Mayor allocates funds to build 1000s more low cost homes for Londoners

London boroughs and housing associations were today given a huge boost as the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, allocated almost half a billion pounds to over 50 housing providers to build thousands of new affordable homes in the capital.

An additional £404m has today been allocated under the Mayor’s ambitious plans to increase house building, which also include funding for the London Housing Bank and Housing Zones as part of an overall £1.25bn package to deliver 45,000 affordable homes by 2018. Today’s allocations will see almost half of London’s boroughs run their own development programme with funding from City Hall and 11 housing associations running large scale construction programmes of over 500 homes each.

These latest allocations will unlock a total investment of £4.23bn into house building in the capital. Of the 54 providers receiving funding, Notting Hill Housing Trust have won the largest allocation with £59.3m to deliver 2,250 homes. Fifteen boroughs in all corners of the capital are also benefiting with Waltham Forest receiving £9.7m to deliver 387 homes, while in Lambeth 303 homes will be delivered with an investment of £10.9m. For the first time the Greater London Authority is also making an allocation to Grainger Trust, a significant private landlord active since 1912, which has been allocated £5.6m to deliver 195 homes.

In addition, the Mayor is taking forward five bids for a portion of a further £85m to establish an innovative revolving fund, that could see up to 5,000 homes built over a longer-period by ‘recycling’ investment. The revolving fund bids, including one from the Big Issue Invest and another from Mill Group, are part of the Mayor’s drive to attract wider sources of investment to support house building and develop longer-term funding packages with individual providers.

The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson said: “The only way to address the huge demand for housing and tackle the 30 year back log of under supply is to build more homes. We’ve worked closely with expert housing providers to ensure this funding will deliver much needed low cost homes across the capital. These latest funds, together with innovative measures to unlock land and development being pioneered by City Hall, will produce thousands more good quality affordable homes for Londoners to rent and buy. We will continue to work with the Government, developers and investors to drive forward and deliver the thousands of homes needed in the capital.”

The Mayor is on course to deliver more affordable completions this financial year than at any other point since 1980 as part of his pledge to build 100,000 affordable homes over two terms, with over 76,000 completed so far. Over this investment period, over 4,000 housing schemes will have been built with support from City Hall to deliver more affordable housing for Londoners.

Since taking on almost 700 hectares of surplus public land in 2012, the Mayor has already moved 87 per cent of it into development. There is capacity for thousands more homes on strategic public land across the capital, ripe for development, and the Mayor is lobbying the Government for increased powers to take sites forward far more quickly and create high quality and affordable homes hard working Londoners need.