JustSpace and CPRE_London have today written to the Secretary of State, Angela Rayner and the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, pressing for urgent action on 3 fronts as the new government’s housing policies are shaped:
- The Mayor of London has fewer powers than any other leader of a major city in the Western world. There is a range of devolved powers which the strategic authority needs to address its unique problems, including the regulation of the rapidly growing private rented sector in terms of rents, conditions and evictions. The Mayor also needs the flexibility to direct government housing grant towards the highest need, which is for genuinely affordable housing in the form of social rented homes. The particular conditions specific to London also need the Mayor to have power to suspend or end the Right to Buy, which continues to erode the social stock and discourage councils from adding new council homes. The necessary devolution of powers could be enacted relatively speedily, while we await provisions in the proposed Housing Bill coming into force.
- The proposed Housing and Infrastructure Bill needs to address urgently the ongoing scandal of s21 ‘no fault’ evictions as well as provide other basic renters’ rights, standards and controls. It also needs provisions to address the growing abuse of homes being kept deliberately vacant, which currently stands at over one million across the UK . It needs powers to address over one million housing permissions which have not been built out (particularly those where implementation has been technically triggered through the expedient of digging a trench): a so-called ‘Use it or Lose it’ approach to planning permissions. And, as part of resolving the crisis in local government finance, the Bill needs to address the absurdity of the average householder in Oldham paying more in council tax than the residents of Buckingham Palace.
- We understand that the Mayor is likely to instigate a full review of the London Plan later this year, and would strongly urge that communities traditionally excluded from the process of developing the strategic housing needs assessment and strategic housing land assessment are fully engaged from the outset.
We look forward to working together to resolve the housing crisis