Letter calling on Mayor to unblock Cable Street Community Land Trust

I’m writing regarding the Cable Street Community Land Trust (CLT) project proposed for Shadwell.

For the last eight years, a coalition of community and faith groups, residents and local campaigners have been working hard to turn a disused Transport for London (TfL) site in Shadwell into 41 permanently and genuinely affordable community-owned homes.

You will know from correspondence with my colleague Zoë Garbett that unfortunately the path to delivering these homes has been tortuous and complicated. The community had planned to submit their planning application in early 2026, but new roadblocks thrown up by TfL have stymied progress. Despite years of planning with TfL – and your repeated backing for the project – TfL only now raised concerns about maintenance access for the adjacent DLR.

In January, the London Assembly passed a budget-related motion urging you to intervene with the appropriate funding to navigate the new hurdles thrown up by TfL and safeguard the project.

Since then, the community have worked hard to address TfL’s concerns with a revised masterplan, but a lack of engagement and action from TfL continue to block the project. We are now at the point where the viability of the project is fundamentally at risk, because necessary pots of money are time limited – the £7m promised under the Community Housing Fund will only be available if the community achieve a start on site by September. Given the delays brought on by TfL, this deadline will be all but impossible to hit. 

In 2017 you made a pledge to deliver 1,000 community land trust properties. It’s a promise I wholeheartedly support. CLT properties are a much-needed alternative to the broken model of shared ownership.

Intermediate housing that is genuinely affordable and stays as affordable housing in perpetuity. And this project shows how CLTs can also deliver desperately needed social housing.

I hope, with that pledge in mind, you can help get Cable Street over the line. It will take Mayoral level intervention to help encourage all the necessary stakeholders onto the same page. I’d urge you to:

• Call on TfL to finally give the project the green light, based on the community’s revised masterplan that addresses concerns around maintenance access;
• Ringfence the £7million allocated to the project under the Community Housing Fund (lobbying Government for an extension if necessary) in recognition of the roadblocks created at the final hour by TfL, which were not of the community’s making. In the absence of this flexibility, you should provide funding via your latest Social and Affordable Homes Programme;
• Meet with Cable Street CLT as soon as possible to hear directly what is needed to make the project a reality. I also sincerely believe they have a lot to help illuminate about the unnecessary challenges community land trusts face, and what can be done to address them.

Today, 1 July, the community expects 500 local people to join a rally asking you to intervene to finally get this desperately needed development off the ground. I stand with them – and hope you do too.

Yours sincerely,

Benali Hamdache 
Green Party Member of the London Assembly