The London mayor’s housing target of 42,000 homes per year falls short of the 49,000 that is actually needed to meet the backlog, yet it is still double the number of homes currently being built.
Reaching that target was not “insurmountable”, but it would be a tough challenge, conceded a panel of housing experts at a residential breakfast debate hosted by Movers & Shakers this morning.
Public private partnerships and infrastructure were crucial to achieving the target, said Tony Pidgley, chairman of Berkeley Group. Already outline sites that “had been ignored for years” were finally being brought forward, he added.
“You take Thamesmead, there’s 15,000 homes there and Crossrail leads to Abbey Wood, it’s 11 minutes to Canary Wharf – it will change it, it is affordable. There are lots of sites on the outskirts of the city that are commuting distance to the city.”
Pidgley also described Kidbrooke Village, a joint venture between Berkely, the Greater London Authority and the Royal Borough of Greenwich, as the “perfect public private partnership”.
David Lunts, executive director, housing and land at the GLA, agreed and said housing should be considered as important as transport in the infrastructure equation.
However, parts of London had undergone “infrastructure preening” yet were still to be exploited for housing, he said.
Lunts and Pidgley were joined by Andrew Stanford, head of private rented sector taskforce at the Department for Communities and Local Government, and Peter Redfern, group chief executive of Taylor Wimpey.
Stanford said institutional investors had aspirations to invest some £10bn into the build-for-rent sector.
Lunts called for a perception change in housing needs, particularly with shared ownership of housing, which needs to become more mainstream.
“It is no longer the preserve of the most disadvantaged,” he said.
He also argued that London should receive a bigger portion of property taxation revenue than the rest of the UK in order to fund infrastructure and reach affordable housing to reach targets.
“We have to reply on a cap in hand every three years, when it’s time we move away from get 7% and go closer to 50%,” said Lunts
Redfern said pace in decision making and consistency in infrastructure development would help to reach housing targets. He also disagreed with a recommendation by the European Housing Commission to extend the Help To Buy scheme into 2020, and said it should be tailed off at least three years earlier.
The panel agreed that current conditions in the housing sector did not constitute a housing bubble, and that high rise residential schemes were necessary.
rebecca.kent@estatesgazette.com
