Mayor has only started 1,600 homes in 6 months

New housing figures have revealed today that the Mayor has only started 1,634 affordable homes in the past six months. The housing figures show that housebuilding has plummeted dramatically on Sadiq Khan's watch this year despite construction sites being able to open for most of that time. These startlingly low figures follow years of sluggish housebuilding under Sadiq Khan. Despite receiving an unprecedented grant of £4.82 billion to start building 116,000 affordable homes by 2022, the Mayor started fewer than half of these homes in four years. Earlier this year due to coronavirus, the Mayor was granted a year-long extension to his housing programme. If Khan is to deliver the homes he promised by the new deadline of 2023, then City Hall must start building more than 5,000 homes on average every three months.

Andrew Boff AM, GLA Conservative Housing Spokesman, commented: “Despite receiving an unprecedented £4.82 billion grant to start building 116,000 homes by 2022, Sadiq Khan has failed to deliver the homes he promised Londoners. The Mayor was on course to miss this deadline well before coronavirus, and even with a year-long extension, the Mayor will struggle to catch up. 

“After four years, Sadiq Khan hadn’t even started half of those homes, and fewer than 17,000 have been completed. Coronavirus was always going to slow down housebuilding, but Londoners will wonder why Sadiq Khan failed to build many more homes when times were good.

“Londoners desperately need the Mayor to treat housebuilding as a sprint rather than a marathon. Not only is Sadiq Khan’s inability to deliver new homes letting down the millions of Londoners struggling to get on the housing ladder, but it is also jeopardising our city’s economic recovery.”