Funding London’s priorities

The biggest priority for London in my opinion is housing and the massive waitlist for housing.

• Push through planning applications to double the amount of social housing available. Preventing NIMBYs from blocking social housing applications. All 2026 planning applications should be about increasing housing. We don’t need more empty commercial premises, more luxury student housing, more empty luxury flats. We need more social housing.
• Tackle the empty flat situation by charging empty flat owners 10x their council tax to incentivise them to sell/rent their properties
• Particularly discourage overseas property investors who are pushing up house prices by reducing housing supply, and those who are laundering money through shell companies using a London property as a façade.
• Ongoing defaulting on council tax payments should result in evictions and seizure of property for those not on benefits.
• Tackle underoccupied housing by incentivising those with underoccupied housing to take lodgers to reduce their council tax bills or improve their benefit payments.
• Get rough sleepers, beggars off the street and public transport and reduce the social housing waitlist by half.
• Put rent caps for social housing properties
• Reduce practices of dodgy landlords to stuff their properties full of immigrants/students etc to earn more. If the landlord owns a 3-bedroom house, there shouldn’t be more than 4-6 people in there, including children and pets.
• Get people who let their homes become derelict and full of hoarding from decades of neglect have priority mental health care.

The second biggest priority I think is mental health care, which wasn’t mentioned in the survey at all.

• Some physical health symptoms stem from mental health issues. Those need to be recognised, diagnosed and addressed properly. Doing so will reduce the benefits burden significantly and improve the long-term sickness issues. The mental health services on the NHS are severely underfunded and social services are a failed agency. Note

The most pressing matter is the environment and Climate Change. The Mayor could lead the way on this, for example, by only having plant-based food at Mayoral events, leading by example. We also need more wildlife spaces in London, to increase biodiversity - more parks and wildlife corridors and more trees, and less polluted canals and rivers. Perhaps more community gardens could be set up. If the transport is better, then less people would use cars - the public transport here is one of the most expensive in Europe. Fees need to be reduced as well as an increase in buses/tubes. 

I also think homelessness needs to be made more of a priority. Perhaps there could also be an extra tax on empty residential properties, ie if someone hasn't used it for more than 6 months, then it could either be taxed heavily or if over a year, taken over by the government. Perhaps an increase in homeless shelters and day shelters too? And more social housing so that homeless people have a better chance to find somewhere permanent to live.

Stop subsidizing Councils incapable of managing their budgets. Voters elected Labour Councils, live with consequences. 

Everything is important, what is not clear is the role of the Mayor in all these areas. Are other involved and can they do more like business and A1. Assume the government has a big influence through planning on housing and rent controls etc

You need to fix the housing crisis - it is real poverty for many in work and it puts up costs for business.

Forget spending on stopping climate change  - it won't be stopped now. China, Russia and the US don't care about it so it will happen and the UK will freeze - which will make the housing crisis even worse.

Start replacing old terrace housing with factory built and fitted out  flats with Swedish grade insulation and low energy use. Sell them at the market rate and watch the rate drop as supply catches up.

"Affordable" housing means 'substandard' by any standard except the middle of a housing crisis. 

Just replace old terraces with blocks of "low energy waste" flats - and sell them at the market rate.

The owners will make a profit and you won't overload the infrastructure.

Prices will come down as supply increases and we won't be left with a city of shoebox homes.

The Mayor's support for cycling is causing huge problems for pedestrians. Lime and Forest bikes are scattered all over pavements blocking access for pedestrians that are disabled or for those wheeling prams, puschairs or mobility vehicles. Cycle riders jump red traffic lights and ride through when pedestrians are crossing at the correct time. The improvements to cycle ways are at the expense of motorists who pay through their vehicle taxes but cyclists pay no such tax nor do they have insurance when they injure people or cause damage to vehicles through their carelessness. There needs to be a change to the law to make cyclists  accountable for their actions especially as electric bikes are much heavier than pedal bikes and can travel at speeds greater than motor vehicles are allowed to on many of London's roads. Cyclists need to learn the Highway code, need to have insurance and cycles need to have some form of registration.

With regards to transport fares- rather than throwing around free bus passes like confetti, how about making 11-17 year old passes term time only, 6am to 6pm, not including weekends. On my local school run, with my 5 year old daughter, she has actually been given a black eye 4 TIMES in 18 months by unruly kids pushing and shoving on buses- and acting so entitled. Teenagers aren't the only ones needing to use transport- and I pay nearly £30 a week to travel with my child, only to face abuse and physical threats on buses.

The issue with such a survey is it is very broad and open to multiple interpretation. Just because something is important, does not mean you need to spend more money on it, or you create new rules and burdens. It may just be that you actually improve the effectiveness of existing policies by ensuring they are followed or the punishment of a breach is severe. 
My opinion is that the mayor should not be spending any money on anything that is a national requirement - example, on climate change: the mayor is not responsible for subsidising greener homes or electric vehicles, or electric vehicle charging points. This cost should be borne by the central government. The mayor should spend it political muscle to ensure the central government spends on it, or devolve the tax collection (e.g. energy levies collected from household bills in London), so the mayor can allocate this to the scheme. 

