PM intervenes in London housing in challenge to mayor

Rishi Sunak says he hopes the review of the mayor's London Plan will accelerate house building

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has said he has had to "step in" to help build affordable houses in the capital because the mayor has "failed to deliver the homes that London needs".

Mr Sunak has announced more than £200m of affordable homes funding for London.

He has also given the mayor a deadline of autumn to agree changes to the London Plan before the Levelling Up secretary may intervene.

Labour's Mr Khan said the announcement was "pathetic gesture politics".

He added: "The Tories have a miserable record of continually blocking badly needed new housing in London across the board while Labour in London has exceeded the government's own affordable housing targets."

He said they had also "delivered higher council home-building than the rest of England combined and built more homes of any kind than since the 1930s".

Speaking from a housing development in London, Mr Sunak said the new funding for London would help drive densification and regenerate unused brownfield land.

Downing Street will also review the mayor's multi-decade London Plan, which is intended to guide the development of the city over the next 20-25 years.

Mr Sunak said Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove would work with the mayor and the Greater London Authority (GLA) to look at opportunities to accelerate residential development on inner city brownfield industrial sites.

He added Mr Khan had been set a deadline of three to four months to agree to changes to the plan before Mr Gove considered whether to use his ministerial powers to intervene.

What has the government announced?

The government has committed more funding for London

In its plan to boost affordable housing in London, the government has committed:

• £150m for housebuilding that will go directly to London boroughs, bypassing the Greater London Authority

• £53m investment to Old Oak West - a project that will deliver more than 9,000 new homes in the area neighbouring the £1.7bn Old Oak Common HS2 station

• Extra support for the regeneration of old social housing estates that will come from an already committed £1bn of funding by the government for Affordable Housing in the Capital

• Launch a review into housebuilding in the mayor's London Plan

• Supporting Docklands 2.0 - an eastward extension along the Thames of the London Docklands development, which has the potential to create up to 65,000 homes across Thamesmead, Beckton and Silvertown

In May, Mr Khan said he had met his own housebuilding target for affordable new homes in the capital.

He said 63,817 affordable homes were completed between 2015-16 and 2022-23, and that 116,000 affordable homes were started during that time.

This includes numbers from the final year of previous mayor Boris Johnson's term in office in 2015-16 when construction of 7,189 affordable homes got under way.

Housebuilding numbers

Mr Khan said that under his leadership, more homes had been completed in the capital than at any time since the 1930s.

However, the government says London's own local housing plan, that requires 52,000 new homes to be built a year, is not being achieved.

It says only about 30,000 have been built in recent years, and the latest indicator suggests only 21,000 new homes began being developed last year.

Sadiq Khan says 40,870 new homes were delivered in London in 2019/20, the most since the 1930s

Mr Sunak said: "Too few of these homes are being built in London, and for too many Londoners the dream of owning their own home is beyond reach.

"This has driven up house prices and made it harder for families to get on the housing ladder in the first place."

In recent days, the Tories have set out a range of reforms and proposals designed to boost house-building in England.

But Mr Khan says the party has a track record of blocking and obstructing new homes in the capital.

He blamed the Tories for delaying the London Plan by over a year with objections, cutting affordable housing funding and having "diverted essential infrastructure funding away from London in the name of 'levelling up'".

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