Three London councils – Tower Hamlets, Hackney and Lewisham – have launched a legal challenge to stop the mayor of London’s planned cut to the affordable housing quota from 35% to 20%. 

Four more councils are formally supporting the legal challenge: Lambeth, Southwark, Waltham Forest and Haringey.

When he was elected mayor in 2016, Sadiq Khan said that more than 50% of new homes should be affordable.

The claimant councils said their judicial review claim, filed with the High Court against the Greater London Authority, highlights the harm the policy would do to their ability to deliver affordable housing.

They accuse Khan of trying to cut the current 35% affordable housing quota in the London Plan without using the proper statutory process for amending it.

They claim there was no fair consultation before the policy change, and a lack of evidence to justify the reduction to 20% in all London boroughs.

The claimant councils are all led by executive mayors directly elected by residents in their boroughs.

The mayor of London’s office has been contacted for comment.

Waiting lists at 10-year high

The legal challenge comes as London’s social housing waiting lists have reached a 10-year high.

More than a million Londoners are living in overcrowded housing or homes otherwise unfit for human habitation due to pests, damp and mould, the claimants said.

Local government organisation London Councils estimates that 183,000 Londoners overall – one in 50 residents of the capital – are homeless.

90,000 children are homeless and living in temporary accommodation, which is one out of every 21 children in London – equivalent to at least one homeless child in every London classroom.

The claimants said housing costs are the overwhelming driver of child poverty in London. The proportion of people living in poverty in London increases significantly from 15% to 26% when housing costs are included.

‘Homes for whom?’

“It is a scandal to cut the affordable housing quota when the need for genuinely affordable homes has never been greater,” said Lutfur Rahman, executive mayor of Tower Hamlets. “Our city is increasingly being turned into an investment asset for the super-rich rather than a place where ordinary Londoners can afford to live, work and raise a family.

“City Hall claims this policy will incentivise developers to build homes more quickly. But homes for whom? If ordinary Londoners can’t afford them, they will simply sit empty. Far from accelerating housebuilding, the policy is already slowing it down, with some developers delaying schemes until the quota is cut to 20%.”

Rahman added: “London is becoming a tale of two cities, with luxury apartments bought up by overseas investors and left empty, while families languish on housing waiting lists, and one in 20 children in our city homeless and more than one million Londoners trapped in overcrowded housing or homes unfit for human habitation because of damp, mould or pests.”

Liam Shrivastava, executive mayor of Lewisham, said: “London is in an unprecedented housing crisis, and private developers have a duty to play a role in supporting our city. It would be totally wrong to allow their profit to go unchecked while thousands of people are on councils’ housing waiting lists.

“While we understand the challenge the mayor of London faces in terms of a stalled house building market and a developer-led model that is broken, he has provided no justification for these changes, which will undoubtedly reduce the number of affordable homes built in London.”