Target for City Hall-funded council house starts ‘exceeded’, says London mayor

The London mayor’s office has announced 11,061 City Hall-funded council homes have been started since 2018, which is more than Sadiq Khan’s election manifesto pledge of 10,000 by the end of this financial year.

City Hall has said there is a “resurgence” of council housebuilding in the capital and that annual starts of council houses have increased six-fold from 774 in 2016.

This is the highest level of council house building in London since the 1970s, the mayor’s office claimed.

However, according to the official figures, council housing starts from April 2020 up to yesterday were, at 3,216, 6% down on the figure for the full 2020/21 financial year, with just a week of the financial year to go.

Khan said: “I grew up on a council estate in south London so I know the vital role council housing plays by providing security for families. That’s why I’ve reversed the years of declining council home building and we are once again seeing these vital homes return to every corner of our city.”

More than three-quarters (3,411) of council homes started in London in 2020-21 received funding from the mayor and most of the rented homes allocated funding from the mayor’s Affordable Homes Programme 2021-26 will be delivered by local authorities.

Khan added: “In London today, we’re not just building more council homes, we’re building better too. The new generation of council homes are some of the best that’s ever been built: modern, sustainable and fit for the twenty-first century.”

Funding from City Hall comes from a combination of its Affordable Homes Programme, Building Council Homes for Londoners and rough sleeping accommodation programmes.

In response to Khan’s claims, the Conservative Party at the Greater London Assembly said on Twitter the Labour mayor had presided over “six years of failure” on housing, in which he had been given £9bn in funding to build 151,000 homes, of which just 70,000 had been started and 40,000 completed.

See below for council house starts for the last four years.