Mayor responds to London housebuilding announcement
Mayor of Hackney, Caroline Woodley, responds to the joint announcement by the UK Government and the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, on measures to kickstart housebuilding in London
“In Hackney, we know first hand the challenges that the development sector faces and the need to get homes built. Despite this crisis in construction, we are committed to building new high quality Council homes for social rent and we currently have 956 in planning, acquisition or being built right now in our award winning housing programme.
“We need time to understand the impact of these proposals. However, I’m committed to continuing to prioritise genuinely affordable homes in our own house building programme, maximising social-rent housing in private-led developments, and ensuring projects already in progress honour their commitments on affordability.
“In a borough short on land but with rising waiting lists, rent levels and property prices, it’s vital that as many new homes as possible are made available for those who need it most - at a cost they can afford.”
Mayor of Hackney, Caroline Woodley
Notes to editors
The Council currently has 956 council homes for social rent in design, planning, acquisition or being built in our direct delivery housing programme.
While we welcome an increase in grant rates for new social and London Living Rent homes (to £220,000 and £140,000 respectively) it currently costs over £500,000 to plan and build one council home for social rent in inner London, highlighting the extraordinary challenge the sector faces in getting new affordable homes built.
We also welcome the reduction in ‘nil grant’ affordable homes (the proportion of homes in a scheme that do not receive any grant funding) from as much as 20% down to 10%, which will enable us to secure grant funding for a larger share of the new social and affordable homes we deliver in mixed tenure projects. However, eliminating the nil grant requirement altogether for Council-led projects would further help the viability of new social rented homes.