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Date updated: 24/04/2024
Planning Policy Library

Development

The City of London's dynamic economy generates a high level of development activity. The City of London Corporation monitors this development and publishes its findings in regular reports.

  • Development Information provides an overview of development activity within the City. It contains key statistics for office, retail, residential and hotel schemes, illustrated with graphs, map and photographs. It is published annually.
  • Development Schedules provides detailed tables showing development sites and planning permissions, including site address, agent, floorspace, and a description of the scheme, in the City. It is published twice-yearly.

Spatial data layers for Development in the City of London are available to view on City of London Interactive Mapping.

Spatial data layers for Greater London are available from Greater London Authority’s London Development Database

Land use

The City of London is the heart of the world's leading financial, business and maritime centre with a range of business orientated land uses including offices, retail and hotels. To encourage healthy lifestyles for all the City's communities improved access to open space and facilities is encouraged. The land use is analysed in a series of reports focussing on the spatial distribution and quantification of the floorspace and number of units.

  • Principal Land Use setting out the spatial relationships between the principal land use classifications in the City. The map displays the dominant land uses on a site-by-site basis and is useful to highlight differences in size and spatial distribution of these land uses throughout the City.
  • Hotels land use is analysed in the Local Plans Monitoring Report.
  • Housing analysing the location and characteristics of housing.
  • Listed Buildings, and whether patterns of land use emerge for Listed Buildings.
  • Office Stock providing an analysis of the amount and distribution of Use Classes Order B1 Office floorspace.
  • Open Spaces Audit report which analyses the distribution and total area of open spaces, as a tool to assist in assessing existing and future need for open space.
  • Retail activity and development in the City, based on the City Corporation's retail survey and development monitoring. This includes reports relating to retail use in five Principal Shopping Centres.
  • Roof Terraces and Green Roofs Audit provides an analysis of the spatial distribution of roof terraces, green roofs and green walls set within the context of the Local Plan 2015 policies.

Select the relevant Land Use in the Planning Policy Library.

Brownfield land

The Town and Country Planning (Brownfield Land Register) Regulations 2017 requires local authorities to prepare and maintain registers of previously developed (brownfield) land that is suitable for residential development.

The register is in two parts:

Part 1 comprises all brownfield sites appropriate for residential development. The data for the City of London is available in the following ways:

City of London Interactive Mapping under the theme Planning – Development. Load the Operational Layer Brownfield Register.

Spatial data is available via the City of London pages on Government Data

Part 2 is those sites granted permission in principle. There are no sites in the City of London so no data file is available.

Data for the City of London Brownfield Register will be updated twice a year in sequence with the City of London Development Schedules (see above).

The City of London is a major centre of employment, providing jobs focused within the Financial, Professional and Estate, and the Administrative and Education industrial sectors. The City of London Corporation monitors employment changes, travel to work. Compared with other local authorities in England and Wales the resident population is small.

Employment trends

Employment Trends provides annual information on the characteristics of employment within the City. It uses information from various surveys conducted by the Office for National Statistics.

Whilst the data is a little out of date it still provides the best data source for an analysis of the:

  • Workforce which is characteristics of those working for businesses and those self-employed within the City of London
  • Spatial data analysis of patterns in the City of London,
  • Industrial sector,
  • Age, Occupation and Socio-economic Classification,
  • The Travel to Work profile including the location of residence and mode of transport.

Workday population

The workday population which is the redistribution of the usually resident population to their place of work, while residents who are not in work remain at their area of residence. The workday population of an area is defined as "all usual residents aged 16 and above who are in employment and whose workplace is in the area, and all other usual residents of any age who are not in employment but are resident in the area".

Resident estimates and projections

There are a range of data sources for estimating and projections the resident population, this includes:

The report City of London Resident Estimates and Projections evaluates the data sources in the context of the City of London.

Resident deprivation

The Index of Multiple Deprivation 2019, published by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government provides the base for analysing deprivation in the City of London and comparing with the greater London profile.

The report City of London Resident Population – Indices of Deprivation 2019 evaluates the data in the context of the City of London.

Resident population

A range of reports was produced from the 2011 Census analysing:

  • An overview of the resident population
  • Spatial analysis by residential zone
  • Ethnicity and nationality
  • Health
  • Households

These reports are available from the Monitoring and Information Team

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