You are viewing 1 of your 1 free articles
Sadiq Khan falling short on affordable housing promises, says scathing report
The mayor of London has fallen far short on his promises around affordable housing delivery and the number of housing starts is well behind where it needs to be, a scathing report from the London Assembly has found.
The London Assembly Housing Committee’s annual monitor of the mayor’s housing pledges found that Sadiq Khan was failing to meet his targets on affordable home starts, with only 12,555 affordable homes part-funded by the mayor starting in the 12 months up until 31 March 2018.
This narrowly exceeds the bottom of Mr Khan’s targeted range for the year of between 12,500 and 16,500 homes.
It comes as the mayor announces the allocation of a further £490m of grant – which will take the total number of affordable homes allocated funding and due to be delivered to 105,000 by 2022.
Mr Khan’s office reacted angrily to the report, which it described as “nonsense”.
The Housing Committee exists to scrutinise the mayor’s housing delivery. It is chaired by Sian Berry of the Green Party, with Labour’s Tom Copley the deputy chair.
READ MORE
Ms Berry, who was also author of the report, said the latest figures proved that Mr Khan was “letting down Londoners” and had “fallen very short of his promises” to deliver more affordable homes.
Of the affordable homes started in 2017/18, 2,762 (22%) of homes were for the social rent market.
The report said that while this was the most social rent starts since 2010/11, it was still well below what was needed.
Current forecasts estimate that the capital needs 31,000 social rent properties to be started each year in the capital.
Listen to a podcast on Sadiq Khan’s housing record in London:
According to the report, in the six months until 31 October just 461 social rent homes have been started.
Since becoming mayor in 2016, Mr Khan has been able to secure £4.82bn of government funding which is aimed at supporting 116,000 affordable home starts by March 2022.
The monitor report found that while housing across the Mr Khan’s mayoral term was up by 15% when compared to previous mayor Boris Johnson’s tenure, it consisted of “more intermediate homes than were justified”.
Intermediate home products represented tenures such as shared ownership or London Living Rent – homes that can be rented at a third of local income.
On average across Mr Khan’s two years as mayor, 5,398 of the 10,235 (53%) homes delivered were intermediate homes. This is despite London needing only 28% of its new homes to be these intermediate products, the report said.
Just 7,135 new affordable homes, including those funded by the mayor, had been completed in 2017/18, well below the 42,841 new affordable home completions required by the capital each year until 2041.
The mayor was also well behind his overall targets for new homes in the capital, delivering just 41,000 homes in 2016/17, way down on the 66,000 new home completions needed in the capital every year.
Despite failing to hit his housing development targets, the report did say that the mayor had some success in tackling rough sleeping on the capital’s streets.
In 2017/18 7,484 people were spotted sleeping rough on London’s streets; this was a drop of 624 on the previous 12-month period.
Despite the overall drop-off in rough sleepers across London, 13 boroughs had seen rough sleeping increase across the 12-month period.
Ms Berry said: “With young and lower-income people suffering the most from the housing crisis, we can’t wait much longer for his policies to kick in.
“The mayor must fulfil his pledges. It is in his power to ease the housing crisis and meet his targets – especially as he has received new funding.
“There is now no excuse for genuinely affordable housing to be out of reach for Londoners who want a secure home.”
A spokesperson for the mayor said: “This nonsense report is the exact opposite of the truth. In reality, Sadiq Khan has exceeded all his housing targets and is building a record number of social and affordable homes. Last year City Hall started building more social homes than ever before – more than the rest of England and Wales combined.”
