2021 Affordable Housing Monitor

The London Assembly Housing Committee has published the annual ‘Affordable Housing Monitor’.



The report this year tracks how the Mayor is delivering affordable homes in London despite the challenges of the pandemic.



Key data in the report include:

• London needs 66,000 new homes each year. 43,000 of those need to be affordable.
• However, a new London Plan was formally published by the Mayor in March 2021, setting a housing target of approximately 52,000 homes per year over ten years.
• In 2020-21 the Mayor started 13,318 affordable homes, exceeding the minimum target of 10,300 for the year, in comparison to 17,256 starts in 2019-20 when the target was 17,000-23,000. This target for 2020-21 reflects the challenges in the housebuilding sector as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
• 9,051 affordable homes were completed in 2020-21 made up of the following tenures: Intermediate – 4,648 (51 per cent), Affordable Rent – 2,167 (24 per cent), Social Rent/London Affordable Rent – 2,208 (24 per cent), Affordable Tenure, type TBC – 28 (0.3 per cent)
• In London, 8.3 per cent of households are overcrowded. Around 35 per cent of children in social housing and 27 per cent of those in private rented housing live in overcrowded conditions.

The Committee has made a number of key recommendations:

• The Mayor should work with partners to improve reporting on the number of bedrooms in homes delivered under the AHP, ensuring that all homes are accounted for in the published data.
• The Greater London Authority (GLA) should publish comprehensive information on relative losses and gains of all affordable housing in London, including affordable housing not funded by the Mayor.
• The GLA’s home starts and completions data should clearly differentiate about what is being delivered under each AHP (2016-23 or 2021-26).
• The Mayor should work to improve data on overcrowding pressures in London, and publish quarterly updates on how much funding has been allocated under each AHP, broken down by tenure and the number of bedrooms in each home.
• The Mayor should collate and publish data on the number of existing and planned homes specifically earmarked for key workers.