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London councils offered £10m to build up capacity for housebuilding
Sadiq Khan is offering £10m to London boroughs to help build up their in-house planning and housing teams, warning they have been “decimated” by cuts.
Inside Housing can exclusively reveal City Hall will launch its Homebuilding Capacity Fund today, intending to help the capital’s town halls recruit new staff to lead new housebuilding programmes.
Councils will be permitted to bid for up to £750,000 each from the fund to boost housing and planning teams.
It comes as councils brace for a major return to housebuilding for the first time since the 1980s, with the government set to drop the cap on their borrowing for development in just over a week.
London boroughs also have access to a specific grant programme offered by Mr Khan’s administration to build new affordable homes.
Many councils across the country are understood to have submitted significant bids for new funds, with allocations to be announced soon.
However, the impact of cuts and nearly three decades out of large-scale housebuilding has ravaged capacity within local authorities’ housebuilding and planning departments. Budgets for planning and development teams have fallen by 50% over the past eight years.
Mr Khan, said: “London’s housing crisis has been decades in the making and there is no easy solution – but we will only make progress if councils can take a lead in getting new homes built.
“In the 1970s, London councils were supported by central government and built more than 20,000 homes a year. However, these councils built only 2,500 homes over the past seven years, including 700 that were completed last year.
“Despite wanting to do far more, councils have been hamstrung by swingeing cuts from government for far too long. My new Homebuilding Capacity Fund won’t reverse those cuts – but it will help ambitious councils to enhance their capacity to deliver large-scale new build programmes.”
The funding comes from business rate devolution to City Hall, announced in last year’s Budget. This sees the capital retain any business rate receipts above the government’s baseline during the financial year 2018/2019.
City Hall will considered funding bids from councils which can be shown to help deliver:
- A ‘new generation’ of council homes
- More homes, including social rented and other affordable homes, on small sites
- Proactive masterplans in areas with significant growth potential
- Optimal density across new residential developments in an area
