Boris Johnson has announced a consultation on draft proposals to alter the London Plan in order to enable contributions to be made by developers through the planning system towards the costs of delivering the Crossrail project.
This came on the same day as the publication of the Crossrail core agreements, which underpin the funding, governance and delivery of the project.
When the funding arrangements for Crossrail were announced in October 2007 it was agreed that the Government, the former Mayor and "London businesses" would each contribute approximately one third of the expected cost.
The Mayor has indicated he would secure contributions from developers, both through use of Section 106 agreements and the proposed Community Infrastructure Levy. Today's initial consultation with the London Assembly and the GLA Group Functional bodies includes proposed alterations to the London Plan to bring in new policies to use planning obligations, which would seek a financial contribution from office developments in the Central Activities Zone (CAZ) and northern Isle of Dogs – but no mention is made of developments elsewhere along the Crossrail route, such as Ealing.
The Section 106 agreements will only be applied on new applications for additional office space above a 5,000 square foot threshold. The Mayor says that these large-scale office developments will directly benefit from new high-frequency and high capacity Crossrail services.
