Policy information sourced from the Islington Core Strategy

CS 12 Meeting the housing challenge

Islington will meet its housing challenge, to provide more high quality, inclusive and affordable homes by:

  • Ensuring residents have a good quality of life while living in the second most densely developed borough in the country. This requires careful management of the design, layout, materials and locations of residential developments. To help achieve a good quality of life the residential space and design standards will be significantly increased from their current levels. Islington’s Development Management Policies will set out these in detail. This will support the council’s aim of retaining and encouraging middle income families and older residents alongside meeting the pressing need for more social-rented housing.
  • Ensuring Islington has a continuous supply of land for housing by identifying sites in Islington’s five, ten and fifteen year housing supply. Proposed developments which result in the reduction of land supply for conventional housing will be refused.
  • Seeking to meet and exceed the borough housing target, which is set by the Mayor of London. The current annual target, which is in the process of being reviewed, requires Islington to build 992 conventional homes, 133 non-self contained units and to bring 33 vacant homes back into use during the period 2007/8 to 2016/7.
  • Residential developments following and not exceeding the densities level set in the London Plan (currently shown in the London Plan density matrix), and complying with housing quality standards set out in other parts of the Local Development Framework.
  • Requiring a range of unit sizes within each housing proposal to meet needs in the borough, including maximising the proportion of family accommodation in both affordable and market housing, and resisting the loss of existing units that are appropriate for the accommodation of families.
  • Identifying areas where high levels of external noise and vibration may make residential development unacceptable, unless appropriate mitigating measures can be provided to the required standard. The transmission of noise from neighbouring buildings and within dwellings will also be minimised. The issue of noise will be addressed in more detail in the Development Management Policies.
  • Provide affordable housing by:
    • requiring that 50% of additional housing to be built in the borough over the plan period should be affordable.
    • requiring all sites capable of delivering 10 or more units gross to provide affordable homes on-site. Schemes below this threshold will be required to provide financial contribution towards affordable housing provision elsewhere in the borough.
    • seeking the maximum reasonable amount of affordable housing, especially social rented housing, from private residential and mixed-use schemes over the threshold set above, taking account of the overall borough wide strategic target. It is expected that many sites will deliver at least 50% of units as affordable, subject to a financial viability assessment, the availability of public subsidy and individual circumstances on the site.
    • seeking to increase delivery of affordable housing, especially social rented housing, from other sources such as 100% affordable housing schemes by Registered Social Landlords, building affordable homes on council’s own land, and from a range of intermediate housing products available on the market.
    • delivering an affordable housing tenure split of 70% social housing and 30% intermediate housing.
    • ensuring affordable housing units are designed to a high quality and be fully integrated within the overall scheme.
  • Requiring all new housing to comply with ‘flexible homes’ standards, with at least 10% wheelchair housing provided as part of all new developments.
  • Consistent with Policies 4 and 7, the provision of additional student accommodation will be supported only within the identified London Metropolitan University campus area and specific City University London sites. These will be designated or allocated in the Site Specific Allocations and Bunhill & Clerkenwell Area Action Plan. Elsewhere, student accommodation will be restricted to reflect the priority need for conventional homes and employment uses. The impact student accommodation has on local infrastructure including open space and transport will be taken into account when assessing applications.
  • Student accommodation developments will help increase access to higher and further education and tackle worklessness by providing funding for bursaries for students leaving council care and other Islington students facing hardship who are attending a higher or further education establishment. The funding provided by the development will be an annual payment equivalent to the rent level charged for a percentage of the student bedrooms in a development. The payments will continue for as long as the site is used for student accommodation. The percentage of student bedrooms used for this payment will be set in a supplementary planning document.
  • Considering the allocation of sites for Gypsy and Traveller accommodation, based on the limited need identified in the borough. Any site will need to:
    • have suitable access for the type of vehicles that could reasonably be expected to use the site;
    • be able to provide basic amenities, water, sewerage etc.;
    • be suitable for housing (that it does not experience unacceptable levels of noise for example);
    • not have any relevant pre-existing policy designations that restrict the use of the site such as Metropolitan Open Land.

For more information please see the Core Strategy