This week’s LandAid Debate saw Sadiq Khan and Zac Goldsmith clash over affordable housing, political credentials and overseas investment in their bids to address London’s housing crisis.
The pair have made pledges, but while housing may be top of the agenda, matching their actions to their words is far from easy.
Back in 2008, Boris Johnson said he would build 50,000 affordable homes and in 2012 he pledged a further 55,000.
In the end, he settled for saying 100,000 over both terms, but to date has still only managed 94,000 – and the “affordability” of many of those has been questioned.
Pledges and policy statements this time around are no less ambitious and, in some instances, increasingly impractical.
Khan says he will implement a 50% affordable housing commitment on development – a policy that Johnson scrapped when taking office in 2008.
Observers have said such a policy will make new schemes unviable, which will lead to less housing development overall. Johnson managed more affordable units on average each year than his predecessor, Ken Livingstone.
Goldsmith’s written proposals are, for the moment, more thin on the ground, although his stumbling block may be the task of upping house building to 50,000 a year.
Here Estates Gazette takes a look at the mayoral race – or perhaps obstacle course – that the two are setting up for themselves, and has a look back at some of Johnson’s pledges, and how he managed them.
