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Insights on Housing Quality, Policy and Progress

Wednesday 09 July 2025

Jo McCafferty

Jo McCafferty

Director
Levitt Bernstein

Our second meeting of this fifth cycle for the NLA Expert Panel on Housing, again brought together our diverse industry leaders to discuss critical housing issues – in terms of policy, design and delivery across London. This session had a particular focus on the LLDC's post-occupancy evaluation work, the Architects’ Action for Affordable Housing (AA4AH) campaign and the newly launched London Plan consultation.

LLDC's Post-Occupancy Evaluation Work
Esther Everett, Head of Design at LLDC presented their large-scale programme of Post-Occupancy Evaluation (POE) of 1082 homes across all their public delivered legacy Housing concluding in summer 2025. She outlined their objectives, which have included evaluating design quality and sustainability standards, gathering resident feedback and looking to actively use lessons learnt to improve future developments. 

The programme’s methodology has combined surveys, focus groups, inspections, and utilities monitoring, and as a result, LLDC has formalized POE requirements in Developer and Joint Venture Agreements, mandating evaluations one year after 80% occupancy, recommending evaluation teams that including architects and MEP consultants.

The scale, depth and care of this evaluation process is extremely impressive, with a nuanced approach to balancing qualitative and quantitative appraisal methods. It has revealed a multitude of interesting insights about the POE process itself and resident feedback about their homes and the success of the newly created neighbourhoods themselves. This vital information is already being fed into LLDC design, delivery and management processes and influencing future POE and the design of new phases of housing moving forward.

The results of the study, due to be launched later this year, are captured in phase-specific reports, alongside a comprehensive summary for the entire process, which is being shared with the GLA and industry partners. It clearly sets the benchmark for POE processes of breadth and depth and should be used to encourage more large-scale housing commissioners and custodians to do the same. As a panel we discussed, how, with the lever of increased GLA grant funding, a commitment to this process could be incentivised in these challenging times, to ensure that before long, it becomes embedded in all design and delivery processes and is no longer seen as a ‘nice to have’ but an essential aspect of all housing development in London.

London Plan Update and Consultation
Our panel also discussed the Mayor's new London Plan consultation, which was formally launched as "Towards a New London Plan" just before our meeting, providing a crucial opportunity for us to shape London's development framework.

Housing and economic growth clearly emerge as priority areas, with the Plan emphasizing their interconnection. The Plan promotes densification on brownfield sites, maximizing infill and regeneration opportunities, and streamlining housing delivery approaches, with particular emphasis on accelerating social housing supply. It was encouraging to hear about the Mayor's collaborative work with local authorities to identify additional development opportunities across London and the NLA Planning Expert Panel have subsequently responded to this first round consultation. We look forward to the draft of the New London Plan next March.

AA4AH Good Homes for All campaign update
Simon Bayliss, Managing Partner of HTA Design, reported back on the recent progress of the AA4AH campaign and the launch of the Good Homes for All publication event at Portcullis House in May. 

With the campaign gathering real momentum and political traction, the next steps following further promotion, will be visits to the key projects illustrated in the publication, and increased broadening of the reach of the campaign, with the media partner, The Architects’ Journal.

Our Panel's Response and Next Steps
During our discussion on the London Plan consultation response, we explored other important considerations including the Plan's delivery mechanisms, policies regarding densification and tall residential buildings and alignment with the Building Safety Act. It is a relief, if nothing else, to see latest Government announcements regarding funding and support for the Building Safety Regulator to help ease and fast track the Gateway 1 and 2 processes, which we all hope will help accelerate housebuilding cross the UK and unlock high quality housing projects currently caught in the system.

Our next steps as a panel are focussed on supporting upcoming NLA initiatives, including the Public Housing Report (October 2025), Housing Summit (February 2026), and Tall Buildings Report (March 2026). As ever, I look forward to continuing our important work together and seeing how our collective insights can shape housing policy and practice across London.



Jo McCafferty

Jo McCafferty

Director
Levitt Bernstein


Housing

#NLAHousing