More than 40,000 homes ‘in the bag’ but only 23,154 signed and sealed
Mayor’s housing deals fall 10,000 shy of target
Boris Johnson’s attempt to extract affordable housing commitments from every London borough is 10,000 homes short of his 50,000 target.
The capital’s mayor has agreed firm targets with 21 of the 33 boroughs, amounting to 23,154 homes.
City Hall says the total rises to 40,259 when offers on the table from the remaining boroughs, and local area agreement targets that seven of those boroughs have signed with the national government, are included.
Mr Johnson has promised to scrap London’s 50 per cent affordable rule for new housing developments, and deliver 50,000 affordable homes by 2011 by negotiating individual targets with the boroughs.
But figures released this week show that a year after his election he has yet to reach agreement for more than 25,000 of those homes.
Richard Blakeway, director of housing for the mayor, said: ‘If we stopped [negotiating] tomorrow we would have, in the bag, over 40,000 homes. We’ve got targets completed, sealed, signed, and agreed, for 23,000. For all the other boroughs, every one is at the table, negotiating some form of target.’
He added: ‘It’s a remarkable achievement, and I expect the only ones who are going to appreciate it are the people that need those homes.’
The 21 agreed targets are published in the latest draft of the mayor’s housing strategy, which was due to be released yesterday.
Mr Blakeway said he planned to complete negotiations with the 12 outstanding boroughs by the time the strategy is ratified at the end of the year.
Among those 12 are Newham, Tower Hamlets, Barnet, and Greenwich, which were given the four highest proposed targets when City Hall began negotiations. The mayor asked those boroughs alone to provide 17,582 homes between them.
Of the councils that have struck deals with Mr Johnson, only 13 have agreed to his proposed targets. The City of London was most successful in bartering down the mayor, agreeing a target of 50 homes - just 9 per cent of the 560 he proposed.
Kensington & Chelsea wasn’t far behind, agreeing to just 270 affordable homes - less than half of the mayor’s proposed target for the borough.
Southwark has agreed the highest target, at 2,453 homes.
The draft housing strategy also contains a fresh commitment to halve severe overcrowding in the capital’s social housing, and reduce under-
occupation by two thirds, by 2016.
And it promises to institute a citywide social housing mobility scheme by 2011, and to double the number of social tenants moving into private or intermediate housing by 2016.
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Readers' comments (1)
| 28/05/2009 11:48 pm
"The City of London was most successful in bartering down the mayor, agreeing a target of 50 homes"
Nice one City. The Corporation of London does not take being dictated to lying down. Living as I do just a few hundred yards from the border, I can confirm that the few Corporation run estates (Golden Lane etc) within the City are bastions of tranquility and efficiency. The streets are cleanest streets in the whole of England (despite having no bins!), the tenants are well behaved (the City do not take kindly to yobs or yob families who find themselves moved out in short order), with no need for gating or fencing off communal areas. And guess what? They do not employ a single so-called "ASB officer", an RSL non-job if ever there was. City of London police deal quickly and efficiently with any ASB they find. Unike the Met who farm out policing of estate based yobbery to the unfortunate RSLs concerned. Even any graffiti found is removed by City of London police officers! What a result. It's like the 1950's all over again. Untouched by the decades of failed social policy from the do-gooders and hand-wringers that have plagued other areas. These are just some of the reasons why the Square Mile is such a great place to live.
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