Meet Tom Copley, the man delivering London’s housing plan

The Mews Housing development is attractive to Mr Copley for more than its aesthetics. It was originally intended to provide 100% shared ownership housing.

But Newham switched the plan to include 50% social rented housing after a change in local politics. This is a move Mr Copley approves of. He says there is “a place for shared ownership”, but he adds: “I really want affordable housing partners to be delivering social rent wherever possible because that’s what we really need.”

The development also speaks to something that is starting to happen in far greater numbers under Mr Khan and Mr Copley’s stewardship: the development of new council housing by London boroughs.

“I think it’s the proudest achievement of Sadiq’s administration, to be honest with you,” says Mr Copley. “We are seeing what we call a new renaissance in terms of council homebuilding.”

Mr Khan opened a specific grant programme for councils in May 2018, called Building Council Homes for Londoners. The scheme proved enormously popular with London’s town halls: just over £1bn was allocated in an initial funding round to pay for almost 15,000 new council homes. Many of these represented the first time boroughs had built their own new homes in decades.

But Mr Copley says this capital funding is not all that has helped to turn the tide. The Homebuilding Capacity Fund, paid for through business rate retention, provided funding to “essentially tool up and rescale after decades of not being able to do this”. And now a land-buying fund will allow councils to compete for new sites, as well as building out land they already own.

“I think what we’ve shown in London is that it’s possible. I mean, pretty much every authority in London has some sort of programme with us now,” he says. “Last year, more new council homes were started in London than in the rest of the country combined.”

Mr Copley was born in a Derbyshire village, but grew up in leafy Wiltshire in the South West of England. His housing situation was comfortable as a child: his father, a schoolteacher, was able to afford to buy a home.

“I very much understand and can relate to people’s experience in the private rented sector. In 2016, I had to move twice in one year with all the associated costs. It’s an absolute scam”

“It’s an interesting contrast with how things are now,” he says. “As a young teacher, my dad had his own place, he had a study, where he could do marking. But for my friends who are teachers today, they are renting a room somewhere and doing the marking on their beds.”

Politics has always been part of Mr Copley’s life: after a degree in politics at the University of Nottingham, he worked for anti-racism charity Searchlight. From there, he became a local organiser for the Labour Party in north London, was selected to stand as an assembly member in 2012 and became the youngest ever elected member of the London Assembly when he won a seat aged 27 (he is now 37 and a veteran of City Hall politics).

Mr Copley has been a tenant in London – he rented privately until 2021 before managing to buy. “I very much understand and can relate to people’s experience in the private rented sector,” he says. “In 2016, I had to move twice in one year with all the associated costs. It’s an absolute scam.”

Did he use shared ownership to get on the property ladder? “To be honest with you, I didn’t,” he says. “I didn’t need to, I was able to buy outright.”

He insists that this was not a result of “anything against shared ownership”, a housing product that has attracted media criticism because of issues including spiralling, sometimes hidden costs and difficulty selling.

He says he does “fully accept there are issues” with the product, which continues to be a major part of the affordable housing funding in London.

“I do think it’s really, really important that it’s made clear to people what shared ownership involves and that’s why we’ve made certain changes at the [Greater London Authority] to require upfront information for people about what it entails, the rights, the responsibilities, and things like that,” he says.

Inside Housing is meeting Mr Copley shortly after the inquest into the death of two-year-old Awaab Ishak in a damp-ridden housing association property in Rochdale. This came on the back of a run of stories about poor quality in social housing – particularly in London, and many involving organisations Mr Copley funds to build new homes through the mayor’s programmes. What is he saying to these organisations about these issues?

“It is appalling, and there’s no doubt the sector itself collectively has dropped the ball,” he says. “They’ve not been as focused on management and standards as they should be.”

“At the end of the day, we’re not a regulator. But we do, I think, have a responsibility given that we fund these organisations to take a firm line with them where they’re not maintaining their existing stock properly”

Would he consider removing funding from providers that do not meet the housing maintenance standards that he and Mr Khan expect? “We recently wrote to all of our delivery partners, to let them know we’re introducing new funding conditions in our programme relating to management standards,” he says. “Any action we take will be proportionate, but we’re very, very clear with our partners that [funding being taken away] is a very, very real risk for them.”

With some of the recent repairs scandals surrounding two of London’s largest developing housing associations – L&Q and Clarion – would Mr Copley be willing to take this step, even if affordable housing targets were jeopardised as a result of excluding such a large developer of new affordable homes?

“Absolutely,” he says. “At the end of the day, we’re not a regulator. But we do, I think, have a responsibility given that we fund these organisations to take a firm line with them where they’re not maintaining their existing stock properly. And it’s absolutely right for that threat to be hanging over them if they don’t bring their standards up.”

As he asks associations to lift their own performance, what about his own? When Mr Khan was first elected in 2016, he promised Londoners that he would ensure 50% of all new homes built in the city were affordable. In his first term, Mr Copley’s predecessor, Mr Murray, described this ambition as “a marathon, not a sprint”.