Two years after its initial guidance, having taken quite a bit of flak for it, the Greater London Authority issued a revised London Plan guidance document for Co-living projects in February. I am not sure the description of “large-scale purpose-built shared living” schemes or the acronym LSPBSL will ever stick, but the revised guidance is very welcome. 

Flexibility is key for this sub-sector of the housing market, as living arrangements continue to evolve. The guidance acknowledges this by including a sliding scale of recommended benchmarks for internal amenity provisions, from 4 sq m per resident (for sub-100 people schemes) to an additional 2 sq m per resident (for 401+ people schemes). The guidance also states that as a minimum, communal facilities should enable all residents to cook/eat meals, relax/socialise, work from home, do laundry and enjoy external communal spaces. Benchmarks for such external amenity space provisions are also given (1sq m per resident up to 400 people, then an additional 0.5 sq m per extra resident). 

Co-living schemes have to provide affordable housing contributions in line with the viability-tested route. Where the scheme cannot deliver on-site affordable housing (because only co-living units are proposed), a cash contribution will be required - either as an up-front payment linked to market value, or as an annual payment (in perpetuity) linked to actual rental income. The expected contribution will be assessed in relation to either 35% of units provided, or 50% of the market value (or rental income) of the relevant proportion of units.

It's great to see that the Co-living sector is finally starting to be understood and embraced by the planners, which will hopefully continue to fuel the growth of this sub-sector into institutional grade operational real estate.

Click here to access the GLA guidance document.