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London boroughs bid £1.4bn for borrowing programme

London councils bid nearly three times their allocation for a programme offering extra borrowing capacity for housebuilding, it has been revealed.

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Picture: Getty
Picture: Getty
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London boroughs bid £1.4bn for borrowing programme #ukhousing

At the 2017 Autumn Budget, chancellor Philip Hammond announced that local authorities across England would be invited to apply for a £1bn of additional Housing Revenue Account (HRA) borrowing headroom.

Half the spending was reserved for London’s 28 stock-retaining councils.

Just three days after the bidding closed, prime minister Theresa May unveiled surprise plans to scrap the HRA cap altogether, with town halls able to borrow freely for new housing from late October.

 


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Just four councils – Enfield, Greenwich, Hackney and Tower Hamlets – applied for more than £510m between them, the entire London budget.

Ministers have said the huge interest in the £1bn programme informed the decision to remove the HRA cap altogether.

The scale of bidding from councils outside London has not yet been made public.

London councils also submitted bids totalling more than £1.5bn of grant for the GLA’s £1bn council housebuilding programme, which was allocated in October with 14,700 new homes expected.

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