Sir Sadiq Khan accused of “misleading” voters in last year’s election campaign, reports Kumail Jaffer, Local Democracy Reporter
City Hall (credit GLA)
The Greater London Authority has been told to launch a full investigation into claims its officials encouraged developers to “dig a trench” in order to boost figures for affordable housing starts.
Tim Craine, the founder of London development analysts Molior, said the mayor should be “livid” that the housing department allegedly “embellished” figures and accused Sir Sadiq Khan of “misleading” voters in last year’s election campaign.
In April 2023, the GLA said that construction had started on 25,658 affordable homes during the previous year, making a total of 116,000 during the mayor’s tenure.
Craine claimed that officials “counted housing starts prematurely”, only for development schemes to “become unviable” due to interest rate rises and construction costs soaring.
“This means many of those 25,568 homes are still not under construction today,” he said.
To get around this, he claims developers, housing associations and local authorities were told to “dig a trench” to register as many housing starts as possible, by claiming they had technically begun construction.
Conservative housing spokesman Lord Bailey has now written to the GLA’s CEO Mary Harpley demanding a extensive probe into the allegations.
In a letter seen by the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS), he wrote: “If data around the number of affordable housing starts in London is found to have been misreported, and this was done with intent, or GLA officers were aware the figures were inaccurate and did not seek to correct the record, we are sure you will agree this would be a very serious matter indeed.
“Inaccuracies within this data could have given Londoners the impression the GLA had made greater progress on homebuilding than it had done so in reality. Given the gravity of the concerns raised, we are asking you to conduct a full investigation into this matter.”
In a separate letter to Tom Copley, deputy mayor for housing, Lord Bailey asked for confirmation that his department would “comply fully” with any investigation and demanded his resignation if he was aware of any misreporting.
He also noted that developers receive a payment for the GLA for registering a “start” as well as at completion, prompting potential concerns over the way taxpayer money was being spent.
When asked about the possible misreporting at Mayor’s Question Time yesterday (Thursday 20th), Khan said: “It’s the first time I’ve heard of them so I can’t agree to anything.
“What I can do is I’ll take away what he said because it’s very serious, the assertions he’s making. Let me take it away and get in touch with him in relation to letting him know what I’ll do about them. I’m more than happy to get the chief officer to look into them.”
A spokesperson for the London mayor later told the LDRS: “GLA statistics on the starts and completions of homes by any tenure are transparent and accurate. The definition of starts on site for City Hall-funded affordable housing programmes is clearly set out in our funding contracts and are similar to those used by Homes England for equivalent projects.
“Housebuilding of all tenures has faced a perfect storm of high interest rates, the rising cost of construction materials, the impact of the pandemic and ongoing consequences of Brexit. The GLA remains committed to supporting as many schemes as possible to remain viable to deliver more genuinely affordable homes as we continue to build a better, fairer London for everyone.”
The issue of affordable housing has been a sore one for the mayor, with the latest GLA data showing that developers made just 1,239 starts on affordable homes from April to September this year, compared to 3,991 in the whole of the last financial year.
Earlier this year the GLA and Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) agreed to lower London’s target for the Affordable Homes Programme (AHP) for 2021-2026 by over a fifth, to between 17,800 and 19,000 starts.
But with just 6,370 affordable homes started since the AHP was signed off in 2023, there are major doubts as to whether City Hall will hit the revised target.
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