Boris Johnson’s housing strategy aims to deliver 42,000 homes a year and looks to empty public spaces to host garden suburbs.
Building4Change writes:
London mayor Boris Johnson wants to see a new generation of garden suburbs to help meet future housing demand in the capital. This is one of the policies in the mayor’s new housing strategy setting out his investment programme for 2015 to 2018, which has been launched for consultation.
A target of building 42,000 new homes a year is set out in the strategy, which doubles last year’s total. An initial funding package of over £1bn will support the delivery of a further 45,000 low cost homes, with more funding due to be announced shortly. The mayor plans to target large areas of vacant public land for the garden suburb approach.
Other polices in the draft strategy include:
· Expansion of the First Steps shared ownership programme to a quarter of a million Londoners over the next decade
· A renewed call for property taxes and stamp duty to be devolved to London, allowing funds to be invested in essential infrastructure to unlock housing growth and also for reform of the tax
· A target of 5,000 purpose-built rented homes a year, within the minimum 42,000
· New housing zones, which City Hall will consider to accelerate building in housing schemes in existing opportunity areas
· A London housing bank to speed up building on large sites. The Greater London Authority (GLA) will publish a discussion paper about the bank next year and in principle will invest over £160m.
Launching the strategy, Johnson said: ‘With London’s unprecedented population growth, housing supply and affordability is now our biggest challenge and we need to double the number of homes being built.’
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