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Mayor’s scheme ‘will provide land for associations and councils’
Land bought with the mayor’s new £250m fund will be sold on to social landlords for development, Sadiq Khan has announced.
Speaking at the launch of his new draft London Housing Strategy, Mr Khan said that land purchased under the new scheme would be made available to “developers, councils and housing associations”.
The fund, which will come out of the Greater London Authority’s (GLA) housing budget, will be used to buy land for assembly or remediation purposes. This land will then be sold on at a profit, with the aim being for the fund to be constantly replenished and used to buy further sites.
James Murray, deputy mayor for housing and residential development, told Inside Housing: “The idea with the land fund is to make sure that we’re buying land which otherwise wouldn’t come into the system through a housing association, a council or a developer.
“We’re going to buy it, we’ll assemble it, remediate it, get it ready for market and put it into production. It’s certainly not about competing with housing associations, who already have plans to acquire land.”
Mr Murray did not confirm whether or not land bought through this scheme would be subject to the 50% affordable threshold required for public land to access fast-tracked planning permission.
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As part of his aim to increase the number of available sites, the mayor will also establish a London Development Panel and offer to buy land off other public sector landowners, including councils, the NHS, Network Rail and the Ministry of Defence.
The strategy will also include a commitment to set “clear and ambitious” housing targets for all London councils, a measure intended to make it easier to bring small sites to the market.
In a section aimed at tackling rough sleeping, the mayor proposed spending £50m on Housing First and helping homeless people after they leave hostels. This follows Inside Housing’s Cathy at 50 campaign, which calls on the government to pilot Housing First, a programme that gives rough sleepers housing before providing other welfare.
David Montague, chief executive of L&Q, one of the GLA’s strategic partners, told Inside Housing: “For some time, the G15 [group of large housing associations] and this mayor and his predecessor have been having a discussion about how we can get more homes built, and all roads lead to land. For us, it makes perfect sense that the mayor should be devoting some capital to unlocking land so we can build more homes.
“This is something we’ve been keen to do for some time. For too long the G15 was saying ‘we need more land’ and the mayor was saying ‘go and find it’. There is no ‘magic land tree’ and I think this moves us beyond that point.”
