Fresh doubt has been thrown on Sadiq Khan’s ability to hit his housing targets by “staggering” figures showing how almost half the proposed new homes in London do not get built despite winning planning permission.
An analysis of all housing developments of at least 10 houses and flats that were approved by councils in 2015 found that work had started on only 54 per cent of them within three years.
Almost 57,500 homes were given consent that year but by the end of 2018 construction was only under way on 30,819, or 46 per cent, the same proportion as in the previous year.
The number of applications fell last year to 65,673, down 17 per cent on 2017 and the first drop since 2014, although the number of permissions rose.
Ian Tasker, director at consultants Grant Thornton UK, which carried out the analysis, said: “London is in the midst of an extreme housing crisis and we are continuing to fall seriously short of the level of house-building needed to reach the Mayor’s target of 66,000 new homes a year.
“Losing one in every two new homes within the planning process for the second year running is staggering and a decrease in the number of planning applications this year is only likely to make this worse.
“It is clear that uncertainty in the market has taken its toll and, while a significant increase in permissions is a welcome sign, without dramatic change and more direct intervention to find out why we are failing to substantially increase this output, we will never fix our broken housing market.”
The problem appears to be starkest in the larger and most complex schemes. Of the 94,528 homes that had consent in developments of more than 500 units, only 36,029, or 38 per cent were under construction three years later.
The figures also show that only 5,230 affordable homes were completed last year, down 30 per cent on 2017. However, the number of affordable homes given planning permission jumped almost three fold to 22,277. The Mayor has pledged to start work on 116,000 new affordable homes by 2022.
A spokesman for Mr Khan said: “The Mayor has always put affordable housing ahead of luxury flats, and this independent analysis is solid evidence that his approach is working. Last year the Mayor got more new council homes under way in London than we have seen for 34 years.”
They called on the Government to give the capital “the step change in investment and powers we need to truly fix the housing crisis”.
