Sadiq Khan claims council housebuilding starts ‘highest for 34 years’

London mayor Sadiq Khan has claimed his investment policies have increased council housebuilding starts in the capital to their highest level in more than 30 years.

Statistics released by the Greater London Authority (GLA) covering affordable home starts funded by affordable housing programmes under the capital’s mayor show that a total of 14,544 such homes were started in 2018/19, more than double the 7,189 built in the last year of Boris Johnson’s mayorship.

Exceeding the government’s own 14,000 target, this was more than any year since City Hall took control of housing investment in London in 2012, said Khan (pictured).

Homes started for social rent numbered 3,991, again the highest since 2012, while construction started on 1,916 council homes.

Pointing to housing ministry data (see table 253) the London mayor said the 1,916 figure was the highest since 1984/85, when it was 1,990.

The GLA said Khan had secured £4.8bn from central government to start building 116,000 homes in the capital by 2022.

Khan said of the latest figures: “My Building Council Homes for Londoners programme has made huge progress already – with more council homes started than in any year since 1985.

“Councils are beginning to build again after decades of their hands being tied behind their backs, but national government needs to match our ambition and determination to deliver the homes Londoners so urgently need.”

Khan said the GLA received only a fraction of the affordable housing investment needed in London.

“Ministers must make a real step-change in the funding and powers we have in London if we are to truly turn around the capital’s housing crisis,” he said.

Despite Khan’s upbeat claims Conservative assembly member Andrew Boff said the mayor’s housing record during his first three years in office “pales into insignificance compared to the track record of his predecessor”.

Boff said Boris Johnson started more than 43,000 homes between 2008 and 2011 despite having much less financial support from the government.

“Far from breaking records, these annual figures are dwarfed by Boris’s performance in 2010/11, when he started 16,351 homes,” Boff said.

“Questions have to be asked about whether the Mayor’s figures can be trusted. Khan has today admitted that his stats from 2016/17 were wrong and we know that 10 percent of the affordable housing starts in 2017/18 were actually re-starts from the previous year. How can we be sure that the Mayor isn’t cooking the books again this time?”