Green candidate for Hackney mayor: affordable homes target cut came as surprise to London councils

As well as standing for mayor, the Dalston councillor is also standing again in that ward. Ms Garbett spent over a decade working as an NHS commissioner, before being elected to the London Assembly in 2024.

There, she has worked alongside party leader Zack Polanski to challenge the Metropolitan Police on discriminatory policing practices, and recently co-authored her party’s controversial drugs policy. The policy calls for an approach to drugs based on public health rather than criminal justice, where Class A drugs would be legalised in a regulated form.

But it is housing that has been front and centre of much of Ms Garbett’s local election campaign.

“It’s the number-one issue that comes up in our council surgeries, the number-one issue that comes up on the doorstep, everything from housing repairs to the price of rent, to leaseholder service charges,” she says.

“So locally, we’re talking about fixing the homes we’ve got, and trying to do the most that we can to build the homes that we need. And obviously we’re focused on affordable homes and accessible homes in that way, like genuinely affordable homes.”

Among Hackney social tenants, the repairs service has been a recurrent issue, she adds.

“We talked to people about [our] housing repairs service. Obviously Hackney had the ombudsman report last year, and people feel that, right?”

Ms Garbett is talking about Hackney Council’s performance-related bonus scheme, which may have created a “perverse incentive” for operatives to mark repair jobs as ‘complete’ to meet targets.

The Housing Ombudsman’s look into Hackney Council also uncovered that “system limitations” only allowed repairs to be recorded as either complete or ‘refused access’, which prevented accurate reporting.

One of the cases investigated involved a resident who experienced flooding after the job was marked ‘complete’, even though the repairs had not been carried out. Hackney later found that around 33% of its recorded repair visits were repeats.

While problems with existing stock persist, another big issue is getting spades in the ground and new homes built.

At the end of last year, the government published plans for a set of emergency measures to resuscitate housebuilding in London. Developers building in the capital can now opt for a ‘fast-track’ planning route with a target of just 20% affordable homes, rather than the current threshold of 35%.

The new “time-limited” route, which will only run until March 2028, will also allow developers to access grant funding for around half of the affordable homes in a scheme, with bids to be submitted by registered providers or local authorities.

“Locally, we’re talking about fixing the homes we’ve got, and trying to do the most that we can to build the homes that we need”

The measures, which are subject to consultation, are an attempt to kick-start development in the capital, where housebuilding rates have crashed this year.

Just 2,158 private homes were started in London in the first half of 2025, according to consultancy Molior – the lowest figure since 2009.

Affordable starts were even lower during this period as work began on just over 1,200 affordable homes.

Ms Garbett says: “I was really concerned when I heard and saw this coming out from the mayor of London. Our framing as the Greens is that they’re kind of sticking to a developer-led solution that got us into the crisis.”

In March this year, mayor of London Sir Sadiq Khan confirmed an additional package of measures to kick-start housebuilding in the capital, including temporary relief for developers from the Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL).

The charge levied on major developers to help local authorities fund infrastructure projects will now be suspended in London on eligible schemes that commence before March 2030.

Among the other measures brought in by the mayor, alongside the Westminster government, will be the removal of guidance on density from the GLA, meaning sites could see more homes built on them.

Ms Garbett says she asked the mayor about what modelling had been done to prove that the emergency measures will deliver the affordable homes the capital needs. She adds that council officers have heard developers wanted a lower figure of 10% affordable housing.

“I was like, ‘can I see the modelling [on the affordable starts reduction]?’ Because they’re obviously getting rid of CIL as well, which I think is a really big concern locally, and they just didn’t have it.

“It just felt like they basically had some conversations with developers, and I don’t think they really engaged any local authorities. I think it came as a real surprise to them.”

Inside Housing has asked the GLA if it can provide any modelling that was done ahead of introducing the emergency measures.

The latest More in Common ‘MRP’ poll of the capital this week put Labour on 28% with the Greens on 20%, and found that the insurgent party is on course to win the highest vote share for the first time in a London borough.

“[Temporary accommodation] is one of those things where even if you’re not affected, you just really feel the injustice of it”

According to the poll, Mr Polanski’s party is now the most popular party in Hackney, leading by three points, and is within two points of Labour in Islington, Lambeth and Lewisham.

Ms Garbett featured in a latest campaign video walking around Hackney in a burgundy jumper alongside Mr Polanski on Sunday, where she pledged to “speak up” on behalf of residents and “hold landlords to account”.

Ms Garbett tells Inside Housing she was hopeful with the new government putting £39bn into the Social and Affordable Homes Programme, but she points out that the UK government is projected to spend over £70bn on housing support payments to private landlords between 2021 and 2026, primarily through Local Housing Allowance (LHA). 

This subsidy, intended to help low-income tenants, is six times higher than the previous £11.5bn invested in new affordable housing over the same period. Ms Garbett says that the money is coming out of communities and into private landlords, while at the same time, councils are trying to procure private rented stock for use as temporary accommodation (TA), further restricting supply and pushing up prices.

“It’s interesting how temporary accommodation comes up on the doorstep. It’s either from people who have experienced it themselves, or through youth services and places like that,” she says.

“It’s one of those things where even if you’re not affected, you just really feel the injustice of it. So in our manifesto, we are committing to trying to bring more [TA] in-house, but obviously we need to be trying to build the homes we need.”