On 28 October 2025, the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government (MHCLG) and the Greater London Authority (GLA) jointly announced new time limited planning and grant measures in an effort to stimulate housing delivery in London.
Both the GLA and MHCLG published their consultation documents in November – in the case of the GLA, that has taken the form of a draft London Plan Guidance (LPG) document. MHCLG’s consultation does not include the proposed forms of secondary legislation that will be necessary to effect the changes. The consultations on those measures concluded on 22 January 2026.
As noted in our previous update, it is possible that the measures may change through the consultation process and the details will likely be subject to further refinement, and the draft Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) Regulations will need to be published and laid before Parliament before coming into effect.
The changes to the Mayoral call-in process will largely be made through changes to the Mayor of London Order, but the revisions to introduce written representations to Mayoral call-ins will require the Devolution Bill to become an Act before it can come into force (and may require further commencing regulations to do so even once that happens). The possibility of challenge risk to the consultation draft LPG cannot be ruled out.
For existing schemes (permitted or commenced) the draft LPG proposes that there will be a focus on using CIL relief (albeit that would only help with chargeable developments which have not yet commenced) and increases in grant to make existing affordable housing obligations viable first, before allowing negotiations to reduce affordable housing provision in line with the new time limited route. The consultation documents do not properly address the fact that in many cases changes will be necessary to the underlying permission itself in order to revise a scheme to account for changes in affordable housing numbers and locations.
There had been suggestion of revisions to national viability guidance to limit the use of S73 applications to reduce affordable housing levels, however this will not come forward given its shortcomings (as highlighted in our previous note), and that has been borne out in the consultation document which accompanies the draft revised National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF). It is understood that more work will be done on how S106 obligations might be revised/discharged as part of bringing S73B into force. Further guidance on modifications to S106 obligations is therefore expected.
It appears that the intention is that the emergency measures will be in effect from the middle of 2026, along with the revised NPPF.