ADD281 London Development Capacity Model - Strategic Housing Land Availability Assessment system upgrade

Approval is sought from the Assistant Director to spend up to £50,000 on the upgrade and enhancement of the Strategic Housing Land Availability Assessment (SHLAA) database to produce a multi-functional London Development Capacity Model (LDCM), while retaining the core functionality to calculate the housing targets for future iterations of the London Plan. The key objectives will be:

• To open it up so it can do more than a one-off snapshot, allowing multiple “projects”. These could be either London-wide or within other user-defined geographic areas.

• Custom upload of GIS boundaries to allow new constraint layers to be used in future SHLAAs without the need for a software developer and for project-specific spatial layers to be uploaded

• Editable constraint levels on all spatial layers

• Allocation of sites to uses other than residential and complex evaluation of mixed use sites

• Addition of specific capacity for specialist housing.

The resulting system will be capable of conducting integrated land availability assessments that cover additional land uses required to support housing growth. It can also be made available to the London Planning Authority’s (LPAs) to allow the ongoing management of their brownfield sites databases and to promote a consistent methodology for land availability assessments across London.