Sadiq Khan has called on the Government not to give up on the building of council homes amid new statistics that show London as a centre for their construction.
Construction began on 11,000 London council homes in 2022/23 and Government figures show that this amounted to twice as many as the rest of the country combined.
This forms part of the 32,000 council homes built in the city since 2016, 23,000 of which have received direct mayoral funding.
Khan said: “The national figures for council homes are truly appalling – I’m urging the Government not to completely give up on council housing as a vital way of delivering affordable homes.
“I grew up on a council estate, so I know the vital role council homes play in providing security for families.
“Every new home we deliver, whether that is funded by City Hall or boroughs, is another London family given the secure, long-term home they deserve.”
In November, the Mayor, along with leaders from London’s housebuilding sector, presented 29 recommendations to the Government including an increase in council homebuilding and scrapping the proposed new infrastructure levy.
The new Council Homes Acquisition Programme, giving boroughs the resources to boost their housing supplies by buying homes from the private market, has joined other mayoral funding schemes to ensure that council homes are now being built in every London borough.
Mayor of Newham Rokhsana Fiaz said: “It’s the housing policy failures of central government and their cost of living crisis which has led to the unprecedented housing crisis facing the capital.
“Through a raft of measures, including the Building Council Homes for Londoners programme, families in Newham are reaping the benefits with access to council homes they can afford.”
Despite this, London was named as the region with the highest destitution levels in 2022 in the latest Joseph Rowntree Foundation study.
Newham also had the highest levels of destitution of any local authority in the country, a fact that Fiaz also attributed to the Government when the report was released.
Featured image credit: London Less Travelled via Flickr under CC BY 2.0 licence
