On Tuesday, June 9, 2026, the City’s Planning and Environment Committee will consider an application to redevelop 3924, 4012 and 4050 Colonel Talbot Road. The applicant is asking for up to 100 units per hectare and six-storey apartment buildings. The Southwest Area Secondary Plan, the City’s own neighbourhood plan for Lambeth, sets the standard here at four storeys and a fraction of that density.
This is not housing that fits Lambeth. It is intensification, directed in from City Hall, and it was filed without the transportation study, the servicing and stormwater reports, or the school-capacity confirmation the City’s own plan requires before Council can judge it. The people who live here were not asked.
I filed a written objection with the Committee, grounded entirely in The London Plan and the City’s own documents. It is reproduced in full below. If you share these concerns, you can add your own voice before the deadline. The how-to is at the bottom of this page.
My submission to the Planning and Environment Committee
Chair and Members,
My name is Matt Millar, and I am a lifelong Lambeth resident. I am writing about the application for 3924, 4012 and 4050 Colonel Talbot Road, and my comments are grounded in The London Plan.
Lambeth is historically a small, established village with a quiet, friendly neighbourhood feel. Well-spaced, family-scaled housing that matched the existing atmosphere would be an expansion of Lambeth, not an intensification of it, and if it conformed to the City’s plan and the infrastructure could carry it, no one would be here objecting. This application is the opposite. It seeks intensification: high-density, multi-storey apartment buildings at a scale the Southwest Area Secondary Plan does not permit for this neighbourhood, directed into Lambeth from City Hall without proof that the roads, sewers and schools can support it, and without asking the people who live here. I say that plainly because the application reads as though density on this scale is settled and welcome. It is neither.
I will acknowledge one point in the application’s favour, and only one. If intensification is going to be forced into the Lambeth area, this is at least a better location than the nearby 4402 Colonel Talbot Road approval, which routes its access onto Marianna Drive, a quiet residential street, rather than the Colonel Talbot Road arterial, despite objections from residents.
Everything else about this application departs from the City’s own plan. The London Plan’s intensification strategy requires that intensification be appropriately located and fit well within its neighbourhood (Policy 940). This application does not meet that test, for the reasons that follow.
1. The height and density exceed the neighbourhood standard in the Southwest Area Secondary Plan. The Southwest Area Secondary Plan sets the Medium Density standard for this neighbourhood at a maximum of 75 units per hectare and heights that “shall not exceed four storeys and be sensitive to the scale of development in the surrounding neighbourhood.” This application seeks up to 100 units per hectare and six-storey apartment buildings, where the neighbourhood maximum is four (and even that is excessive). The 100-unit figure is the exception the Plan allows only through a site-specific amendment, not the standard. The applicant’s own report concedes that height is “the most significant discrepancy” between the London Plan and the Southwest Area Secondary Plan. To bridge that gap, the application relies on a City-initiated Official Plan amendment to reconcile the Secondary Plan with The London Plan. I ask the Committee not to treat that reconciliation as a reason to grant the maximum. Where the two plans differ, the neighbourhood-specific Secondary Plan and its “sensitive to the scale” test should govern, and the height and density should be held to what fits this established, low-rise community.
2. No transportation study was filed. The London Plan provides that a Transportation Impact Assessment may be required to identify and mitigate the transportation impacts of a development (Policy 335), and that such studies exist to determine whether the proposal can be accommodated by the mobility network and what changes the network would need (Policy 1591, 1592). Hayward Drive is a Neighbourhood Connector, a classification the Plan assigns priority for pedestrians and low to medium traffic volumes (Policy 371.7). The application realigns Hayward Drive and lines it with medium-density blocks. Routing the traffic of a six-storey, 100-unit-per-hectare development through it is a change the Plan expects to be studied first. The City has recently rebuilt (and is still working on it, as anyone who has had to travel on it lately has learned the hard way) this stretch of Colonel Talbot Road as an urban street, and Colonel Talbot feeds Lambeth’s constrained Main Street. Whether the road network can carry the traffic this intensification generates, and what it would push onto local residential streets, is the exact question a transportation study answers, and none was filed. I ask the Committee to require, at the applicant’s expense and not the taxpayers’, a Transportation Impact Assessment covering Colonel Talbot Road, Main Street, and the risk of through-traffic on local residential streets before any decision. Calls for traffic-calming measures, after creating the conditions that cause residents to feel them necessary, indicate a planning failure.
3. No servicing or stormwater study was filed. The London Plan requires applications to demonstrate that they can be supported by adequate municipal water, sanitary sewer and stormwater facilities (Policy 1594, 1595). The City application page lists no Functional Servicing Report and no Stormwater Management Report. The applicant’s entire servicing case is one sentence: “Municipal services are available for the development as planned for with the overall subdivision.” The City’s own Southwest Area Sanitary Servicing Master Plan shows why that is not enough here. This stretch of Colonel Talbot Road is served today by a temporary, developer-owned pumping station, the Talbot Village pumping station built in 2003 at 6664 Pack Road, which the Master Plan’s preferred alternative slates for decommissioning. That preferred alternative, estimated at $44.3 million, includes a new gravity sewer along Colonel Talbot Road and a new Colonel Talbot Road pumping station, and the Master Plan states that it provides “a high level servicing strategy, without assigning timelines to specific projects.” The land drains to Dingman Creek, where the City and the Conservation Authority are still completing an Environmental Assessment and updated floodplain mapping that the Secondary Plan requires to be built into development plans. The London Plan allows Council to refuse or defer a development that is premature (Policy 1573.3). Approving added density before the servicing is demonstrated and in place fits that description. I ask the Committee to require a Functional Servicing Report and a Stormwater Management Report, and confirmation of sanitary capacity, to the City Engineer’s satisfaction and at the applicant’s expense, before any decision. The London Plan’s growth-financing policy provides that growth-related capital costs are recovered from new development (Policy 1573.1). The cost of proving this development can be serviced, and of any infrastructure it requires, belongs with the applicant, not London taxpayers.
