Mayor answers to London

Affordable Housing Starts

Question number	3851/2011
Meeting date	14/12/2011

Question by Mike Tuffrey

How do you respond to statistics released by the Homes & Communities Agency on 22 November 2011 which show that London saw a 99.5 per cent decrease in the number of Affordable Housing Starts, from 11,708 between October and March 2010/11 to just 56 between April and September 2011?

Answer by Boris Johnson (1st Term)

The HCA published figures suggesting there were only 56 affordable starts in the first six months of this year. This data is misleading. The London Development Database reports that there were 2,240 affordable starts over the same six month period. The HCA are unable to record these homes on their system until they have signed new contracts with developers which they are in the process of doing.

HCA figures do show that there was a 46 per cent increase in affordable starts in the last financial year, 2010/11, compared with 2007/8 - the year before I was elected. All starts against my 50,000 have also happened, and the HCA is projecting around 16,000 affordable completions in 2011/12, the highest for a single year since the mid 1990s.