Holy grail of end to the housing crisis as far away as ever

With just over four weeks to go until the mayoral election on May 2, the Standard continues its audit into Sadiq Khan’s record. Today Business EditorJonathan Prynn examines housing

- Jonathan Prynn

IT IS just over eight years since Sadiq Khan published his manifesto for his first mayoral election campaign. He rightly observed that "Londoners are being priced out of our city" before going on to declare "my first priority will be tackling the housing crisis"

Although he can take credit for injecting energy into London's affordable homes programme, and for reviving the council housebuilding programme, there are few who say the housing crisis has been greatly eased over the past eight years. In some respects it has got worse.

Prices remain close to their all-time high at an average of £508,000, about 13 times median earnings, while rents have surged by close to 20 per cent over the past two years. Latest statistics show there were 61,810 London families in temporary accommodation last year, up from 59,830 in March 2021, just before the last mayoral election. Housing is in desperately short supply.

As Darren Rodwell, the Labour leader of Barking and Dagenham council, put it: "We are in middle of the worst housing crisis since Charles Dickens was a social commentator." More alarmingly, housebuilding in London has slowed dramatically over the past year as a perfect storm of setbacks and shocks, ranging from rocketing interest rates and soaring building costs to the new regime of tougher new fire safety rules after Grenfell, that have conspired to make creating new housing harder than at any time since the financial crisis a decade and a half ago.

The London Plan sets a 10-year target of 52,300 new homes every year, but the GLA says the need is much higher at 66,000. The reality has fallen short in every year. According to government data the number of "net additional dwellings" in London peaked at 45,676 in 2019 but has fallen back every year since then.