Housing secretary Michael Gove has said he is taking urgent action because London is ‘failing’ to provide affordable homes.
Mr Gove has set up a panel of advisers to consider the London Plan – which he claimed ‘could be preventing thousands of homes being brought forward’ – with a focus on brownfield sites.
In a letter to Sadiq Khan, Mr Gove berated the capital’s ‘woeful’ housing delivery and told the London mayor: ‘Under your leadership the Greater London Authority is failing to provide affordable homes for those that need them most.’
He said Government officials had reviewed the capital’s housing delivery and met with developers and planning authorities to identify challenges in delivering housing, with ‘a number of issues raised’.
‘If you cannot do what is needed to deliver the homes that London needs, I will’, Mr Gove added.
The panel, led by Christopher Katkowski KC and including former Local Government Association chairman James Jamieson, has been asked to produce a report by January.
A spokesperson for the mayor of London said: 'London as a whole has outbuilt the rest of the country since Sadiq took office in 2016.
'This is despite the fact that decades of austerity, high inflation and a lack of national leadership have culminated in a major decline in housebuilding across the country.'
