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Boris Johnson’s boost for affordable housing
Published: 2009-11-30 09:49:26
London’s housing market is to receive a boost from a recent initiative by the Greater London Authority (GLA) and London Development Agency (LDA).
Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, used his Housing Investment Summit to announce that more than 30,000 new homes could be built in the capital on under-used land owned by the GLA.
Johnson wants an audit to be carried out of land across the GLA, including Transport for London and the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority.
Potential development sites will be identified and outside investors invited to join the GLA as shareholders in housing schemes from which future profits would be re-invested in affordable housing for the capital.
According the Mayor: "The GLA is sitting on hundreds of potential housing sites that could be used to build more than 32,000 new homes. To do this we need innovative ideas that will reshape how we invest, build and deliver affordable homes in London and in return I’ll put my land where my mouth is." The scheme is hoped to start by early summer 2010 and is intended to cover as many boroughs as possible. The likelihood, however, is that precise locations won’t be identified until the land audit is completed and this will take several months.
The background to the new initiative comes from current difficulties in raising finance, combined with falling land values and next year's anticipated funding cuts by central government. London desperately needs more affordable housing and Boris Johnson, together with the HCA, wants to speed up the release of public land in packages that can attract institutional and other investors in partnership with the LDA. Sir Bob Kerslake of the HCA and Stuart Fraser of the City of London Corporation's Policy and Resources Committee also spoke at the November Summit in favour of more imaginative schemes for getting private finance to invest in new homes for London.
London's housing problems are also being tackled by the GLA's new Delegated Delivery Scheme providing greater freedom to three boroughs in how they can spend funding from the HCA. Croydon, Hackney and Westminster are piloting this scheme between April 2010 and March 2011. If successful, it will be rolled out after April 2011 to give other London boroughs their own indicative budgets for affordable housing delivery.