SME builders urged to bid for 'small London sites' housing schemes

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan is encouraging small builders to bid to build nearly 100 homes being lined up for small sites across the capital.

The latest group of Transport for London sites – in Bexley, Ealing, Hounslow, Lambeth, Newham, Richmond and Waltham Forest – will deliver between one and 30 homes, up to 90 in all.

The homes will form part of the mayor of London’s small sites’ programme and go towards Khan’s target of 50% affordable housing across the portfolio of sites to be used by the transport body for housing.

At Arbuthnot Lane, Bexley, 100% of the homes will be affordable, with Newham Way (Newham), Atkins Road (Lambeth) and a car park in North Ealing offering 50% affordable.

The remaining four sites will deliver between one and nine homes, with affordable housing requirements following the local council’s policy for sites with fewer than 10 homes.

The mayor said London’s housebuilding sector was “dominated by a small number of larger developers that build the vast majority of homes across the capital”.

Khan wants to make small plots of publicly-owned land accessible to small and medium-sized builders – those which build fewer than 100 homes a year – and has created what the mayor’s office called “a simple bidding process with standardised contracts”.

TfL launched 10 small sites across seven boroughs as a pilot programme in February 2018, receiving 134 bids from 80 organisations to build homes on the available land.

James Murray, deputy mayor for housing and residential development, said the mayor’s ‘small sites, small builders’ programme had “proved very popular with small and medium-sized homebuilders and community-led housing groups”.

Murray said London had become “over reliant” on large developers and smaller firms should be able to play their part through such schemes.