Mayor Fails Again. This Time on Housing.

Figures from the Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities show that the number of affordable homes built in Newham is dropping. In 2022-23 some 844 affordable homes were completed. This corresponds to a figure 1156 in the year before. This shows a drop in completed homes of almost 25% in a year.

We noted how the mayor and council had reneged on their election promise to ensure that 50% of all new housing built would be let at social rent. There was some embarrassment when the Green councillors introduced a motion seeking to keep Labour to the policy they had proposed during the election.

Given that housing was one of the flagship policies of the mayor, this news must come as yet another embarrassment to her.

“As Mayor, my mission is to champion people’s needs and that’s why, among my top priorities, is making sure Newham Council does all that it can to provide local people with the homes they deserve and can afford. I’m really proud that we have started work on yet more housing projects across Newham that will help deliver the high-quality homes our people deserve.”  (link)

More worrying than the number of ‘completions’ is that the DLUHC shows that there have been no new affordable homes started between April 2022 and March 2023 and that there were none in the preceding year. (Table 2a) This compares with 207 in 2020-21.

We are not sure whether she has shared this news with her council colleagues, we suspect not. Maybe some of them would like to ask her why affordable home-building numbers are dropping.

Even we were astonished by these figures, in truth we found them difficult to believe. If they are correct, they show that the mayor’s flagship housing policy is a complete disaster. Amidst all of the hype about caring and providing housing, it seems that building council houses has come to a complete halt and we’re not sure that the councillors have realised this yet.

Perhaps one of our elected councillors might enquire of the mayor or Cllr Mohammed and check whether these figures are true.

If the figures are correct, then councillors might check just what it is that Populo has been doing for the past two years.

Frankly, we find it difficult to believe that there have been no new ‘starts’ for social or affordable rent for two years. Tell us where we are wrong, and as always, we’ll correct it. 

If, as we suspect, we are correct, then the mayor and council should hang their heads in shame.