If Labour is no longer in favour of building affordable housing, what exactly is the party for, asks James Ford
Housebuilding in London has ground to a halt. Report after report, statistic after statistic has shown that the number of homes being started and completed in the capital is falling way below the government target of 88,000 new homes a year that is required. The latest report from the Centre for Policy Studies found that in the financial year 2024-25, only 4,170 new homes were started (less than five per cent of the government target). Housing starts per capita in the first quarter of this year were the lowest in London compared to any other region. Data from consultancy Molior projects that the number of new homes under construction in the capital could fall to just 15,000 by 2027 (compared to around 60,000 in 2015-20).
But don’t worry – just like Baldrick, Labour has a cunning plan. Housing secretary Steve Reed and Mayor Sadiq Khan are, according to media reports, considering dropping the requirement that 35 per cent of homes built in the capital must be affordable to just 20 per cent. For reference, during Boris Johnson’s tenure at City Hall, affordable homes accounted for between 22 per cent and 26 per cent of completed new builds – so this new goal is not just much, much lower than what Sadiq Khan promised, but less even than a Conservative mayor managed to deliver.
Labour still won’t reach its housing targets
Dropping affordability requirements, coupled with the many other pro-planning reform measures that the government is proposing (like allowing building on the green belt), are likely to boost the number of homes being built, but will they be enough to achieve Labour’s lofty targets, and at what human cost?
Whilst developers will no doubt be rubbing their hands together about the increased profitability of their housing schemes, other people are horrified. Shelter has calculated that London is currently the worst region in the UK for the number of households (73,000) and children (97,140) that are living in temporary accommodation, costing London’s councils £5.5m a day. These figures are up seven per cent since Labour took office and the latest plans will surely see those figures – and the bill that local authorities must shoulder – grow further.
Apart from the thousands of Londoners left to live in temporary accommodation, there is another group that will be bitterly betrayed by this imminent announcement: Labour voters. You wait 14 years for a shot at power – to address gross inequalities, to right the perceived wrongs of the past and to build that fairer society you are always promising – and, within just 18 months of an historic landslide win, that great reforming government you had hoped for turns around and cuts the building of affordable houses almost in half.
The changes that are being mooted are unlikely to radically boost the number of homes being built by enough to hit the government’s sky-high targets (and missing this year’s housing target just increases the numbers that need to be built in each successive year). If Labour can’t – or won’t – build homes for London’s poorest citizens at the same rate that Boris Johnson managed, what exactly is the party for? What would Herbert Morrison make of a Labour housing strategy that prioritises developers’ profits ahead of reducing the housing waiting lists?
If Labour voters did not already have enough buyers’ remorse about the shambolic regime that they have imposed upon the nation, then the moment when the government they elected consciously decides to let more children be homeless in order to line developers’ pockets is likely to be a sobering slap in the face.
James Ford was an adviser to former Mayor of London Boris Johnson