34,000 new homes delayed in London due to fire safety rules

Sadiq Khan has now demanded urgent action from the housing secretary to address fire safety rules so more homes can be built in the capital.

New figures have found the government is holding up on the delivery of new homes in London by leaving housebuilders in the dark about impending new fire safety requirements.

In response to the Grenfell Tower tragedy that occurred in June 2017, ministers proposed plans to include a second staircase in new, tall buildings in December 2022. Following this, Michael Gove committed to a transition period that would see staircases installed in blocks over 18 metres tall, but pledges there would be ‘no disruption to housing supply’.

However, new data from City Hall has discovered 34,000 homes on major developments being held up due to a lack of clarity from the government on these new fire safety requirements.

The Mayor has used his London Plan and funding programmes to go further than the national building regulations with a push towards greater building safety, for example requiring sprinklers, and a complete ban on combustible cladding on all new homes.

Local authorities and housing developers currently have no guidance on what the promised ‘transition period’ will cover, nor have they been informed what technical requirements they will need to meet to satisfy new rules – for example, whether the two staircases will need to be entirely separate or whether they can be contained within the same building core.

With construction costs rapidly rising and developers already warning they could be forced to down tools, this delay could cause some schemes to be abandoned altogether.

Against this backdrop, homes in London are in demand now more than ever. As costs continue to skyrocket more people are looking for affordable properties and homelessness figures in the capital have reached record highs.

‘While I strongly support the highest fire safety standards for new buildings, the chaotic way these new rules are being put in place by the Government is now holding up the delivery of thousands of homes across the capital,’ the Mayor of London said. ‘We’ve made huge progress in London since 2016 – building more new council homes that at any time since the 1970s – but we still have a long way to go to fix the housing crisis.  We simply can’t afford this confusion caused by the Government to slow down crucial housing delivery in our city.’

The Mayor added: ‘Ministers must cut through this bureaucratic dither and delay to urgently bring clarity on these new fire safety rules.

‘This should be done alongside the other steps we know are needed to help fix our housing crisis, including investing the £4.9bn a year the capital needs to meet the demand for new, high quality genuinely affordable homes.’

Image: David Monaghan

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