4. The application makes its own school site optional, and the Planning Act requires school-site adequacy to be weighed. This application includes a redline revision to a draft plan of subdivision (39T-12503). For a plan of subdivision, the Planning Act directs that regard “shall be had” to “the adequacy of school sites” (section 51(24)(j)). The applicant’s own Planning Justification Report identifies Block 26 as “a potential school site,” then proposes zoning that “would allow the site to develop for low-rise residential uses should a school not be required in this location.” The one school block in this plan is optional, and can be turned into housing. That is the opposite of securing a school site. The context makes it sharper. Lambeth has had one public elementary school since M.B. McEachren closed in 2010: Lambeth Public School off James Street. The Thames Valley District School Board capped its enrolment to new families effective January 1, 2024, and designated new Lambeth families to Westmount and Princess Elizabeth, two schools farther into London, as interim accommodation “until permanent accommodations are available.” That permanent accommodation, White Pine Public School, opened in September 2025 in Talbot Village, which the applicant’s own report places about 2.5 kilometres north of this site, outside of walking range. The board’s answer to Lambeth’s capped school was to bus Lambeth children out of the village. Approving this plan while it keeps its only school site optional asks the Committee to find the adequacy of school sites satisfied on no evidence. I ask the Committee to require that Block 26 be secured as a school site to the school board’s satisfaction, and to obtain written confirmation from the Thames Valley District School Board and the London District Catholic School Board on elementary and secondary accommodation, before any decision.
5. The evaluation criteria cannot be applied to this application as filed. The London Plan evaluates every application against the criteria in Policy 1578, including conformity with the place type (criterion 3), the availability of municipal services (criterion 5), impacts on adjacent properties such as traffic and access (criterion 6), and how the proposal fits its context in height, density, massing and scale (criterion 7). Policy 1579 states that sufficient information must be submitted by the applicant to allow these criteria to be applied. The transportation, servicing and stormwater studies that would let staff and Council apply those criteria were not filed. The application is not ready for a decision on its merits.
6. The neighbourhood has not been asked. The applicant’s report contains no record of consultation with surrounding residents, and the June 9 meeting is the first formal opportunity for them to be heard. This is a major intensification of an established neighbourhood, and the people who live here deserve to have their input on the record before a decision, not after.
I am asking the Committee to apply The London Plan and to respect the established community the Plan is meant to protect. As filed, this application exceeds the height and density the Southwest Area Secondary Plan sets for this neighbourhood, relies on a City-initiated amendment to reconcile that plan with The London Plan in favour of the larger numbers, and is missing the transportation, servicing, stormwater and school-site evidence the Plan and the Planning Act require before Council can judge it. The residents of Lambeth were not consulted, and a small village is being asked to absorb an intensification it did not seek and that the application has not shown the schools, sewers and roads can support. I ask the Committee to refuse the application as presented, or to defer it as premature under Policy 1573.3, and to direct that it return only if it conforms to the Plan, proof of adequate infrastructure is provided, and the neighbourhood has been properly consulted.
Matt Millar, Longwoods Road, London, ON
[email protected]
How to add your voice before June 9
If this application concerns you, the most useful thing you can do is put your own comments on the public record. You do not need to be a planner. A few plain sentences in your own words about how this scale of development affects your street, your commute, or your children’s school carry real weight.
The Planning and Environment Committee meets Tuesday, June 9, 2026, no earlier than 1:00 p.m., at City Hall in the Council Chambers, with virtual participation available. There are two ways to be heard, and doing either one before the decision also preserves your right to appeal to the Ontario Land Tribunal.
Submit a written comment. Email it to [email protected]. To be included on the agenda for the meeting, send it by 9:00 a.m. on Friday, June 5, 2026 (comments are accepted up to the meeting, but earlier is safer). Reference the file number, Z-26046 / O-26047 / 39T-12503, and the address, 3924, 4012 and 4050 Colonel Talbot Road. The City also requires a separate line of consent before your comment can appear on the public agenda, so include this sentence in your own name:
I, [your first and last name], provide consent for my communication to be included on a public agenda.
Your name and your comment will become part of the public record and will be posted on the City’s website.
Speak at the meeting. To address the Committee in person or virtually, pre-register with [email protected] or 519-661-2489 ext. 7100 by 9:00 a.m. on June 9.
Lambeth is worth standing up for. The City’s own plan is on our side. The only thing missing is enough of us saying so, on the record, before the decision is made.