When the Planning Inquiry starts again on 3^rd December it will be considering two of the most important issues to be decided. They are affordable housing and viability. It may be where the planning applications are most vulnerable.

Councillor Niki Crookdake has already given some evidence on this. This post relies to a degree on her factual evidence. She has been the only elected member to stand up to the pressures exerted by the Richmond Council leaders to achieve their objectives.

To keep our communities diverse and provide adequate services we need more decent, affordable, social rent homes in Mortlake, not a further 1,000 unaffordable flats. The need for affordable housing and the lack of it in Richmond and in this development is obvious. Given the extremely low level of affordable housing on the biggest site in the borough by some margin, you would have thought it would be a priority to maximise the affordable housing contribution, by all means possible.

From 2021 to 2024 housing completions fell substantially short of the targets. An action plan was approved in June 2024 to increase delivery. The recommended actions to improve delivery included investing additional funds from the Housing Capital Grant, applying for more GLA grants directly and reviewing sites to address specific challenges to increase not just housing, but particularly social rent home delivery.

If the council had followed its own recommended actions and the London Plan, it could have increased affordable housing on the Stag site. It could have invested some of the Community Infrastructure Levy receipts, used some of the £44m unallocated capital Richmond has available, or applied directly for GLA grants. None of these were considered, despite being used in other borough sites, such as in Cllr Frost’s ward in Ham.

The money generated from the Stag Brewery site will fund community projects elsewhere in the borough – £7m for a new community and youth centre in Ham and £4.5m for a new community centre in Teddington. But there are inadequate community benefits for Mortlake. Local priorities are ignored whilst the rest of the borough benefits from eight years of construction in Mortlake.

Viability is a complicated area. In order for non-expert planning committee members to challenge complex developer reports there is a need for independent guidance, particularly when considering a £1bn project over 10 years. Was this lacking? In the planning committee meeting in January 2024 members placed trust in the Review Mechanism to deliver more affordable homes if market conditions improved. One has to ask whether this was misplaced.

The price of the land is not a relevant justification for failing to comply with policy. It is worth noting that the site was purchased for £158m in 2015. In this case the level of affordable housing has been based on a profit margin for the developer. But what you can afford to pay for a site in the first place, especially depends on what you are allowed to build, i.e. the detailed planning consent and taking into account revenue from sales and leases, which are then set against costs and profit margin. No-one can be certain about any of that at an early stage. Regrettably the developer’s assumptions were not properly challenged in the Planning Committee meetings in July 2023 or January 2024.

There are other scenarios under which the project could generate a substantial monetary return for the developer. These could be different types of housing, including later living or build to rent; incorporating a neighbouring social housing estate; replacing the secondary school with a primary school and an additional 57 affordable homes.

At its simplest viability is when a project’s revenue exceeds costs but it is notoriously subjective. Development schemes can be profitable or unprofitable. Reselton was perhaps overly optimistic at an early stage about what it would actually be permitted to build. If so it could have overpaid significantly for the site, resulting in viability being unsurprisingly weak or even negative.

The planning inspector should rule on what can be built to meet the needs of the environment and community. That should determine actual viability, not the project as currently proposed.