Perspectives on London's housing emergency - affordable homes supply and threshold, CIL relief for developers, reduced powers of councils

 Below are three different perspectives that feed into the debate about how to address London's current housing emergency.

From the London Assembly

Rising costs, funding constraints and a lack of strategic focus are slowing the delivery of the affordable homes Londoners need most, particularly family-sized and accessible homes.

A new report from the London Assembly Housing Committee – Assessing delivery, needs and challenges of the Mayor’s Affordable Homes – warns that London’s affordable housing system is failing to keep pace with need, despite public investment through the Mayor’s Affordable Homes Programme. Delivery under the current programme has been slow, with 64 per cent of homes still to be started as of September 2025, less than a year before the programme is due to end in March 2026.

The Committee found that certain types of homes are in particularly short supply. Family-sized social rent homes and accessible homes for Deaf and Disabled Londoners are not being delivered at the scale required, leaving many families trapped in overcrowded or unsuitable accommodation. The report also raises concerns about the lack of progress in delivering sites for Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities and the growing pressure on supported housing providers.

To address this, the Committee calls for a more targeted approach to funding affordable housing. Key recommendations include increasing grant rates and setting clear targets for family-sized and accessible homes under the 2026–36 Affordable Homes Programme, so that public investment better reflects London’s most urgent housing needs.

Other recommendations in the report include:

·          improving support for councils to acquire existing homes for social rent, as a faster way to increase supply

·           requiring better monitoring and reporting on homes delivered for Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities, to ensure commitments translate into delivery

·          securing sustainable funding for supported housing, including revenue funding alongside capital investment

Chair of the London Assembly Housing Committee, Zoë Garbett AM (Green Party), said:

London’s housing crisis is hitting families and disabled Londoners hardest, yet the homes they need most are the ones least likely to be built. The report highlights that delivery has slowed sharply since 2023, at the same time as demand for genuinely affordable housing continues to rise.

Evidence to the Committee showed that rising construction costs, high land prices, increased borrowing costs and new building safety requirements have all reduced the capacity of councils and housing associations to bring forward new homes. Without changes to how funding is allocated, the report warns that delivery under the next Affordable Homes Programme risks falling further behind.

Menwhile Brent Council reacted to Government and London Mayor proposals on the Housing Emergency that included reducing the affordable housing threshold and temporary relief on the amount of Community Infrastructure Levy required from developers.

Councillor Teo Benea, Cabinet Member for Regeneration, Planning and Property published a statement on the Council's position:

While we support urgent action to unblock housing delivery, the current proposals risk doing the opposite in places like Brent, reducing the number of affordable homes delivered while significantly cutting the funding that pays for the infrastructure that our borough relies on.

Brent currently has 2,054 households living in temporary accommodation, and tens of thousands of residents on our housing register who will face waiting decades for an affordable home; unless grant funding for building new council homes is increased.

Lowering the effective affordable housing threshold and introducing substantial reductions in borough level Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) would remove vital investment in schools, future transport schemes like the West London Orbital, public realm improvements, as well as community and medical facilities, without addressing the real barriers to delivery.

Our submission is clear that Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) makes up only a small proportion of overall development costs, and that cutting it would have a disproportionate impact on Brent, particularly in areas that are already growing.

We want to work with Government to help realise their ambition of 1.5 million new homes, getting more families into secure and genuinely affordable housing, and supporting first time buyers onto the housing ladder.

That means introducing policies that increase delivery without undermining affordable housing, or stripping out the funding needed to support growing communities. We have submitted our formal response to both consultations, urging a rethink so we can deliver homes, infrastructure and opportunity together.

The Just Space Alliance, the campaign against the dominance of developers and landowners in planning, have written a detailed response that you can read HERE 

Here is a key extract:

Part 1: Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) Relief
 

We note that;

 Local authorities already set CIL levels to ensure developments can be viable and can choose not to charge CIL.
 

 Local authorities can already give Exceptional Circumstances Relief (ECR), if a scheme is unviable. This proposal would effectively over-ride local authority discretion.
 

 CIL is not cited as one of the causes of ‘non-viability’ (causes are Covid, high interest rates, construction and labour costs, new regulations, fall in demand for unaffordable housing).
 

 There is a danger that CIL relief will not be time limited, once introduced it will become the norm for financing developments.

We strongly object to the proposals for the following reasons

 If the Government allows both a significant reduction in CIL payments alongside consents that provide only 20% affordable housing this simply benefits landowners and developers with no corresponding public benefits. Land values will rise, driving up house prices and rents.

 These proposals would reduce the money that local authorities have to spend on essential improvements to the local area and providing social infrastructure for new and existing residents. Councils do not have the money to make up this shortfall, so it would have a long term impact on communities across London.
 

 The measures give priority to the delivery of ‘units’ rather than the sustainable development of appropriate homes addressing identified need – which is for social housing, not more unaffordable housing.
 

 The consultation contains no evidence of its necessity or effectiveness. It is extraordinary that the government has not provided its own financial modelling to support these proposals. The developer’s lobby have done so. It is deeply concerning that the affordable housing requirement may be reduced based on untested evidence provided by developers.

 If the govt wants to encourage developers building the homes we need, they could propose a reduction in CIL for schemes that commit to providing at least 35% affordable housing and for this to be the primary approach.
 

 The proposed £500,000 threshold discriminates against small schemes and the potential contribution of SMEs, which the Government purports to encourage.
 

 There would be no cut to Mayoral CIL. It is not clear why the boroughs are bearing the burden.

 The proposal for applications for CIL reductions to provide sufficient and truthful evidence to support viability modelling is welcomed. Information provided should be put into the public domain and the approach extended to apply to viability assessments used to reduce affordable housing contribution in planning applications.

Part 2: increasing Mayor’s powers to approve applications

The proposal is firstly to extend the Mayor’s power to ‘call in’ much smaller schemes of over 50 homes, but only if the borough intend to refuse the application – and the Mayor could then approve. Secondly it is proposed that the Mayor would be given additional powers to‘call in’ applications to build on the Green Belt or Metropolitan Open Land (MOL) .

These powers are designed to over-ride potential refusals by local councils of inappropriate schemes – all too rare an occasion anyway (many boroughs haven’t refused any major
schemes for years).

Local decision-making by local planning authorities (and local planning committees) is essential for transparency, legitimacy, and local democracy. We do not consider it appropriate for the Mayor to be given the power to over-ride the local authority’s democratic decision making process for schemes smaller than 150 homes, which are essentially local matters. Similarly it is not appropriate to give the Mayor specific additional powers of approval over-riding boroughs in relation to sites which are within the Green Belt or Metropolitan Open Land. This would fundamentally upset the relationships set out in the Greater London Authority Act 1999.

For these reasons we do not support a further extension of the Mayor’s call in powers.

In conclusion, we believe that the whoe package of measures - including those being concurrently consulted on by the Mayor - are fundamentally flawed, unevidenced, contradictory to the core principles and policies set out in the statutory London Plan, and therein fundamentally improper and open to legal challenge.