Image courtesy (c) Kilian O’Sullivan

The future of the former Motspur Park Gasholders site has become an increasingly tangled planning story, with Kingston Council, the Mayor of London and now potentially the Secretary of State all becoming involved in deciding what should be built there.

Berkeley Homes is proposing 586 homes in five buildings ranging from eight to 16 storeys, together with new landscaping, public space and walking and cycling routes through the former gasworks site. Of the 586 homes, 175 would be affordable, comprising 72 Social Rent and 103 Shared Ownership homes. Most of the development lies in Kingston, although part of the northern access is in Merton.

The application has always been controversial. The site is previously developed land, but most of it remains designated Metropolitan Open Land, which receives protection broadly comparable with Green Belt. It is also surrounded largely by open land and low-rise suburban development, while public transport accessibility is unusually low for a development of this scale.

Kingston planning officers nevertheless recommended approval. The Council’s Planning Committee disagreed and, on 11 March 2026, resolved to refuse the application, citing harm to the openness of Metropolitan Open Land, the height and character of the proposed development and the absence at that stage of a completed legal agreement securing affordable housing and other mitigation. That might normally have been the end of the Council’s part in the decision. It wasn’t.

On 7 April, the Mayor of London took over determination of the Kingston and Merton applications. Following a public representation hearing on 21 July, Deputy Mayor Jules Pipe accepted the recommendation of GLA planning officers and resolved to grant permission, subject to conditions and completion of a Section 106 agreement.

The GLA did not dismiss many of the concerns raised locally. Its assessment accepted that the development would introduce a very different building form into a predominantly low-rise area and that there would be an adverse impact on the openness of Metropolitan Open Land.

Its conclusion was that the harm would be sufficiently limited to allow the national planning policy exception for redevelopment of previously developed land to apply. Considerable weight was placed on the delivery of 586 homes, including 175 affordable homes, and on opening up and landscaping a currently inaccessible industrial site.

There was, however, another significant difficulty. GLA officers acknowledged that the site is not identified in an adopted development plan as a location suitable for tall buildings, putting the proposal in conflict with part of London Plan Policy D9. They nevertheless concluded that the housing, regeneration and design benefits justified approval when the development plan was considered as a whole.

That decision has now prompted local residents, including representatives of SERAK, to ask the Secretary of State to call in the applications under Section 77 of the Town and Country Planning Act.

A Secretary of State call-in is not another ordinary appeal. If ministers decide to intervene, responsibility for determining the application passes to national government, normally following examination by a planning inspector.

The request argues that the case raises matters going beyond one development, particularly the treatment of previously developed land within Metropolitan Open Land, the acknowledged conflict with London Plan tall-building policy and the wider consequences of allowing buildings of this scale in a poorly connected suburban location.

Campaigners have also raised questions about ecology, Beverley Brook, transport, flooding and material contained in an addendum issued at the time of the GLA hearing. Many of those issues were considered by GLA officers and are covered by conditions and the proposed Section 106 agreement, so the case for government intervention does not depend simply upon proving that those matters were ignored.

Kingston’s own emerging Local Plan now proposes the Motspur Park Gasholders site for housing and explicitly proposes its release from Metropolitan Open Land. It also identifies the site as suitable for tall buildings. But the emerging allocation is for around 440 homes, rather than the 586-home scheme which the Deputy Mayor has resolved to approve, and the Local Plan is still only at Regulation 19 stage, ahead of examination and eventual adoption.

The result is an unusual sequence. Kingston’s Planning Committee refused the current scheme. The Mayor took the decision away from the borough and approved it. Residents have now asked national government to intervene in the Mayor’s decision, while Kingston is simultaneously consulting on a new Local Plan that may eventually change the planning status of the site itself.

At the time of writing, no decision by the Secretary of State on the call-in request has been announced.

For a planning system intended to be plan-led, Motspur Park is becoming a remarkably complicated way of deciding what the plan actually means.