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Hackney ramps up social housing build targets after funding from Sadiq Khan
A London council has vowed to boost the number of homes it is building for social rent using funding from mayor Sadiq Khan.
Hackney Council said it will build 104 more “genuinely affordable” council homes across eight planned developments after receiving approval last night from its cabinet.
The authority will use £10m it was awarded from the London mayor’s Building Council Homes for Londoners programme to fund the move.
A year ago, City Hall unveiled plans for the new grant scheme aimed at helping councils build 10,000 new homes over the next four years.
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Hackney said that without the grant the 104 homes would have been for shared ownership or sold outright to cover the costs of building new council housing.
Philip Glanville, mayor of Hackney, said the funding is “vital”.
He added: “Sadiq Khan’s support for council housebuilding means we have the long-term financial security to invest in finding new sites to develop homes – demonstrating the real effect direct funding can have in transforming our residents’ lives.”
On top of this, an extra £35.5m of funding will be used to help build 2,000 more new homes by 2022 on sites yet to be identified, the council said.
Hackney Council is already building 2,000 homes, with around half of these aiming to be for “genuinely affordable social rent”, or shared ownership, when completed by 2022.
The authority has also taken advantage of the mayor of London’s offer to ringfence income from Right to Buy sales to reinvest in future programmes. Hackney said this would allow it to “plan for the long term”.
Earlier this month, a report by the council claimed there is a “dishonourable culture” among housing contractors.