Andrew Boff AM comment: Mayor publishes housing stats for third quarter

Responding to today’s London housing figures, Andrew Boff AM said:

“We now have a full picture of Sadiq Khan’s housing record, and there can be little doubt that this Mayor has presided over nothing more than missed targets and sluggish progress. Khan has failed time and time again to show any urgency and recognise that housebuilding in London needs to be sprint rather than marathon.

“These statistics clearly show that Sadiq Khan is not only on course to miss his minimum building target for 2019/20, but also failing to use the record £4.82 billion which the Government gave him to get London building. At the start of his term the Mayor said he’d use this money to build 116,000 homes by March 2022, but more than half of these homes are yet to be started with just over two years to go until the deadline.

“This Mayor has a penchant for cooking the books when it comes to housing figures having shamelessly counted re-starts in the past. This could raise questions over whether these disappointing figures are even accurate.

“Housing starts are of course important, but so are completions. We know that over the course of his term the Mayor has completed barely a third of the inadequate number of homes that he started. This painfully slow progress means that Londoners are finding it harder than ever to get onto the housing ladder.”