He has outlined his agenda for the future in a report called 2020 Vision – The Greatest City on Earth; Ambitions for London, which says that as London’s population will hit 10 million by 2030 it needs 400,000 new homes in the next decade alone.
Advocating the need for stable and continuous investment in housing and infrastructure projects in particular, the Mayor highlighted that the capital now contributes a greater share to the UK’s economic output than any point in its history and its future prosperity, and that of the whole country, is reliant on hardworking Londoners.
At the launch of the report the Mayor made it clear that Londoners need jobs and homes. He believes that the way forward is with partnerships to address shared issues around housing, transport and regeneration.
Johnson aims to address population growth largely by building homes on brown field sites and has identified 21 sites with opportunities in the city. He also wants to lift the cap for councils to be able to borrow to fund house building and to release more public land for development.
He also wants to do something about developers with large land banks that they are not using and create a use it or lose it planning permission for developers which he says will speed up development.
Johnson also said that it is only fair that London should be able to keep the money from stamp duty of property sales in London that currently goes to central government and amounts to around £1 billion a year.
Helen Evans, chief executive of the Network Housing Group, part of the G15 group of the largest housing associations in London, said that the report recognises that London's housing crisis is the largest stumbling block for growth and this must be urgently addressed if the city is to remain globally competitive, with a socially inclusive society at its heart.
‘Affordability in London is no longer just an issue for the unemployed or minimum wage workers, it is a problem for the majority of young professionals and working families who are dealing with house prices rising at 3 to 4% annually but pay packets in London shrinking by 3.9% over the last five years,’ she explained.
‘We are increasing the number of homes we're building by almost a quarter using funding from the Mayor’s Housing Covenant, so any extension of this scheme for working Londoners is going to help the long term prosperity of the capital,’ she pointed out.
‘There is also a huge opportunity for London's councils to explore using their pension funds to finance social housing development, boosting economic growth locally while supporting social objectives, a win/win. It is precisely this kind of radical solution that could help to tackle this situation, which has been left to deteriorate for far too long,’ she added.
According to Andy Hill, chief executive at house builder Hill, a use it or lose it approach to land banking would go some way towards speeding up the development of sites. ‘But the Mayor must remember that it is not a straightforward issue of developers sitting on land to maximise profits. In fact, it is essential that developers have a pipeline of land looking ahead for several years and this is vital in securing all-important development funding,’ he said.
‘As well as the slow planning process, the increasing use of joint venture partnerships, prohibitive section 106 agreements and the lack of development finance can all impact on the ability of the developer to start building,’ he added.
