The first ever City Hall programme dedicated to building new council homes is to receive a £10 million boost for planning and housing announced by Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London.
Over the next four years, this multi million pound Home Building Capacity fund will be allocated specifically to aid local authorities across London to provide over 11,000 residents with more genuinely affordable housing, including social rented and council houses.
The Home Building Capacity Fund is funded through the Business Rates Retention Pilot. It works alongside other practical support that City Hall is providing to help councils build again. This includes the new council led Housing Forum, run by Future of London, to provide technical advice to practitioners involved in council led delivery of homes.
Proactive masterplans across London
Around 30 London local authorities will receive funding up to £650,000. This can be spent on building a new generation of affordable homes on small sites. The money can be used for proactive masterplans in areas with significant growth potential and planning for optimal density across new residential developments in a designated area.
Sadiq Khan said: “Over the last eight years, central Government cuts have seen council budgets for planning and development fall by 50% in London and this has held back housing growth and particularly plans to build new council homes.”
Last year, the Mayor’s flagship Building Council Homes for Londoners’ programme agreed plans to the value of over £1 billion with 27 London boroughs to begin building 11,000 new council homes at social rent levels by 2022.
The successful bids include a project to increase pipeline of council owned land in Ealing, a new Housing Delivery Hub in Newham, and a joint bid between Barnet and Harrow to develop a town centre planning brief.
Councillor Emina Ibrahim, Cabinet Member for Housing and Estate Renewal and Deputy Leader of Haringey Council said: “Despite the housing crisis that is affecting thousands of people across London and the lack of funding that we receive from Central Government, we are doing everything we can to ensure our residents get the homes they deserve. With thousands of people on the waiting list, this funding will give us the capacity to support our housing delivery team and go a long way to helping us deliver these homes.”
The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan said: “London’s local authorities have seen their budgets slashed year after year through Government cuts. This has hit their services across the board and has severely hampered their ambitions to build more affordable homes.”
“This funding won’t reverse all those cuts but it will help councils boost their teams to go much further than they otherwise could. We are going as far as we can, and it is now imperative for the Government to give us significantly more investment and greater powers so we can build all the homes Londoners need.”
