Sadiq Khan has called for a £2.2bn emergency housing stimulus for the capital, as the Mayor of London renews his battle with the government.
He says the cash from Whitehall will provide new social and “genuinely affordable homes,” backed by private, public and non-profit housebuilders across the city.
London’s top politician warns that “ministers are exacerbating a national housebuilding downturn by ignoring calls to boost spending to keep homebuilders on site in the capital and across the country”.
The Mayor does not outline how many homes the extra cash will build, but adds that London’s current Affordable Homes 2023-26 Programme, funded by the government, is worth £4bn and will build around 24,000 properties.
Last year the UK added 234,400 dwellings across the country, unchanged compared to the previous 12 months, according to Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities data in November.
This is below the 2019 Conservative manifesto target of adding 300,000 homes a year by the mid-2020s.
Khan, who begins his third term as mayor, says: “Just as national housebuilding loses momentum they’ve still got their foot on the brakes rather than stamping hard on the accelerator.
However, in March, housing secretary Michael Gove told Khan he must review the capital’s housing plan as it lags more than 25,000 homes a year behind target.
Gove wrote to Khan saying new housebuilding in London would need to jump by 37,200 homes a year to more than 62,300 homes to meet the capital’s current targets.
The capital has 736 hectares of industrial land, “the equivalent of approximately 900 football pitches, could potentially be turned into housing developments,” according to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and the Communities.
It adds that London also has 47 “opportunity areas” that “typically have the potential to deliver at least 2,500 new homes or 5,000 new jobs (or a combination of the two), but too many have made almost no progress and others appear to have plateaued”.
The housing minister said early findings of the review should be submitted to him by the end of June, followed by a full report by 30 September.
