Mayor of London Sir Sadiq Khan has said some London councils are not ‘pulling their weight’ to deliver housing in the capital. The Mayor said he planned on prescribing authorities a specific target for the number of affordable homes to deliver each year to address the issue.
The comments came from the Mayor’s launch event on Tuesday, May 20, for his Plan of Action to end rough sleeping in London by 2030. The plan stated that investment in housing-led routes out of rough sleeping was the most effective way to support getting people off the streets.
The Greater London Authority (GLA) published figures regarding the number of affordable homes started by each local authority in London from April 2024 to the end of March 2025 stated that each council on average started work to deliver 121 affordable homes across the year. However, Bexley Council was listed as having started zero homes within the time frame.
The Mayor told MyLondon: “I have no doubt that some councils, Bexley is a good example, are not pulling their weight in relation to addressing the needs of our city. What the government has said is over the course of the next 10 years, they want, and they are right to do so, London to deliver 88,000 homes on average per year over the next 10 years.
“We’ve never done that before, the closest we got is the 1930s, we got around 80,000. What will happen with the next London Plan is each council will have a target of homes they should be delivering to meet the needs of their residents and councils like Bexley, and there are others, Bromley is another example, have got to pull their weight.”
Bromley Council was cited as having only started work to building three affordable homes across the year. The two authorities had more impressive figures for affordable homes completed over the 2024/25 financial year, with Bexley finishing 92 units and Bromley delivering 170.
Council leader slams criticism as ‘ridiculous’
Baroness O’Neill of Bexley OBE, leader of the council, told MyLondon: “For the Mayor of London to say we are not ‘pulling our weight’ in terms of meeting housing need is ridiculous. Bexley was one of only 13 London boroughs that passed the housing delivery test – confirmation that we have delivered our housing target for the previous three years – in the last published measure and we expect to do the same in the next set of figures. We also have an up to date five year housing land supply and an up to date Local Plan which many boroughs do not.”
The council leader said there was a host of reasons why affordable housing was not being built, including market conditions, a shortage of skilled labour, regulatory issues around high risk buildings and a shortage of Class 3 building inspectors. She added that there was a current focus by many housing associations on replacing cladding and dealing with issues in existing properties rather than building new units.
She said: “The GLA are using figures from their Planning London Database. We have found this source to be inaccurate over the years and often find mistakes in the figures. We will collect our own statistics and completions for the relevant period and are currently in the process of doing this.”
Colin Smith, leader of Bromley Council, told MyLondon that the figures from the GLA were ‘cherry-picked’ and did not reflect the ‘true picture’ of affordable housing delivery in Bromley. He said over 420 affordable housing unites were started on site in Bromley a couple years ago, with statistics for more recent years often being revised up as more data becomes available.
He said: “Residents should not be fooled by Mr Khan’s rhetoric as this is a very clear attempt by him and his team to deflect from their broken electoral pledge not to attack Outer London’s Green Belt. The truth is that Bromley is one of few London councils directly delivering affordable housing at present, with eight sites having secured planning in recent years to deliver around 300 homes and more sites in the pipeline with, rather embarrassingly for him, even Mr Khan’s own deputy having recently praised this progress.”
He added: “Additionally, the council has secured over 800 properties in recent years through multi-million-pound partnership working projects with investors to help combat the ongoing and severe challenges to all London councils of housing homeless families. There is of course more to be done to provide further affordable housing, which the council is doing at appropriate sites across the borough, while continuing to protect our Bromley’s much cherished Green Belt.”
The Mayor announced at the launch event that he would be using £17 million of government funding to open a network of Ending Homelessness Hubs, while also refurbishing 500 new empty homes in the capital. He said these would be added to the current 3,500 units being used in the Homes off the Streets programme to help individuals with complex needs have somewhere to stay while being given support to independently live.
The Mayor said: “We will be saying to councils across London, all 32 boroughs, and registered social landlords across London, ‘If you have got a property that’s empty, in bad condition and needs a bit of work, that’s not being used – give it to us’. We will refurbish it, we will bring it back into use, and it means one of those street homeless Londoners can be having access to these homes. At the core of the plan today though, the plan of action is prevention – to stop somebody needing to be bedded down or verified homeless before they can get assistance.”
He added: “Three big things we will be doing is having a prevent homeless phone line, which is really important. You can ring up, get advice, be signposted, referred to one of our hubs. [Secondly is] having a network of end-to-end homelessness hubs across our city. In every part of the city, there will be a hub with a support worker, wraparound care, assistance you can go to. The third thing is to have support workers in day centres and food banks, so you can be given assistance before you end up on the streets so you don’t end up on the street in the first place.”
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