The role of the mayor is to reduce red tape, encourage infrastructure development, and spend money on local culture, and community development. Focus on the deregulation (not increased regulation), and reducing cost of doing business (not increasing cost). 

The two big policies that the mayor has directly enacted that is negative for London - ULEZ and Congestion charge increased cost. There is no improvement in public infrastructure or alternatives - the underground in outer london is just as bad as it was 10 years ago - the piccadilly line upgrade has been delayed every year and it remains shut; metropolitan line continues to have consistent signal failures and irregular and infrequent services due to shortage of trains, drivers, etc; same with a number of overground lines. Yet, if you drive into London because of lack of efficient alternatives you are penalised. So business will continue to move out. These are policies directly in the Mayor's control, and he has to take responsibility for his failure. Policing is another failure, and directly at the feet of the mayor. 

The proposed pedestrianisation of Oxford Street is a discriminates against those  who are not fully ambulant.  It will prevent them from visiting the area.

The entrenched privilege of London's homeowners, especially those in houses rather than apartments, is truely disgusting. 

I don't think they know how much damage they're doing to the city and the whole of the UK by blocking the building of denser housing.

We absolutely need higher taxes on houses (rather than apartments) to force them out. Getting rid of the single home inheritance tax exemption and the other tax property loopholes would be great too.

Demolishing houses in London to build mid and high rises is the most important way to create opportunity in the UK. This affects a whole generation of young people.

Some lovely stuff here but some items eg  supporting space for artists seem like ‘nice to haves’ when so many Londoners are really struggling with the cost of living.

The GLA share of council tax has gone up a lot over the last 10 years plus the Government's fairer funding adjustments will hike up the council share of council tax for Londoners who are already struggling.

better to trim back some of these luxuries and hand money back to band A-D council tax payers who will appreciate the support. 

Very surprised to see the cost of living completely missing here.

I do strongly support more police but the mayor must do more to publicly support our hard working officers 

Some things eg supporting carnivals will be better delivered by organising private sector sponsorship. This already happens with pride and the marathons/cycling. Notting Hill springs to mind as something that should be funded privately.

I strongly support more buses in Outer London. The mayor needs to cut congestion to improve bus speed and reliability. The pedestrian crossings popping up everywhere really don’t help. 
I also support keeping the fares down, the fares are amongst the highest in the world but the service is far from it.

Two threads strike me as most important: 

Building more homes, especially affordable homes suitable for families.

Reducing reliance on the private car with its effects on pollution, danger, time-loss through congestion and domination of public spaces.

I moved to London this year: wanted to see what all the fuss was about.

The city doesn't seem to offer much opportunity in exchange for it's high prices. I will probably give it one more year and then move to Manchester where I might actually be able to afford housing.

I know he’s been looking but I wish the mayor would pay more attention and copy what the Mayor for Paris has been doing in the city.  The transport transformation, which has taken place in such a short time is nothing short of unbelievable. The whole city has changed beyond recognition and become a cycling and walking utopia. The knock-on effects of this are less pollution, more nature, more green spaces, less people in hospital for obesity and other related diseases, thriving communities where people talk to, look out for and after each other.  Most of the subjects that we’ve been asked to comment on would improve if we changed the city from one reliant and dominated by the motor vehicle and pivoted to one where walking and cycling are prioritised.  I know London has changed enormously in the past 10 years but we don’t have the luxury of time at this pace. Stop all this slow transitioning, take the bull by the horns and make the changes we all need, now. Cities for people not vehicles.

I'm frustrated that the survey put so much focus on social and affordable housing when the problems are clearly with high prices homes for average workers and renters.

Solving the problem for homeless and low income people isn't enough. What about the rest of us?

Agree. And the increasing use of our parks and green spaces for music festivals and the like - bringing lots of extra traffic and noise - is sometimes contrary to the quiet enjoyment of local people, both of their park and their neighbourhood.

Personally, I believe the only way to improve housing in the capital is to have more housing stock under local authority control. My local borough has no stock at all. That means they can’t house people without paying private companies or other boroughs. Something they legally have to do. Additionally it means money cannot be reinvested. The mayor needs a strategic plan here. Maybe in a development 3-5% of homes built must be offered to be sold at cost price to the LA to raise the number of quality houses in the London stock. Alternatively, the mayors office takes on the day to day running of all housing across all boroughs and pools the pot of money back into the system, so that the funds raised can be reinvested to build our own homes without developers taking a huge slice. 

Maybe I’m living in fantasy land, but ideas need to be made to fix the broken housing system.