The Two Cities Lowdown is Lowick Hedry’s weekly read on the City of Westminster and the City of London, written by the team that works both every day. A read for the commute or over a coffee, not a council report.
The City wins the week outright, with City Plan 2040 through after the sharpest ministerial row of the year. In Westminster, last week’s Growth Statement is still setting the pace: a new position statement on Policy 43, and New West End Company has launched its Open for Growth manifesto ahead of Labour Conference this weekend.
TOP OF THE INBOX: Housing Minister Matthew Pennycook has withdrawn his holding direction on City Plan 2040 after the Planning Inspectorate found decisively in the Corporation’s favour on tall buildings near the Tower of London. Members meet Wednesday to sign off the Corporation’s response to the Draft London Plan. Westminster has published a new position statement on Policy 43, restating retrofit first, not retrofit only, a smart piece of positioning from an administration keen to show it is open for business. New West End Company’s Open for Growth manifesto has launched ahead of Labour Conference. And a new Blue Note jazz club has opened in Covent Garden, licensed and ready, days after the council’s own Growth Statement promised exactly this kind of thing.
The City of London
City Plan 2040: the Corporation wins
This is the story of the year in City planning, and it broke this week. The Corporation’s own account is here.
Following June’s holding direction, which forced further examination of the Plan’s approach to tall buildings around the Tower of London World Heritage Site, the Planning Inspectorate has concluded decisively in the Corporation’s favour. Inspectors found that the Corporation’s evidence-based approach to managing tall buildings near the Tower strikes a better balance between heritage protection and economic growth than the alternative Historic England had proposed. Pennycook has accepted that finding and withdrawn his direction with immediate effect.
Policy Chairman Chris Hayward called it “an outstanding result for the City, for London and for the wider UK economy.” Planning and Transportation Committee Chairman Tom Sleigh went further: “the Tower is protected and the City has room to grow.”
Two things worth holding onto before taking that at full value. First, Pennycook’s own letter says the reassurance he needed came partly from “recent national policy changes,” specifically the additional special regard duties at section 102 of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023, not solely from the Corporation’s evidence being stronger than it was in June. The ground shifted under Historic England as much as the City won the argument outright. Second, this lifts the direction, it does not adopt the Plan. The inspectors’ final report, due in the coming weeks, is the thing that actually matters, and Pennycook’s letter is careful to say he is not predetermining it.
Practically, though, the City has what it needed: a green light to keep moving toward adoption by year end, and a genuine confidence boost heading into next week’s fight over office floorspace numbers in the London Plan response, where the Corporation is about to make an even more aggressive ask. Worth watching whether that confidence shows in how hard the Committee pushes on Wednesday.
Look ahead: Planning and Transportation Committee, Wednesday 30 September
Members meet at 9:30am to sign off the Corporation’s response to the Draft London Plan, ahead of the 15 October deadline. The headline dispute: the GLA’s forecast of 192,000 new City jobs by 2050 implies demand for 1.4 million sqm of office and R&D floorspace, while the Corporation puts the realistic figure at 2.2 to 3.0 million sqm, close to double.
That is a genuinely large gap to bridge in three weeks, and it is effectively the same argument as City Plan 2040 fought on different ground: who gets to set the ceiling on how much the City is allowed to grow. Having just had its own judgement vindicated by independent inspectors, the Corporation goes into this dispute with more institutional confidence than it had in June. Whether the GLA reads it the same way, or digs in precisely because the City just won one fight, is the thing to watch. We will cover the Committee’s actual deliberations next Friday.
Westminster
The Growth Statement, one week on
Last week’s Growth Statement promised a Retrofit First statement “within days.” What has landed is a new position statement on Policy 43.
Worth being precise about what this is and isn’t. Policy 43 itself came into force back in January, and the underlying mechanics are unchanged: a sequential test applicants must pass to justify substantial demolition, upfront embodied carbon targets for major developments, and significant weight given to retaining existing buildings. What has just been published is not new policy. It is a position statement restating the principle that has sat behind Policy 43 since it was first developed, retrofit first, not retrofit only, giving applicants clearer reassurance about how that balance actually gets applied in practice.
Technical as that sounds, it is a smart piece of positioning from an administration keen to be seen as clearly open for business: reassuring industry on a policy that predates it, at no cost to the policy itself.
Read it as a signal of intent rather than a one-off. The Westminster Property Association has been pushing for exactly this clarity for two years, most recently in its formal submission last October, and getting it now, unprompted, this early in the administration’s term, is a reasonable indicator of how this council wants to be seen operating: alive to where the previous approach created friction for applicants, and willing to move on it quickly. Worth watching whether the same instinct shows up on other longstanding industry asks over the coming months.
New West End Company launches Open for Growth
New West End Company has launched its Open for Growth manifesto, setting out its policy ambitions for the next decade of West End growth. The numbers it leads with: over 200 million visitors, 350,000 jobs supported, £17bn in tax generated a year, and 8% of all UK business rates from an area you can walk across in 20 minutes.
Three asks, in New West End Company’s own framing. Open and Safe: a long-term, coordinated approach to public safety, including sustained visible neighbourhood policing and a national multi-agency response to organised retail and acquisitive crime. Open for Business: reform of business rates to protect the anchor businesses that hold high streets together, in London and elsewhere. Open to the World: if tax-free shopping cannot be restored, a new visitor economy spending incentive rewarding international visitors for spending across the whole of the UK, and a clear position that any Overnight Visitor Levy must be proportionate, in line with global standards, and reinvested back into the areas where it is generated.
The launch reception is this Sunday 27 September, 19:15–20:30, Room 4A, ACC Liverpool, at Labour Party Conference, with Deputy Mayor Howard Dawber speaking. If anyone is attending conference in Liverpool, do come along to hear more. A parallel Conservative Conference reception is being finalised for Birmingham the following week.
We’ll be there too. The team heads to Liverpool this weekend for Labour Party Conference, so expect more on all of this, and what we hear on the ground, in special conference-season editions of the Lowdown over the coming weeks.
A new note in Soho
Good, simple proof the licensing system can move fast when it wants to. The London outpost of the world-famous Blue Note jazz club has opened its doors in Covent Garden this week, with Grammy winner Robert Jasper as opening act, after the council granted final licensing approval. Deputy Leader Tim Barnes toured the venue and pointed to Westminster’s UK-first scheme, which he led eight years ago, zero-rating grassroots venues like the 100 Club for business rates. The Blue Note now sits alongside Ronnie Scott’s in a West End jazz scene the council is visibly keen to be seen backing.
Also worth having on the record. Kemi Badenoch has pledged to restore tax-free shopping for tourists if elected, and West End business leaders have publicly backed the pledge, reinforcing the same ask already running through the Growth Statement and New West End Company’s own campaign.
On the funding fight, still waiting. Swaddle’s letter to the DWP on short-term let data-sharing, published Wednesday, has had no formal government response yet, and nor has the wider joint funding letter with Kensington & Chelsea, Wandsworth and Richmond from earlier in the month.
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