Crash means funds have been allocated for just 34,000 homes by 2011
London can’t afford mayor’s 50,000-home pledge
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London does not have enough money left to meet mayor Boris Johnson’s election pledge of 50,000 new affordable homes by 2011.
That was what David Lunts, London director at the Homes and Communities Agency, told the mayor’s watchdog, the London Assembly, this week.
Under City Hall plans, 44,000 of the promised homes were to be built with HCA funding. Just less than £4 billion of the quango’s £8.4 billion affordable housing budget was allocated to the capital.
But the housing crash forced the HCA to up the amount it pays towards each social home, because housing associations are unable to subsidise them by building homes for sale.
Mr Lunts told the assembly’s planning and housing committee: ‘If we continue to fund on the kind of grant-per-unit basis that’s now the norm, the resources we currently have are not sufficient to deliver the 50,000 target.’
The agency had allocated funds for 34,000 homes in London by 2011, he added. He did not say how far London’s remaining budget would take it towards the 44,000 target.
The Conservative mayor’s director of housing, Richard Blakeway, later insisted London could still hit this target if it received its ‘fair share’ of the extra £1.5 billion for housing announced last month by prime minister Gordon Brown. Those funds include £750 million for the national affordable housing programme.
‘Our share of the original [£8.4 billion] NAHP was 42 per cent,’ he said. ‘We need 42 per cent of that £750 million. If we got that - despite the increased cost of delivering homes per unit - we would perform very strongly against the original 44,000 [target].’
Mr Lunts told the committee that while the extra cash was ‘welcome’ there was ‘still a question mark that I think needs to be raised’ over the ‘level of resources and the level of ambition in terms of 50,000 homes’.
Committee chair Jenny Jones said: ‘[This] is very worrying because we desperately need those houses. [Mr Johnson] has got to work very hard with the government to make sure they give us the money we need.’
The Communities and Local Government department was unable to comment.
All figured out
London’s housing plans
50,000
London mayor Boris Johnson’s affordable housing target
44,000
Homes planned under the target to be built with HCA funding
£4 billion
Amount of HCA’s affordable housing budget allocated to London
£8.4 billion
HCA’s total affordable housing budget
£133,000
Current average grant per social home in London
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Readers' comments (1)
Jim Paton | 19/07/2009 12:54 pm
I see we've moved from meeting targets to "performing strongly against" them. Those weasel words could apply equally to misspending all the money and building nothing. That would, after all, be "against" the target.
Say what you mean.
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