Councillor Diarmaid Ward

DEVELOPERS will not be allowed to turn high streets into luxury housing under new planning rules.

Islington Council says it will override central government’s new planning legislation to allow developers to turn commercial and service-use properties – which includes things like shops, museums, indoor sports centres, and restaurants – into housing without planning permission.

Now, developers will have to jump through all the usual planning hoops and commit to building 50 per cent of their development as “genuinely affordable” housing.

“This idea that you can just circumvent the planning system, it squeezes out local businesses because developers jump on a lucrative residential market, and it stops genuinely affordable homes, because developers don’t have to build them as part of their plans,” deputy council chief Councillor Diarmaid Ward told the Tribune.

“If the development is going to be residential, it would have to be 50 per cent genuinely affordable homes, and there’s a good reason for that because we’re in desperate need for housing in Islington.

“We don’t want a dormitory borough. We want a borough with good jobs and genuinely affordable homes.”

In a separate statement, Cllr Ward said he was “very disappointed by the government’s decision to change the planning regulations” that posed a “severe threat” to local businesses and allowed “property developers to buy up properties on our high streets and turn them into what would likely be poor quality and expensive homes.”

These restrictions, which will come into force on August 31, will apply to what the council call four “economically significant” areas: parts of King’s Cross and Angel that fall inside “London’s Central Activities Zone,” Vale Royal and Brewery Road, Camden Passage, and Fonthill Road.

The council said that without these restrictions, the local businesses were burdened with “uncertainty” about their future as they were already in need of extra support due to the Covid-19 crisis and changing shopping habits.