Sadiq Khan hit back at Rishi Sunak on Friday branding his Government “blockers not builders” in a growing war-of-words over how to solve London’s housing crisis.
The Mayor of London accused ministers of “meddling and delaying” new housing projects in the capital, and the PM of “caving in” to Tory MPs opposed to a 300,000 new homes mandatory target.
He spoke out after The Standard revealed that the Prime Minister was “stepping in” to try to tackle the city’s housing problems which are making buying a home out of the reach of so many Londoners, with rents also soaring.
Mr Sunak launched a scathing attack on Mr Khan’s record on housebuilding accusing him of “failing to deliver the homes that London needs,” arguing this had fuelled property prices.
But the Mayor responded: “There is a housing crisis in our city and Londoners are suffering. We need a Government who’s prepared to work with the elected Mayor to help fix it, but the Conservatives in government have shown themselves time and again to be blockers, not builders.”
He added: “Ministers have meddled and delayed individual building projects in our city – intervening to block major new developments.”
He urged the Government to agree to new infrastructure to “unlock” thousands of new homes and to deliver £4.9 billion a year to build “the social and affordable housing London needs”.
Mr Sunak announced yesterday a review of the London Plan, to identify more housing sites, setting an autumn deadline for the Mayor to make progress on agreeing changes.
He also stressed £150 million of funding would go directly to boroughs, by-passing City Hall, to prepare brownfield sites for housing, including for roads and other infrastructure, announced £53 million for the Old Oak West homes project in west London, and confirmed the relaxation of rules on the use of £1 billion for affordable housing so it can be used to regenerate old social housing estates.
Housing Secretary Michael Gove said he would “not hesitate” to use powers to intervene if the Government believed City Hall was not making sufficient progress.
John Dickie, chief executive at the BusinessLDN group, said: “London desperately needs to build more new homes but a sure-fire way to check delivery is to see planning policy become a political football.
“It’s great that central government sees that London needs investment and support to deliver more homes - this needs partnership between Whitehall, City Hall and the boroughs not partisanship.”
