Sadiq Khan's defiant message to NIMBYs as he outlines plan to build thousands of extra London homes
Sadiq Khan has promised to 'take on NIMBYs' and deliver several thousand more homes a year in London. The Mayor's team says new analysis has shown that reforms to ‘small sites’ and 'similar suburban regeneration' could deliver an 6,000 additional homes a year in the capital alone.
Mr Khan, who is appearing at the Labour Party's annual conference in Liverpool this weekend, suggests that large numbers of new homes have previously been created by 'a planning approach which backed the conversion of existing detached homes and bungalows into well-designed flats'. Alongside 'targeted' investment into transport and housing projects, this change could eventually yield a 'significant' boost to London’s housing output, the Mayor claims.
Mr Khan said: “London needs and wants more housing and I’ll always be a committed advocate for more homes, particularly the council and social housing that Londoners need most. Against the backdrop of a disastrous housing inheritance from the Conservatives, it will take time to turn things around to deliver the homes we need.
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"This is particularly given the acute challenges the sector is facing, including higher construction and borrowing costs and labour shortages. But the election of a Labour London Mayor and a Labour Government has created a moment of maximum opportunity to make inroads into our country’s decades-long housing crisis which we feel most sharply in London.
"I’m a pro-growth, pro-house building politician and more than ever we can't let NIMBYs get in our way. London can’t afford the forces of conservatism to hold us back. I’ll continue to bang the drum for new homes in our city, to help make build a fairer, more prosperous London for everyone.”
City Hall has faced 'major challenges'
In August, Mr Khan blamed 'major challenges' after it was revealed that only 150 affordable homes had been started to be built in one programme during the last quarter, and fewer than half that number have been completed - 71. In return for £4 billion of Government cash, City Hall must start between 23,900 and 27,100 homes by March 2026. All need to be completed by March 2030.
A spokesperson for Mr Khan said the figures released by City Hall are only for one of the Mayor’s affordable housing delivery programmes and added more than 1,000 homes have been built in the last quarter alone. They added this particular scheme only had funding agreed by the previous Government last summer, with the first starts later last year. Therefore, large numbers of completions at this stage should not be expected.
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Before the general election in July, the Conservatives promised to 'raise density levels' in Inner London to those of European cities like Paris and Barcelona. The party's manifesto added: "We will ensure the London Plan delivers more family homes a year, forcing the mayor to plan for more homes on brownfield sites, like underused industrial land.
"We will regenerate major sites like Euston, Old Oak Common and Thamesmead." Furthermore, the Prime Minister at the time, Rishi Sunak, promised to 'launch a new design competition for urban greening, focused on the new quarters we want to develop in Leeds, Cambridge and sites in Inner London'.
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