Social housing
Past updates under the tag ‘Housing Delivery‘ cover lack of funding for social housing. That subject was covered by our Patron Tony Travers of the LSE and Leanne Tritton of The London Society in talks at our AGM, reported separately.
The lawyer Simon Ricketts examines stalling of building here and proposals from the APPG for London on speeding house building are here.
Construction Adviser appointed
A new interim Chief Construction Adviser, Thouria Istephan, was appointed by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government on 30th September 2025.
MHCLG states that “Thouria will play a central role helping to shape the future of the built environment sector, ensuring that safety, delivery and accountability are central to decision-making, with residents’ voices at heart.”
Details are here.
Consultation for next London Plan
The GLA has published an ‘Easy Read’ version here of an earlier ‘Towards a New London Plan‘. It explains the need to deliver more homes and related problems. The consultation seeks views on that and various options for land use, jobs, environment and cultural facilities. London Forum’s members should consider responding by the closing date of 2nd November 2025 to influence the content of the draft replacement London Plan due in 2026.
Housing delivery – THF
The Housing Forum (THF) has published useful reports. One assessed Progress at July 2025 towards 1.5 m new homes target. Another in September 2025 is Barriers to housing delivery. It identifies challenges bringing housing delivery almost to a halt and offers solutions to financial constraints, planning complexities, regulatory pressures, workforce capacity and efficiency of working practices. The Government, the next London Plan and London’s local authorities will need policies to address those issues.
RPs and affordable homes
The Home Builders Federation posted on LinkedIn they had investigated the effects of lack of bids from Registered Providers (RPs) on housing delivery nationally and found :-
An estimated 900 completed Section 106 Affordable Housing units remain empty due to the absence of a contract with a Registered Provider.
Around 8,500 Section 106 Affordable Homes either under construction or due to commence construction within the next 12 months are not currently contracted.
More than 700 sites have been delayed or stalled in the past three years due to developers’ inability [more…]
High quality Social Housing
The Policy Exchange has a 35-Point Blueprint for a New Generation of Superlative British Social Housing. It calls for a new generation of exemplary council housing that will restore the traditional, humanist social and design ideals that marked the early iterations of English public housing. The report argues that by so doing, not only will we help solve the affordability riddle that lies at the heart of the housing crisis, but we will provide the growth, prosperity and social mobility that will help turbo-charge the economy and [more…]
Blockers and Approvers: Rates of Delegation and Approval for Planning Applications
The Government recently published Planning Statistics for the year to March 2025. For the 32 London boroughs, the statistics showed some interesting features.
First, they showed that all but three boroughs – Camden, Ealing and Harrow delegated decisions to officers on 90% or more of the applications they received; and that 19 of them delegated decisions on more than 98% of applications. Two boroughs – Enfield and Redbridge – delegated decisions on nearly 100% of applications.
Second, rates of approval varied much more widely, from an outlier [more…]
Homes on Green Belt
The OnLondon news channel is one to which London Forum recommends its members should subscribe. Its edition here includes a review of the progress of review of LB Enfield’s new Local Plan. It promotes the use of Green Belt land for housing and the arguments for and against that will be considered by the Inspector in the examination’s stage three in October 2025.
There are other news items of interest in the OnLondon website including an Earls Court special, details of proposals to address use of mobile phones [more…]
Right to Buy sales
The Government published figures in a report for the number of social homes sold, the number replaced and the receipts for LPAs.
Annual eligible sales in London peaked at 4,000 in 2014 and declined after that as discounts were reduced, although receipts from sales remained high.
Replacement properties for those sold have increasingly failed to meet the one-for-one target since 2017-18, as described in the report, and some reasons are suggested.
Assembly Affordable Housing report
The London Assembly Housing Committee published a report on affordable housing delivery. It shows that, as of March 2025, starts had been made on 5,200 new homes compared with a target of a minimum of 17,800.
Details and comments are at
London Assembly affordable housing monitor 2025.
Savills: Challenges for affordable housing delivery in London.
Rhys Williams: Politics and market reality are worlds apart.
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How to petition Parliament
Old Kent Road development – update
High Value Council Tax Surcharge
Densifying the Suburbs – A presenter’s Insight
Our President, Ben Derbyshire, provides his Insights into our recent Densifying the Suburbs event.
I welcomed the invitation to speak at an [more…]
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How Effective is Planning Enforcement?
📆 Mon 29th June | 18:30 - 20:30
🚩 77 Cowcross Street, EC1M 6EL (map)
How can we make it work better? Planning enforcement is important. Unless it’s done effectively, the integrity of the whole planning system is put at risk. But it’s one of the most frustrating issues for civic societies and local community groups. We’ll discuss this and related issues at this Open Meeting on 29th June. Please book here ( https://www.londonforum.org.uk/events/how-effective-is-planning-enforcement#booking ) Cases typically include: Large developments that grossly fail to meet planning conditions or even submitted drawings and plans; Illegal demolitions; Unauthorised residential alterations and extensions; Additional floors…