The housing numbers in the Local Plan are specific. By contrast, important parts of the infrastructure needed to support them appear less certain. Some improvements depend on future decisions by TfL, the NHS, utility companies and other organisations whose funding and priorities are not controlled by Kingston Council.

Kingston is not cut off from the rest of London. It has National Rail services and an extensive bus network, and some parts of the borough are well connected. But accessibility varies considerably. Some areas depend on less frequent rail services, indirect bus journeys or travel through already busy centres and junctions.

Kingston was identified as an Opportunity Area partly in the context of the proposed Crossrail 2 South Growth Corridor. Crossrail 2 is not expected to provide additional capacity during the Local Plan period. The plan must therefore work without it.

Walking, cycling, parking controls and better buses can all make a meaningful contribution. More people should be able to make shorter journeys without using a car.

But these measures do different jobs. A new bus stop may improve access, but it does not itself add buses. More frequent services require funding, vehicles, drivers, reliable journey times and enough space at stops and interchanges. Walking and cycling are important, but they cannot serve every journey or every resident.

The council should therefore show how many additional journeys the housing programme is expected to generate, how people are expected to travel and what happens if the planned reduction in car use does not occur as quickly as assumed.

More residents could benefit Kingston’s centres. They could support shops, cafés, pubs, restaurants, cinemas, gyms, cultural venues and public transport. But proximity to a town centre does not prove that the centre has unlimited capacity. The plan should explain how Kingston, New Malden, Surbiton, Tolworth and the borough’s local centres will accommodate additional demand. This includes transport, public spaces, healthcare, shops, leisure, culture and community facilities.

This matters particularly if much of the new housing consists of smaller flats. Where people have limited internal space, no private garden and modest communal facilities, they may depend more heavily on the surrounding town for everyday life. They need places to exercise, meet friends, eat, drink, study, attend events, spend an evening and participate in a community. That demand does not fall only on parks and green spaces. People do not simply sleep, work and take occasional walks through protected land. A functioning town needs an accessible and varied social and cultural life. Minimum internal-space standards alone do not demonstrate that a home, neighbourhood or town will be liveable.

High-density development is not automatically bad. Flats and tall buildings can provide good homes when they are well designed, appropriately located and supported by transport, services and public space. But density should result from a careful assessment of each location. It should not become simply a way of extracting the largest possible number of units from every available site.

The council should look beyond the number of homes approved or completed. It should also consider the mix of home sizes, internal and storage space, daylight and ventilation, accessible housing, family-sized homes, private and communal amenity space, and the capacity of the neighbourhood surrounding them. A technically compliant flat is not necessarily a good long-term home. Nor does a high number of completed units necessarily create a balanced and liveable community.

The emerging proposal for Guildhall 1 illustrates the wider concern. Current consultation material suggests that the existing four-storey office building could be replaced by approximately 100 homes in a development rising to 16 storeys.The site is beside Kingston’s historic Guildhall complex and close to the Coronation Stone, Clattern Bridge, the Old Town Conservation Area, the Market Place and the Hogsmill. The question is not simply whether 100 homes can be fitted onto the site. It is whether a building of that height and mass is appropriate in one of the borough’s most sensitive locations, and how it would relate to other tall developments around the town centre. Kingston’s heritage depends on more than keeping individual listed buildings standing. Their setting, surrounding views, the scale of nearby development and the relationship between streets and public spaces also matter. A building does not cease to affect the Old Town because it sits just outside a line drawn on a conservation-area map.

Guildhall 1 should therefore be assessed both as an individual proposal and as part of the cumulative transformation of Kingston’s skyline, public realm and historic centre. On-site trees, landscaping and communal areas may be welcome. They do not answer the wider questions about transport, healthcare, cultural facilities, civic space and the cumulative capacity of the town centre.

The council does not need to prove that nothing will ever go wrong. Long-term planning will always involve uncertainty. It should, however, be able to answer four basic questions:

• Why has this scale and distribution of housing growth been selected?
• What additional infrastructure and services will it require?
• Who will provide and fund them, and when?
• What happens to development if critical infrastructure is delayed or does not arrive?

These questions should shape the housing strategy. They should not be left until after its scale has already been established. Kingston should contribute to meeting London’s housing needs. But responsible planning means planning for the residents who will occupy the homes, not simply counting the units that can be placed on identified sites.

Before the plan is adopted, the council should demonstrate that its housing ambition is matched by a credible plan for the transport, healthcare, education, utilities, public spaces, social life and historic town that those homes will depend on.

*the views expressed here are not necessarily the views of The Kingston Society.