Sadiq Khan misses watered-down target on affordable homes
Sadiq Khan misses watered-down target on affordable homes
Pui-Guan ManTue, May 12, 2026 at 2:38 PM UTC
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This week, the London Mayor negotiated a third reprieve from the Government - Stefan Rousseau/PA Images
Sir Sadiq Khan has missed a target to start building at least 17,800 affordable homes in London, despite quotas having already been watered down.
New data from the Greater London Authority (GLA) show that construction began on 14,335 homes priced for lower-income earners between 2021 and March this year.
It means the number of affordable homes being built in the UK capital has fallen short of an already watered-down target.
The Mayor of London was first handed a reprieve by the last Conservative government, which required construction to have begun on at least 23,900 homes in 2023 after Sir Sadiq struggled to boost numbers.
He was given a second reprieve in October 2025 over his affordable home quotas. At the time, Angela Rayner, then housing secretary, cut his target for affordable homes in London by a fifth to at least 17,800 properties.
Having missed the latest lowered target of 17,800 homes, the GLA said this week that the Mayor had negotiated a third reprieve from the Government.
It said, under a fresh agreement with the housing department, it would be given up to six months to ensure building got under way for individual projects which had been affected by “external factors” – including delays linked to regulation.
City Hall said these projects would be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. It said it was confident it would exceed the 4,185 construction starts needed to comfortably hit its extended target.
It is understood the same extension will also be granted to Homes England, the Government’s housing quango.
Sir James Cleverly, the shadow housing secretary, said the latest figures showed that construction had “totally collapsed” in “Labour-run London”.
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He said: “Sadiq Khan is plumbing depths of failure not seen since the Second World War. Even a helping hand from Angela Rayner hasn’t concealed the stark truth: the Mayor’s housing record is abysmal and ordinary people are paying the price for it.
“It all comes against the backdrop of Labour’s total inability to deliver their much-trumpeted promise of 1.5 million homes.”
City Hall defended the latest data, saying the number of projects started had more than doubled on the previous year. It said schemes had been delayed by the impact of Brexit, the pandemic, high interest rates and economic shocks caused by global instability.
A spokesman for the Mayor of London said Britain was in “the most difficult period for housebuilding since the global financial crash”, adding that tackling the housing crisis remained “one of the Mayor’s top priorities”.
Despite this, Lord Bailey, the housing spokesman for the City Hall Conservatives, said the situation had become “extremely worrying”.
He said: “The Government has had to step in and lower the bar again and again for the Mayor and he still couldn’t clear it. These figures speak to a continued failure by Sadiq Khan to provide housing at a time when Londoners are being crushed by housing costs and languishing indefinitely on waiting lists for homes, and it’s simply not good enough during a cost of living crisis.
“I’m afraid that the Mayor cannot be allowed to dress up these catastrophic failures – which have been going on for years – as record of success. It isn’t acceptable, and he has failed to meet London’s needs.”
It comes after a number of Britain’s biggest housebuilders scale back on land purchases and cut their profit forecasts, casting doubts on whether Sir Keir Starmer will be able to meet his manifesto promise to build 1.5 million homes by the end of this parliament.
Last month, Berkeley Group warned that building homes in London was becoming impossible because of high taxes and red tape.
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government was contacted for comment.
Source: “AOL Money”
