The long awaited update to the London Plan’s Air Quality Neutral London Plan Guidance (LPG) was published yesterday (8th February 2023). This will make it easier to demonstrate that your development is Air Quality Neutral. However, the penalties will now be higher if you are not. Nick Hawkins explains:
The long awaited update to the London Plan’s Air Quality Neutral London Plan Guidance has just been published. (The new guidance can be viewed here). Since the 2011 version of the London Plan, new major developments were required to be air quality neutral. This meant that they were required to ensure that the emissions associated with transport and the building (i.e. heating, hot water, etc) where below certain benchmarks (the Transport Emission Benchmark or TEB and the Building Emission Benchmark or BEB). The benchmarks themselves were calculated relating to the development location, land use and floor area. If the development adhered to the Benchmarks, the development will not worsen air pollution in the area.
Why did it need updating?
Updated to include both minor and major development, guidance relating to the implementation of the policy hasn’t always been clear. Historically there were a number of practical issues relating to the determination of whether a site is air quality neutral. Issues included:
- The necessity to determine how much traffic would be generated by the proposal, regardless of how small it . In many situations, for example for developments of less than 50 dwellings, it is not necessary to have any form of transport assessment; therefore, this data can be difficult to obtain;
- The necessity to know specifically what type of boiler/ other types of polluting plant will be required to calculate building emissions from a development. Whilst an energy strategy is normally known at the planning stage, it is unusual for the specific model of boilers to be known. Typically, this is something that is often decided much later, after planning consent is given;
- Transport benchmarks were only calculatable for a small number of land use classes, with very vague advice for other land use classes.
So what are main differences?
The new guidance makes it much easier for certain types of development to demonstrate compliance with policy SI1. For example:
- For minor developments (less than 10 dwellings) a development is now considered to meet the TEB, if the development meets the maximum parking standards in policy T6.1 to T6.5 of the London Plan;
- For major developments (10+ dwellings) a development is now considered to meet the TEB, if the development is “car free”. In theory, this means all development in the Central Activities Zone, Inner London Opportunity Areas, Metropolitan and Town Centres, plus all areas of PTAL 5 to 6 and Inner London PTAL 4, should be automatically be considered air quality neutral in relation to transport emissions, unless they deviate from Policy T6 of the London Plan;
- For minor developments, it is now assumed that any development that has a heating system with a gas boiler will meet the BEB, providing that the NOx emission rate is less than 40 mg/kWh. Given that all boilers meet this criteria, most minor development will not need assessment.
Other changes have been incorporated, including:
- only traffic generated by the development occupiers needs to be considered. Trips generated by deliveries, servicing, taxis and heavy good vehicles from non-occupiers can be ignored;
- the TEB is now defined as trips/m2/year (or trips/dwelling/year) rather than total NOx or PM10. This enables the TEB to be calculated for significantly more land use classes, as trip lengths are not required;
- The TEB now considers PM2.5 rather than PM10, thus reflecting the pollutants of greatest concern.
So what does this mean?
As a result of the changes, a significant number of developments will automatically be considered to be meet the TEB . Given that a huge proportion of new development in London now incorporate all-electric heating and hot water systems, most minor development and car free development will not require any further analysis and will automatically be considered air quality neutral.
For developers, this is good news. However, a word of caution – for developments that are not air quality neutral, the penalties are now more severe. The guidance now specifically states for the first time that the costs should be calculated over 30 years. Previously there was no consensus and the abatements costs were often calculated over a single year. This means that penalties for not meeting the air quality neutral benchmarks are 30+ times higher than they were previously. This is good news for air quality in London, as there will be a greater incentive for developers to incorporate zero emission heating and hot water systems, as well as minimising traffic, by either reducing car parking or designed car free developments.
If you would like any more information about the new Guidance, please get in touch.