London’s local authorities have urged the government to give them extra powers to be able to push forward construction starts.
The call comes as the government aims to have 1.5m new homes built during this parliament.
At a Concilio Labour Party conference fringe event, “Housing Revolution and Devolution”, mayor of Lewisham Brenda Dacres said councils wanted the legislation so they could ensure that private developers “honour their commitment to build at pace”.
“One of the biggest bugs is the fact that we have large developers that are sitting on land and don’t do anything. Across London there are 186,000 planning applications that are just sitting there waiting for developers to start building,” she said. “We need powers to give us the ability to really push them forward so that they don’t just tinker about and drill a few holes but build up in a timely manner. We’ve got this crisis in landbanking, now it’s time to resolve it.”
Dacres added: “We have a long way to go with Greater London Authority and other bodies to be able to give us the ability to be much more eager to take their powers so that we can adopt the developments and build the homes.”
The panel said centralisation was a barrier to solving housing crises across the country.
John Denham, director of Labour English Network, said: “We will not solve the problems that the Labour Party wants to solve unless there is radical devolution. I think that devolution applies at many different levels, it shouldn’t just be about mayors and combined authorities. It should be about local authorities, too.”
The panel emphasised that London’s local authorities had laid the foundations in the form of skills, experience, expertise and capabilities, to bring forward new homes in the capital, but they could not do this alone.
Anthony Okereke, leader of the Royal Borough of Greenwich Council, said: “The market has gone to a halt, costs are still high and it’s difficult to deliver anything at the moment, so councils are really struggling to be able to deliver, housing associations are not delivering, they’ve slowed down. We need a cash injection in the system to get ourselves out of where we are right now in order to continue to deliver.
“No longer can we afford to work in silence when it comes to thinking about how we tackle the housing crisis. Collectively, we need to send a message to the market of what we are trying to deliver, and the market will provide that.”
To encourage private sector collaboration, London councils have expressed their readiness to build strategic relationships and committed to drafting quality frameworks outlining local needs on affordability, quality and infrastructure around the potential housing development opportunities.
Sharma Tatler, cabinet member for regeneration, planning and growth at Brent Council, said: “What’s great to see is the dial being moved in terms of the pragmatic approach to quality of our housing.
“Inclusive growth is about understanding your place and trusting local leaders to understand what their needs are for their communities and how you build on that. Because we want to kick-start the market again. We want to be building again.
“Labour are actually looking at mission-led, sustainable, structural changes to the system that need to happen in the long term, not the short term, because there are specific systemic issues that need to be fixed and it will take longer than a one-parliament term.”
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