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London allocated £1.7bn of grant from previous government announcements
London has today been allocated half of the £3.4bn of additional government cash for affordable housing to 2022, but City Hall warned it is “not nearly enough” to tackle the capital’s housing crisis.
At the Spring Statement today, chancellor Philip Hammond said £1.7bn of affordable housing grant would go to London, to fund a further 26,000 affordable homes.
It expands Sadiq Khan’s housing budget to £4.8bn up to 2022 – 60% of the total £8bn of grant funding the government is providing over this period.
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However, City Hall reacted by saying the funding “does not go anywhere near far enough” to meeting the scale of the capital’s housing crisis.
In a statement it said the cash is around a quarter of the £2.7bn a year it estimates is necessary, and less than half what was spent in 2009/10.
He had aimed to fund the construction of 90,000 affordable homes with the initial £3.15bn, taking the new total to 116,000 by 2021/22.
The cash is understood not to be new money for the housing budget – instead it is London’s allocation of the £2bn for social and affordable housing announced by Theresa May at the Conservative Party conference in October last year, and £1.4bn of additional housing grant announced at the Autumn Statement in November 2016.
It means, effectively, that London will receive half of the total £3.4bn pot provided by this additional funding.
Mr Hammond said the money would be used to build 26,000 additional affordable properties in the capital, including some for social rent.
He said: “London will receive an additional £1.7bn to deliver an additional 26,000 affordable homes, including homes for social rent, taking the total affordable housing delivery in London to over 116,000 by the end of 2020/21.”
Mr Khan added: “While I cautiously welcome the extra investment in genuinely affordable homes… The housing crisis is the capital’s biggest challenge and we are still not seeing the level of investment that we need if we want to tackle it head on.”
Mr Khan’s Affordable Homes Programme funds three tenures of housing for social rent – between £144 per week for one-bed and £187 per week for six or more – shared ownership and London Living Rent, a Rent to Buy product with rents at one-third of median local incomes.
The £1.7bn of funding allocated so far will see 17,000 social rented and 32,000 Living Rent and shared ownership products built.
