The London Assembly Health Committee has urged the Mayor to strengthen the draft London Plan so high streets and town centres do more to support Londoners’ health. Its consultation response calls for stronger planning support for health-promoting uses, including health centres, GP surgeries, dentists, gyms and leisure facilities, while keeping tools that allow boroughs to manage concentrations of premises the committee says can harm health and wellbeing.
The intervention is a scrutiny recommendation, not an adopted change to the London Plan or a Mayoral decision. The committee response has been marked as adopted as an Assembly publication, but the Mayor had not publicly accepted or rejected the recommendations at the time of publication.
Call for more health-promoting uses
The committee’s position is that planning policy should give greater weight to everyday services that can help residents stay well and access care closer to home. It wants the draft London Plan to place more emphasis on uses such as GP surgeries, dental practices, health centres, gyms and leisure facilities as part of the mix of activities that support healthy, inclusive town centres.
Its response links the issue to the way London’s high streets are changing. The committee says health-related premises in the capital increased by 30% between 2017 and 2024. Over the same period, it says hot-food-takeaway floorspace grew by 38%, a faster rate of growth.
The figures are being used by the committee to argue that London’s planning framework should not only encourage healthier uses, but also help boroughs respond where clusters of certain premises may have negative effects on health and wellbeing. The recommendations would have implications across London, particularly for borough high streets and town centres where councils already make day-to-day planning decisions within the wider London planning framework.
Takeaway controls near schools
A key part of the committee’s response is its support for retaining existing restrictions on hot-food takeaways near schools. Krupesh Hirani AM, who chairs the committee, has said those controls should remain in place and that the committee believes such policies can make a positive difference to communities.
The committee is not saying that new restrictions have already been imposed. Its request is that the draft London Plan should continue to give boroughs effective planning tools to manage unhealthy concentrations of premises on local high streets. That distinction is important for businesses and councils: the committee’s response is part of the consultation and scrutiny process, while planning policy will depend on the Mayor’s final decisions and the formal progress of the London Plan.
The London Plan is intended to guide how the capital grows and develops over the next 25 years. Because it shapes borough planning policies and decisions, changes to its wording can influence how local authorities balance housing, transport, economic activity, town-centre vitality and public health.
Active travel evidence sought
The committee has also called for updated evidence on how active-travel policies affect high streets across the capital. Active travel measures can include changes intended to support walking and cycling, although the committee’s public request focuses on the need for evidence rather than a specific new scheme.
That request sits alongside the wider argument that healthier high streets should support both local economies and community life. The committee’s case is that access to care, exercise, leisure and everyday services should be treated as part of what makes town centres successful, not as separate from high-street recovery or growth.
For now, the recommendations remain part of the Assembly’s statutory scrutiny and consultation response to the Mayor’s draft London Plan. The next significant step will be whether the Mayor chooses to reflect any of the committee’s proposals in the development of the Plan. Until then, the existing position has not changed: the committee has adopted its response, but the draft London Plan has not been amended on this basis.
