The housing secretary has told the Mayor of London to review the capital’s housing plan as it lacks at more than 25,000 homes a year behind target.  

Michael Gove has written to Sadiq Khan and directed him to partially review the provision of homes in the capital [called the London Plan] after “repeated warnings”. 

The housing secretary writes that to tackle the “housing delivery backlog and meet targets set within the London Plan, the average rate of delivery would need to increase from 37,200 to more than 62,300 homes a year”.  

Gove says 736 hectares of industrial land, “the equivalent of approximately 900 football pitches, could potentially be turned into housing developments”.  

He adds that London 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 secretary directs the Mayor, under his statutory powers, to conduct a review to get housing developments started across these two areas.  

Gove says early findings should be submitted to him by the end of June, followed by a full report by 30 September.  

The housing secretary adds: “Londoners are being let down by the Mayor’s chronic under delivery of new homes in the capital. We have already taken comprehensive action to reverse this trend — investing billions of pounds to build affordable homes and unlocking brownfield developments as part of our long-term plan for housing.    

“However, that alone will not build the homes we need, which is why I am now directing the Mayor to review aspects of the London Plan and announcing specialist support on planning to help unlock thousands of homes.”  

Gove adds that his new ‘super-squad’ of planners, brought in by the government, will use their expertise to work across London to speed up planning decisions.   

The specialist team will work on complex cases that for too long have been held up in the planning system.  Newham and Greenwich have been prioritised with £500,000 this year to help with planning applications and unlock over 7,000 homes.      

However, a London Labour spokesperson says: “This is nothing more than a stunt from the government to distract from their abysmal record of failure.   

“The facts are clear, while Sadiq has been Mayor, London has outbuilt the rest of the country. Under a Labour Mayor housing completions in the capital have hit the highest level since the 1930s, according to the government’s own data.   

“London is also delivering twice the level of council homebuilding as the rest of the country combined, showing up the Tories’ dismal failure nationally.”  

Last year the UK added 234,400 dwellings, unchanged from a year ago, 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.