The focus on units instead of bedrooms means larger family-sized homes are barely being built
Developers are incentivised to build too many one and two-bedroom properties in London instead of the family-sized homes that the capital desperately needs, the Mayor of London has been told.
City Hall’s government-set target of building 88,000 homes every year has prompted Sir Sadiq Khan to prioritise speed over need, according to senior Conservative Assembly Member Andrew Boff.
In a new report, entitled ‘Uncrowded Houses’, he explains that the current focus on “units” over “bedrooms” has led to unnecessary high rise developments proliferating across the capital – and warned that more families could be forced to leave the capital if the Mayor doesn’t change his strategy.
“This is really, really worrying,” Mr Boff said.
“London’s population fell for the first time in decades last year, and families are leaving the capital en masse because they cannot afford the housing they need.
“Meanwhile, planning changes to enable developers to bulldoze green spaces, and circumvent local councils – elected by residents – to put up developments look set to throw up tens of thousands of unsuitable properties which will not solve the issue.
“We need to stop building these high rises and start building the family homes that Londoners really need.”
Earlier this year it emerged that just three per cent of all homes built through City Hall’s Affordable Homes Programme (AHP) between 2016 and 2025 had four or more bedrooms. The vast majority – 78 per cent – were either studios, or one or two-bedroom properties.
An accompanying report from the London Assembly Housing Committee suggested that developers were not being given the appropriate grants to motivate them to build larger homes. The report recommends reform of the system to ensure a “variable grant model” which could allocate money per bedroom or person housed instead of per unit.
Other measures suggested include more effective management of existing stock, including incentivising people with extra bedrooms to downsize, and target acquisitions of larger homes for use by councils or the Mayor.
Building larger homes would not only relieve overcrowded families, but free up properties further down the chain, the report said.
“When a suitably large home becomes available, it often releases a chain of moves: a family exits temporary accommodation, another household moves into the vacated smaller property, and overall pressure across multiple segments of the housing stock is reduced,” Mr Boff’s report says.
“Conversely, the absence of larger homes creates a bottleneck that prevents movement and intensifies overcrowding.”
His comments echo Anna Clarke, Director of Policy and Public Affairs at The Housing Forum, who told the Centre for London’s Housing Summit earlier this year: “We’re rather too obsessed with counting the number of units, which pushes the pressure to build small housing. We’ve got an awful lot of overcrowded households in London.”
The draft London Plan, which is currently undergoing public consultation, acknowledges that “family-sized housing accounts for a much larger proportion of need in affordable tenures than in market homes”.
It takes into account the findings of the London-wide Strategic Housing Market Assessment (SHMA), which says the need for affordable, larger homes is “acute” as families with children face the highest overcrowding rates of any group of people, at 16.8 per cent.
Earlier this year a report from the London Assembly’s economy, culture and skills committee found that number of children living in the capital has been declining at a faster rate than anywhere else in the UK since the early 2010s. Assembly Members suggested that serious financial and practical barriers, including the cost of childcare and housing, played a major role in families moving out of London.
A spokesperson for the Mayor of London told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS): “Tackling London’s housing crisis is one of the Mayor’s top priorities and City Hall is working with London boroughs, housing associations, developers and others to deliver more homes of all tenures.
“The draft new London Plan aims to deliver a range of different sized homes to meet Londoners’ needs.
“The Mayor remains committed to improving access to good-quality green spaces for Londoners and has been clear that the next London Plan will continue to provide strong protections for the capital’s strategically important green spaces.”
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