FAQs

A Supplementary Planning Document (SPD) can provide additional information and guidance to explain how planning policies in OPDC’s Local Plan can be successfully implemented. SPDs cannot create new planning policies. 

OPDC is preparing a series of SPDs, including this Industrial SPD.

OPDC’s adopted Local Plan includes detailed development management policies that are used to assess different aspects of development, such as housing; transport; open space; employment; and environment and utilities, when planning applications are submitted. 

The OPDC area has London’s largest Strategic Industrial Location (SIL), with over 1,700 businesses, employing around 43,000 people. OPDC’s SIL plays a significant role in the local, London and national economy and this is recognised in OPDC’s Local Plan. There are a number of industrial related strategic and development management policies, with the fundamental priorities being the need to protect, strengthen and intensify the industrial area, and to support the delivery of high quality and a diverse range of industrial floorspace and jobs. 

The Local Plan also indicates the spatial locations where industrial uses would be acceptable across the OPDC area and opportunities to deliver a net uplift of over 250,000 sqm of industrial floorspace by 2038.Varying business needs and demand from a range of broad industrial type activities is anticipated and has already been planned for, including a range of industrial employment growth sectors and a mix of spaces. 

Regeneration, on the scale envisaged in the Local Plan will shape the local and subregional economy and strengthen London’s role as a global city. It will also provide new and existing communities with access to a range of different jobs and training as well as support local businesses to access new supply chain opportunities. 

Through the Industrial SPD, there is the opportunity to guide and inspire planning applicants towards exemplar forms of industrial development that can create the best environment in which to work and operate a business, and in doing so, create more opportunities for local people and communities. 

The Industrial SPD provides additional information and detail on how OPDC will implement policies in the industrial related policies in the Local Plan. The SPD will apply generally to the whole OPDC area, with a core focus on: 

• how industrial developments, within and outside of SIL, can be intensified and integrated within the urban fabric and demonstrate best practice from a design, placemaking and sustainability perspective; 
• how industrial developments can respond to local character, by setting out spatially specific design guidance where appropriate; 
• development that happens on/within sites. 

The Draft Industrial Supplementary Planning Document will provide supplementary planning guidance to OPDC’s Local Plan. The document is intended to provide clarity to local people, applicants, developers and wider stakeholders on how OPDC will implement the policies in the Local Plan and will be a material consideration for the determination of planning applications.

All responses will be considered by OPDC planning officers to help shape the final version of the Industrial SPD. 

We will publish each individual comment and provide a specific officer response to each comment setting out whether or not it has resulted in a change to the SPD and the reasoning for the officer response. These will be published in a table within a Statement of Consultation and presented to both OPDC’s Planning Committee and OPDC’s Board for consideration in adopting the SPD. 

If adopted, the Industrial SPD will be a material consideration when determining all planning applications in the OPDC area, including those delegated to the London Boroughs of Brent and Ealing to determine on behalf of OPDC. 

There will be opportunities during the consultation period to speak to OPDC officers and find out more about the Draft Industrial SPD. Please feel free to:

•  Drop by OPDC’s stall at Standard Road (Street Food Market) NW10 6HF on 1st July, 11am-4pm
• Join us for an online session on 6th July, 6-7pm – please register for the event using this link