Khan’s Kickstart

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Before potentially being kicked out of office in a May election, London Mayor Sadiq Khan has unveiled a new £100m ‘Housing Kickstart Fund’ to accelerate stalled developments and boost delivery of homes across the capital.

The funding forms part of a new package of measures to boost council and affordable housing supply, amidst a national housing downturn. The money is to be allocated to projects that have started but not moved forward due to economic conditions. If those projects had been completed, the homes would have sold at market rate. Under the Housing Kickstart Fund, they will be provided at what are described as ‘genuinely affordable’ rates. No definition of ‘genuinely affordable’ has been provided.

Alongside the Housing Kickstart Fund, the Mayor has announced a new Accelerated Funding Route, to make it simpler for developers to achieve over 40 per cent affordable on their sites by providing more predictable grant financing.

Other funding

The Mayor has also made a new commitment to utilise City Hall’s existing funding, skills and experience to unlock and accelerate the building of homes on brownfield sites. Two sites, in Newham and Southwark, are already benefiting from a multi-million-pound injection of new funding, accelerating the delivery of 1,450 housing starts by March 2026.

Sadiq Khan says: “London’s housing crisis was decades in the making and won’t be fixed overnight, yet I’m determined to do everything in my power to deliver more council and genuinely affordable homes across the capital.

“We’ve made important progress, hitting the government’s flagship 116,000 affordable homes target, which was missed outside of London; and delivering council homebuilding at double the level of the rest of the country combined.”

Fiona Fletcher-Smith, Chair of the G15 group of London’s leading housing associations, says: “More than 175,000 Londoners are homeless and living in temporary accommodation. With a crisis of this magnitude we need more housing of all types, but the most acute need is for affordable, preferably social housing.

“As the largest providers of affordable housing in the capital, G15 members very much welcome any initiatives that will boost supply.

Picture: Sadiq Khan as Mayor of London.

Article written by Cathryn Ellis
18th April 2024

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