Mayor of London approves £1Bn council housing bid to build 11,000 homes

Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has green lit plans to provide more than 11,000 new council houses for social rent over the next four years.

The proposals form part of the ‘Building Council Homes for Londoners’ strategy – City Hall’s first-ever dedicated council housebuilding programme, which launched last May. In the months since, there has been “overwhelming interest” from the London boroughs, with Mayor Khan agreeing allocations for 11,154 new council houses and a further 3,570 homes – including those for London Living Rent.

Delivery will require councils to bolster their building rates over a four year period to five times greater than that of the previous four years. While Mayor Khan has welcomed the government’s decision to boost the amount councils can borrow, he said this alone would not fix the housing crisis. According to City Hall, the capital will need around £2.7Bn each year to build the council, social rented and affordable homes Londoners so desperately need.

“London’s housing crisis is hugely complex and has been decades in the making,” said Mayor Khan. “There is no simple fix – but council housing is the most important part of the solution. Londoners need more council homes that they can genuinely afford, and local authorities have a fundamental role to play in getting London building the homes we need for the future.”

“Newham residents are at the forefront of the housing crisis,” added Mayor of Newham, Rokhsana Fiaz – who pledged begin building over 1,000 quality homes across 40 sites by 2022.

“Too many families are desperately in need of a sustainable home they can genuinely afford. We have over 27,000 households on our housing waiting list and more than 4,800 households in temporary accommodation. This is why I have committed to build over 1,000 new council homes at social rent levels over the next four years. Only through a massive council housebuilding programme can we begin to address the scale of this challenge.”

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