The City of London may be synonymous with bowler hats, bankers and skyscrapers but officials have reached for their hard hats to embark on the biggest housebuilding programme since the Barbican estate was built in the mid-1970s. A total of 3,700 flats and houses will be built over the next decade on the City’s existing housing estates and land outside the Square Mile, in an effort to boost the capital’s chronic supply problem.
Some will be social housing but others will be offered at the market rate. The City of London Corporation will look at all options to determine how best to build the homes, including working with developers or looking at shared ownership and government schemes.
“The rising cost of housing over the last few years is now seen to be a significant problem,” Mark Boleat, the corporation’s policy chairman, said. “It’s mentioned to me by big City employers, including those who pay very high salaries to some of their staff. The main risk is that businesses that might otherwise be in London will choose not to be.”
The other risk, Mr Boleat said, was that staff such as security guards, receptionists and baristas would be unable to afford to live and work in London, meaning the City would “cease to function”.
The corporation owns estates in seven London boroughs, including Islington, Hackney and Southwark. There are 2,000 homes on these sites and the new policy suggests that 700 more could be built. It also owns land in Hampstead Heath and Epping Forest, but stressed that it wouldn’t be building in these areas.
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The corporation’s move came as a survey by Inside Housing showed that nearly a third of chief executives of English housing associations said they were likely to stop building social housing as a result of George Osborne’s 1 per cent social housing rent cut, which comes into effect next year.