Boris' strategy splits London planning committee
Boris Johnson’s plan to drop London’s ‘50 per cent affordable’ target for new homes has divided the committee overseeing the mayor’s planning policies.
The London Assembly’s planning committee has warned the mayor that dropping the target could slow the building of new affordable homes.
The committee has also advised the mayor to ‘reconsider’ his plan to increase the proportion of new affordable homes made up by low-cost ownership schemes from 30 per cent to 40 per cent.
Chair Nicky Gavron said: ‘Whilst the Mayor’s draft housing strategy contains some good proposals, our detailed assessment… suggests he must take a more radical approach, or he risks failing to deliver the housing he has promised Londoners.’
In its response to a consultation on the mayor’s strategy, the committee lists the 50 per cent target and the revised split of social and ‘intermediate’ housing as its ‘key concerns’.
But Conservative members of the committee have rejected its stance, and formally dissented from the passages of its response dealing with these criticisms.
Steve O’Connell, London Assembly Conservative group housing spokesperson, said: ‘It would be absolute madness to return to the failed 50 per cent affordable housing target, especially when the economy is in the grip of recession.
‘Even at the peak of the housing market, only 34 per cent affordable housing was ever achieved. In a struggling housing market, do we really want to constrain new house building by imposing meaningless regulations?’
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Readers' comments (1)
Jim | 27/01/2009 8:46 pm
So the Tory approach is that "in a struggling housing market" they don't want to constrain the over-production of private and "intermediate" housing which will stand empty for months or years to come in favour of social rented housing for which there is an immediate and urgent demand and which will be eagerly occupied as soon as the plaster is dry.
I write within shouting distance of three of these mixed-tenure blocks completed from about 14 to 2 months ago. The oldest is still not fully occupied and the most recent very partially. You can tell the social rented flats. They're the ones with the curtains and the lights on.
Oh well, could be grist to the mill of the err..."fourth sector" -squatting.
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