London mulls legal battle over decent homes cash

The Communities and Local Government department revealed last week that it was withdrawing £150 million from next year’s decent homes budget to help finance prime minister Gordon Brown’s £1.5 billion house building pledge.

Richard Blakeway, housing advisor to London mayor Boris Johnson, said the move to delay funding for arm’s-length management organisations to improve homes would disproportionately affect London, which has seven ALMOs yet to gain two stars.

In a letter to Inside Housing Mr Blakeway said Mr Johnson’s opinion should have been sought. ‘This could in fact breach the government’s own legislation. Schedule 8 of the Housing and Regeneration Act 2008 indicates that the mayor should be consulted,’ he wrote.

Mr Johnson has also hit out at the government’s decision to award the capital just £207 million of the £750 million for new affordable homes announced in the funding pledge.

Mr Blakeway said the figure represented 28 per cent of the overall total. But he claimed that the formula agreed for the current national affordable housing programme funding round should be used, meaning London should get 42 per cent of the cash.

He said that CLG officials had been ‘quite open’ in discussions about the ‘tension’ between places of high need like London and those which could deliver high numbers of completions on low grant rates.

A spokesperson for the HCA said many of the London bids were for schemes that will complete after 2011 and so weren’t considered. He said they would be considered after the September round.

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