How much more private market housing was delivered in London in 2005-19 than required targets?

Published on March 7, 2022

Published on March 7, 2022

The Mayor of London’s London Plan sets housing delivery targets in the capital. These include London-wide and borough targets for all types of new homes and a London-wide numerical or percentage target (of the total) for ‘affordable homes.’

We assume the target for private market homes to be the total target minus the affordable homes’ target.

When looking at boroughs we apply an appropriate percentage target to the Mayor’s borough targets.

We assess that almost 63,000 more private market homes were delivered in London than were required by the London Plan targets from 2005-19 (for which we have available data from annual monitoring reports of the London Plan).

Twenty-five boroughs over-delivered private / market homes compared to targets.

Five boroughs delivered 5,000 plus more private market homes than were required by London Plan targets. These were Wandsworth (8,380), Islington (7,710), Hillingdon (6854), Croydon (5974) and Hackney (5474).

Three boroughs delivered more than double the required targets for private / market homes – Harrow, Sutton and Richmond upon Thames.

Not only does this take up huge amounts of land for housing that does not meet the desperate need for social rented homes, but it also does little to help to attain the Mayor of London’s Net-Zero targets.

Check out this document to see whether and how much your borough over-delivered market homes in 2005-19.