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Conservatives seize on figures showing fall in GLA-funded family homes
The number of Greater London Authority (GLA)-funded homes with three or more bedrooms fell 31% last year, it has emerged.
Figures obtained by Andrew Boff, the housing spokesperson for the GLA Conservatives, show that the GLA funded 2,005 new homes with three or more bedrooms in 2018/19, compared with 2,892 in 2017/18.
Meanwhile, total starts rose 16% from 12,555 to 14,544 – the highest level since housing funding was devolved to the London mayor in 2012.
This means 14% of GLA-funded affordable homes started in 2018/19 had three or more bedrooms, compared with 23% in 2017/18.
The figures also show that GLA did not fund a single home with three bedrooms or more in the boroughs of Richmond upon Thames and Merton.
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The GLA Conservatives accused London mayor Sadiq Khan of “deprioritising families”.
Mr Khan’s housing strategy does not include a target for delivering family-sized homes – unlike the previous strategies in 2010 and 2014 of the then-mayor, the Conservatives’ Boris Johnson.
Mr Boff said: “Lasting damage will be done to London if it continues to become a family-free zone – we desperately need thousands more homes that have three or more bedrooms.
“Against this backdrop, it is extraordinary that Sadiq Khan has decided to remove a family-sized homes target from his housing strategy.
“Make no mistake, this severe drop in the number of homes has come about as a result of this senseless decision to de-prioritise families.”
But the mayor argued that government restrictions on the GLA’s affordable housing programme mean it is heavily weighted towards shared ownership homes, which are more likely to be one- or two-bedroom.
A spokesperson for Mr Khan said: “Government rules restrict how the mayor can use affordable housing investment in London, and these rules favour one- and two-bedroom homes over family-sized ones.
“The mayor will keep making the case to ministers for more family-sized social housing, and last year he got more than three times the number of social rent homes under way than the rest of England combined.”
