Tower Hamlets, London Borough of Hackney and London Borough of Lewisham have collectively launched a High Court challenge against plans by the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, to reduce the affordable housing threshold in planning applications from 35% to 20%.
Seven councils are backing the legal action in total, with Lambeth, Southwark, Waltham Forest and Haringey councils formally supporting the legal challenge, which also relates to the lack of a fair consultation before the policy change was made.
London’s social housing waiting lists have reached a 10-year high and more than one million Londoners are living in overcrowded housing or homes otherwise unfit for human habitation due to pests, damp and mould. London Councils estimates that 183,000 Londoners overall (one in 50 residents of the capital) are homeless.
Lutfur Rahman, Executive Mayor of Tower Hamlets, said:
"It is a scandal to cut the affordable housing quota when the need for genuinely affordable homes has never been greater. Our city is increasingly being turned into an investment asset for the super rich rather than a place where ordinary Londoners can afford to live, work and raise a family.
"City Hall claims this policy will incentivise developers to build homes more quickly. But homes for whom? If ordinary Londoners can’t afford them, they will simply sit empty. Far from accelerating housebuilding, the policy is already slowing it down, with some developers delaying schemes until the quota is cut to 20%."
Zoë Garbett, Executive Mayor of Hackney, said:
"The Mayor of London is no longer surrounded by councils willing to sign off any developer-driven decision he wants to make. Hackney now has a Mayor who will go to bat for affordable housing."
Liam Shrivastava, Executive Mayor of Lewisham, said:
"In Lewisham, we’re not anti-development – far from it; we want to work with responsible developers, that are respectful of our communities and make a positive difference. To do that, we need the planning system to support the delivery of more, not less, of the affordable homes our communities need."
