London is at an historic low. Under Sadiq Khan, housebuilding in our capital has collapsed to its lowest level since 2009, a truly staggering failure.
The numbers are not in dispute. The Mayor’s latest affordable housing figures are a humiliation. Between April and June, there were barely over 300 affordable projects launched in London. We are now staring down the barrel of the worst three-year run for affordable housing since records began.
Billions have been poured in from central government, targets have been written in black and white, but the only thing missing is a Mayor with the will to build. Just what is his problem?
The Mayor’s own reports show that in January to March this year just 1,210 private homes were started in the whole of London, a mere 5.5 per cent of his own target for the quarter. Worse still, 23 of our 33 boroughs saw precisely zero private starts.
Indeed, there are whole swathes of London where the only things breaking any ground are weeds.
And this is not because there’s no land or no permission, Khan himself admits there are 300,000 homes which, despite having planning permission, have simply not been built. They languish there, with empty plots and dormant cranes, all the while Londoners pay record rents and poorer families crowd into temporary accommodation.
If you can believe it, the rot runs deeper still. Despite the rhetoric the number of starts have actually been declining in recent months. Private starts are down from 1,427 in January to March of 2025 to a measly 731 private starts in April and June of 2025.
And it is not hard to see why the backlog grows. All Sadiq Khan’s so-called London Plan has done is to create more red tape for building, forcing demand out of London and onto the rest of England.
Higher taxes mean higher costs, which lead to projects stalling
But they only have themselves to blame. Nationally, Labour has made things worse. Labour’s tax raid has choked the economy and the construction industry along with it. Every part of the economy has been hit, whether that be households, high streets and the building industry that should be delivering London’s homes. Higher taxes mean higher costs for every brick, every beam, every worker. Projects stall, investment dries up and the crisis deepens.
And yet, instead of tackling the backlog, instead of forcing delivery, Labour in City Hall and in Westminster have taken a hammer to the very targets London needs to meet. Angela Rayner has cut London’s overall housing target by more than 10 per cent and scrapped the formal review of the London Plan entirely, replacing it with the toothless partnership approach that continues to fail.
Incredibly, Angela Rayner has now told councils to put playing fields and allotments up for sale. They are where children learn to play sport and where neighbours meet, so to destroy them is to carve up the very spaces that help communities thrive. Once they are gone, they are gone for good.
Scandalously, while Londoners wait, Khan has set his sights on bulldozing the Green Belt. He has U-turned on a previously “cast iron” commitment to protect the Green Belt and has now made clear that no park, no open space, no stretch of Metropolitan Open Land is safe. He’s doing it with the full blessing of Angela Rayner and Labour’s borough leaders. Labour’s answer to a failure to build on brownfield is to pave over the lungs of our city.
Khan’s Green Belt assault falls overwhelmingly in London’s outer, greener boroughs, whether that be Bexley, Bromley, Havering, Hillingdon, Kingston, Richmond - the places that prize their open space, heritage and suburban character. These are the areas Khan is lining up for the bulldozers.
We should not be tearing up our Green Belt, we should be building in the city itself. People want to move to London, work in London and raise their families in London, so we must build in London. Every year that passes with brownfield sites lying derelict is a year of deliberate waste. These are sites that already have infrastructure, transport links, schools and hospitals nearby. Sites that could take the pressure off our suburbs, protect our open spaces and deliver homes where the demand is.
We should be using the land we already have, raising the skyline where it makes sense, and delivering homes that fit the character and needs of each borough. Brownfield first, built in the heart of the capital, not at the expense of the green spaces that keep it alive.
Astonishingly, when they were given the chance to defend those spaces, Reform UK sided with Labour.
Reform UK had the chance to stand up for Londoners when the Conservatives in City Hall put forward a motion in the London Assembly to protect our parks, open spaces and Green Belt. Instead of doing the right thing, Reform UK joined Labour to vote it down.
Londoners deserve a lot better than this coalition of failure.
That is not to mention the impact of immigration on London’s housing. Under Sadiq Khan and Keir Starmer, immigration is swallowing up London’s housing supply.
Between 2025 and 2030, London is expected to see a net increase of 973,000 through net migration. Every new arrival needs somewhere to live, and when housebuilding is collapsing, those homes do not appear from thin air. They are taken from the existing supply, in turn pushing up rents, pricing out first-time buyers and lengthening waiting lists. Yet, instead of recognising these pressures and adjusting policy to protect housing supply for Londoners, Khan and Starmer are fuelling the problem by opening the door wider, with no credible plan to meet the demand they continue to create. It is a reckless approach that sacrifices stability, fairness, and the opportunity of Londoners to have a home in their own city.
London’s housing shortage is not the result of bad luck or forces beyond our control. It is the product of deliberate political choices. A Mayor who has strangled building with red tape for the better part of a decade and a Labour Government that has driven up costs with mammoth tax rises.
Londoners deserve a Mayor and a Government who will enforce delivery on the permissions we already have, who will defend our green spaces, who will build on brownfield first and who will put Londoners first. Not tomorrow, not next year, but now. And Conservatives are the only party with the will to do it – to cut the red tape, drive development where it is needed, protect the character of our communities and deliver the homes London needs - without destroying the city itself.
Gareth Bacon MP is Shadow Minister for Planning, Housing and London
