There is an increasing demand for affordable homes, and with the numbers of houses built being at a low over recent years there has been a large deficit in housing available. Housebuilding has dropped below targets set by London Plan even with 1,031 property developments in the pipeline.
A new report into this housing issue has been conducted by Centre for London, a think tank focused on finding solutions for the problems within the city. The organisation looks at economic, environmental and social concerns as well as developing thorough research to come up with solutions to the issues they raise. Centre for London has carried out research which has discovered an increase amount of flexible funding as well as collaborations between Inner and Outer London boroughs could improve the figures and boost the number of affordable housing being built. These measures will still maintain a variety of different communities and neighbourhoods within the city.
Due to the different land values within the individual boroughs it has been shown by the dedicated think tank that certain boroughs can afford to develop more housing but lack the available land to do so. By the different boroughs working together, the housing demand can be lessened. Working together allows for the boroughs with funding to develop and other boroughs with land and without available funding could team up to deliver low cost affordable housing. It is typically the Inner boroughs that have funding and little land to develop, whereas Outer boroughs have available land, located in the suburbs and therefore priced lower, yet lack the available funding to do anything with it.
The report does state that these deals could be problematic and suggests that the Mayor of London help in facilitating such partnerships. Center for London also suggest incentivizing such partnerships and involve both local authorities and private developers in the discussions in order to create a more effective strategy to deal with the housing shortage.
