On 23 June 2016, we hosted the final conference of our HEIF 5 project on accelerating housing production in London. Over the last 18 months LSE London has been discussing how to accelerate the supply of new housing in London with experts from government, industry and academia.
We are now finalising our findings and recommendations about how the Mayor’s housing goals might most effectively be supported, both immediately and over the longer term. These findings and recommendations were presented at the conference to which we invited all those who generously took part in the project.
The conference was held on the afternoon of June 23rd, Referendum Day, at LSE. The event started with a short presentation by the LSE London team setting out our main recommendations. This presentation was followed by a Panel Discussion looking at political ways of taking these forward and leaving plenty of time for contributions from participants.
The biggest issues raised were around how to address the issue of re-negotiations on viability which impact negatively on S106 affordable housing; how to make national government policies work more effectively in London which is so short of affordable rented housing; whether it is possible to develop more London-wide policies which would make it easier to meet national requirements and, for example, allow Right to Buy funds to provide more affordable homes than is currently possible. More fundamental questions about possibilities of further devolution, increasing the incentives to local authorities to provide a better mix of sites and to encourage higher building rates; and London’s position in the wider south east were also discussed. All of these questions now need to be discussed in the massively changed environment that has followed the Referendum result.
Click here to view the event’s agenda.
Click here to view the short presentation.
Click here to view the preliminary report of our findings.
As part of this project, we also produced this video titled: The Kipling Estate: Genuinely affordable housing in central London. Here, we explore a creative approach to accelerating housing production in London and the possibilities and obstacles for replicating this model.
