Mayor ‘failing Londoners’ as developers dodge 35 per cent affordable homes target

Sadiq Khan set private house builders a target of 35 per cent affordable homes
Mayor of London, City Hall

Less than a quarter of new developments approved in the capital under Mayor Sadiq Khan have met his affordable housing target, according to fresh analysis.

In 2016, Mr Khan set private house builders a target of 35 per cent affordable homes — a climbdown on his election promise of 50 per cent.

City Hall’s policy states that developments with “more than 10 units” are required to deliver “a minimum of 35 per cent” affordable housing.

Since Mr Khan took office, a total of 1,540 developments have been approved that should comply with the policy. However, just 24 per cent — or 376 projects — have met the affordable housing target. Overall, this means 48,000 affordable units have been approved — 20,000 short of what should have been provided under the policy.

Tory mayoral candidate Shaun Bailey, whose team carried out the research, claimed Mr Khan was failing Londoners who were “increasingly unable to have a home to call their own”.

However, City Hall claimed that “national loopholes” introduced by the Government meant developers were getting away with providing zero affordable housing. Developers can use viability assessments to reduce affordable housing requirements where they can show that this would prevent a project from going ahead.

Also, sites with fewer than 150 units are not automatically referred to the Mayor, with local councils left to have the final say. The analysis comes from a database of every planning application and shows the Mayor is struggling to meet his 35 per cent commitment. The data also shows that of the developers which fail to meet the minimum threshold, only 13 per cent of them have made cash contributions to help build affordable homes elsewhere. When the policy was announced in 2016, critics predicted that developers would argue they could only go ahead with projects if they could deliver fewer affordable units.

James Murray, deputy mayor for housing and residential development, said: “At the end of the previous mayor’s term, affordable housing fell to just 13 per cent of all the homes given permission in London. We’ve overhauled the system with tough rules to make sure developers build more genuinely affordable housing — and they’re working, with planning permissions granted by Sadiq last year including 34 per cent affordable housing.

“But in order to deliver the affordable housing Londoners desperately need, the Government needs to reverse the damaging national loopholes it has introduced.”

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