Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has announced new funding to help get 10,000 council homes built over the next four years.
In what will be the first City Hall programme dedicated to supporting council housing, Khan has pledged to use funds from the £1.7bn he secured from central government in the Spring Statement to help support London’s councils ramp up the rate of council homebuilding in the capital.
The mayor said he was determined to point the way towards what he believed was needed to fix the housing crisis: “a modern comeback for council housing”.
In the 1970s London councils were supported by central government and built more than 20,000 homes a year, but that number plummeted to almost zero during the 1990s, according to the Greater London Authority.
London councils built 2,100 homes over the past seven years, including 300 that were completed last year, the GLA said.
First deals announced
The mayor today welcomed the first deals – with Waltham Forest, Newham and Lewisham – struck under the Building Council Homes for Londoners initiative.
Waltham Forest plans to start 525 new council homes with £26m of funding from City Hall over the next four years, while both Newham and Lewisham have each committed to starting 1,000 new council homes by 2022.
Khan criticised the government for failing to give councils the freedoms they need to ensure all those homes sold under Right to Buy rules are replaced. He said his programme offered councils an innovative way to ringfence their Right to Buy receipts to help them build new homes to replace those sold in the local area.
Right to Buy was introduced in 1980 and, according to Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government figures, it has resulted in 306,000 social homes sold by councils in London since 1980.
During the same period, councils have built only 62,000 homes at social rent – equivalent to just one in five of those homes sold being replaced.
The mayor’s main points
Khan said: “I grew up on a council estate and I know first-hand the vital role social housing plays in London. Council homes for social rent bind our city together, and they have been built thanks to the ambition of London’s councils over many decades.
“Back in the 1970s, when I was growing up, London councils built thousands of social homes, providing homes for families and generations of Londoners. But the government has turned its back on local authorities, severely hampering their ambition to build by cutting funding and imposing arbitrary restrictions on borrowing.
“I am proud to launch Building Council Homes for Londoners – the first City Hall programme dedicated to new council housing. I want to help councils get back to building homes for Londoners again, and I’m doing that with support from the £1.67bn fund I secured from government to help get 10,000 new homes underway over the next four years.
“I am offering councils expertise and resources from City Hall to scale up their homebuilding programmes, and I will help them to replace homes sold through Right to Buy. The government is failing to enable councils to replace the hundreds of thousands of council homes sold through Right to Buy, and so I will do all I can to help councils replace as many of them as possible.”
Enhanced capacity
Building Council Homes for Londoners said it would support councils to enhance their capacity to deliver large-scale new-build programmes with skills, expertise and resources from City Hall.
The mayor said he would continue to lobby the government to help London’s councils access increased borrowing limits from central government and providing them with greater flexibility.
To send feedback, e-mail Louisa.Clarence-Smith@egi.co.uk or tweet @LouisaClarence or @estatesgazette
