Building a future: Which mayoral candidate has the answer to London's housing crisis?
Ryan Gow
| Dods Monitoring
In a round-up of the housing commitments featuring in the main London mayoral candidates’ manifestos, Dods Monitoring compares their plans to tackle London's housing crisis.
The housing pressures in London have been picked up on by all the candidates, with the issue featuring heavily in their manifestos, literature and soundbites across the campaign so far.
Sadiq Khan and Zac Goldsmith have emphasised their commitment to protecting the greenbelt whilst maximising the use of public sector land to meet housing demands in the capital, however concerns have been raised as to whether this would be enough.
Labour candidate Sadiq has pledged to establish Homes for Londoners, which will work with stakeholders to construct a range of new homes, such as social housing, homes for London Living Rent and part-buy part-rent.
Zac has said that as mayor, any use of publicly owned land would include a ‘London share’ to ensure Londoners benefited from developments – and he has also pledged to support London boroughs in planning decisions, setting up a London Local Authority Housing Fund along with a new House Building Academy.
Both have promised to do more on involving smaller builders in building new homes in London. On homelessness, they have also each pledged tackle the issue. Zac has called for an expansion of the No First Night Out scheme whilst Sadiq has pledged to introduce a No Nights Sleeping Rough initiative.
Liberal Democrat candidate Caroline Pidgeon has pledged to retain the Olympic Games precept to support building 200,000 homes over the term, whilst also setting up a London Housing Company to match public land with private investment. Sian Berry, the Green Party candidate, has said her party would replace the Olympic Games precept with a new People’s Housing Precept to support building more housing. At the opposite end of the political spectrum, Peter Whittle for UKIP, has pledged to build “genuinely affordable housing” whilst restricting access to social housing for foreign nationals.
The Dods Monitoring team has also produced sector round ups of all the manifestos published by the main candidates in the London campaign. Please find them at the following links:
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