Culture
Khan's Housing Pledge for London
Culture
Today Sadiq Khan begins his tenure as new Mayor of London. Below, we review his proposed mandate and what this may mean to London's housing market.
As would be expected of any incumbent Mayor, Khans priority will be to deliver more housing for Londoners given the current shortfall of genuinely affordable housing that exist across the capital. Khan has promised to set up an independent agency called “Homes For London” which will be tasked with the role of delivering new homes. Site procurement we are told will come mainly through publicly owned brownfield sites as it is understood that Khan is not keen on high rise developments. Moreover Khan has pledged that councils and local authorities will deliver more social housing with 50% of new properties becoming genuinely affordable to Londoners.Khan will aim to create a new class of properties in which rents are a third of average local wages that will be given priorities to Londoners. He also wishes to set up a not-for-profit lettings agency and create a landlord licencing scheme to further regulate tenancy lengths, rents and property standards.
It will be interesting to see how Khan will be able to reconcile the objective of securing 50% of genuinely affordable housing with that of delivering more housing across the board; there has already been comment from a number of think tanks as well as property consultancy Savills which voiced concerns that there will be a lot more unviable sites at a 50% affordable housing threshold. Khans objectives may be reconciled however through the provision of more housing in outer boroughs. We wish him the best of luck in his new role as Mayor of the greatest city on the planet.
