Sadiq Khan announces plans to build 10,000 new council homes with government funding

Sadiq Khan has announced ambitions for construction to begin on 10,000 new council homes to be built in the next four years.

The Mayor of London's programme would be the first in the history of City Hall dedicated purely to building new council housing.

The move is an attempt to counter the dramatic decline in housebuilding by London's councils over the last decades.

London's councils built just 2,100 homes over the last seven years, an average of just 300 homes per year, or roughly 10 council homes per London borough every year.

He plans to use a fund of £1.67 billion which he secured from central government during the Spring Statement to build the homes.

This contrasts starkly with the 1970s, where at its peak, London councils built 20,000 new homes a year. All the while, there are tens of thousands of Londoners on council housing waiting lists, says City Hall.

Increasing local authority house building was a key Labour manifesto pledge in the 2017 General Elections.

Sadiq Khan slammed the Tory government for not giving councils the powers to ensure that council homes sold to tenants at discounted rates under the Right to Buy scheme were replaced with new housing.

According to Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government figures 306,000 council houses were sold to their tenants at a discounted rate since the policy was implemented in the 1980s.

However since that period, just 62,000 social rent homes have been built by councils.

Sadiq Khan, said: “I grew up on a council estate and I know first-hand the vital role social housing plays in London. Council homes for social rent bind our city together, and they have been built thanks to the ambition of London’s councils over many decades.

“Back in the 1970s, when I was growing up, London councils built thousands of social homes, providing homes for families and generations of Londoners.

"But the government has turned its back on local authorities, severely hampering their ambition to build by cutting funding and imposing arbitrary restrictions on borrowing.

“I want to help councils get back to building homes for Londoners again, and I’m doing that with support from the £1.67bn fund I secured from government to help get 10,000 new homes underway over the next four years."

Waltham Forest, Lewisham and Newham boroughs have already struck deals with City Hall to use the funding grants to build more homes in their boroughs.

No west London local authorities have signed up to the scheme yet.