Mayor of London calls on Housing Taskforce as progress of new homes slows

Sadiq Khan has warned housebuilding in the capital city is ‘grinding to a halt’ prompting him to call on the housing taskforce for urgent assistance.

New data, which was released by City Hall, has discovered a 41% year-on-year drop in major planning applications referred to the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, with national forecasts indicating the construction sector faces a recession this year and housebuilding could fall to the lowest level since World War II.

As a result, Sadiq Khan’s deputy Mayor for housing and residential development, Tom Copley, and Councillor Darren Rodwell, executive member for housing and planning at London Councils met with other key figures in the sector this week as part of the reconvened London Housing Delivery Taskforce.

The taskforce, which comprises leaders from London councils, unions, construction bodies, developers, community groups, industry organisations and housing associations is pleading with the government to ensure affordable homes continue to be built in London at a pace that is required for people squeezed by the current cost-of-living.

‘Housing has been a top priority of mine since I was elected, and I’ve left no stone unturned in getting London building again,’ Mr Khan said. ‘In recent years, more homes have been completed in the capital than at any time since the 1930s, genuinely affordable homebuilding has hit the highest level since records began, and we’ve started work on more new council homes than at any time since the 1970s.’

Mr Khan added: ‘But with spiralling costs, the housing sector is increasingly facing a perfect storm of pressures. The national housing crisis is not just piling pain on households, but it’s threatening future housebuilding too.

‘The government cannot afford to sit around any longer. We need urgent investment from the government to keep our city and our country building.’

Against this backdrop, in a letter that was sent to Michael Gove today, Mr Khan is calling for an additional £2.2bn in affordable housing investment to help kickstart a slowing housing market.

The letter includes a start warning that developers could be forced to down tools if the government fails to provide the funding that is required to revive housing delivery across the country after decades of austerity and a lack of commitment from those in power in Westminster.

The taskforce will agree a set of wider asks to present to the government over the autumn, outlining what is needed by both the private and public sectors to sustain delivery.

Image: john crozier

More on the housing crisis that plagues London: 

One in 50 Londoners homeless as ‘housing disaster unfolds in capital’

New ‘appalling’ figures highlight London’s acute homelessness crisis