housing within walking distance of numerous tube stations.

Industrial land swaps can allow for re-development of industrial sites without reducing the amount of space available for businesses. For example, Enfield council’s Meridian Water development aims to deliver 10,000 homes near a newly-built rail station. Half of those homes would be delivered on Strategic Industrial Land. Enfield proposed de-designating that Strategic Industrial Land and compensating for the loss by providing new industrial land nearby with better road access. However, the de-designation was refused and 5,000 homes cannot be built as a result. There is significant potential for allowing riverfront developments on previously industrial land and replacing it with land better connected to the strategic road network.

To boost homebuilding, the Mayor should explicitly support councils swapping Strategic Industrial Land to sites with better access to the road network. The Mayor should also actively identify sites unsuitable for brownfield development with good access to the strategic road network to facilitate SIL swaps.

Co-location helps preserve industrial workspace while unlocking new land for housing. However, co-location can be expensive and can threaten the viability of a scheme when combined with the London Plan’s 50% affordability requirement for industrial land. The Mayor should modify the London Plan to permit higher densities on industrial sites when it makes co-location viable.

This is an edited section from Get London Building, Britain Remade’s plan to boost housebuilding in London and end the capital’s housing shortage. Read the full plan here.