It is appropriate that I should follow another London Member, the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter). At the risk
of being criticised—we often rightly are—for being London-centric, London does face specific challenges, so I would like to spend a few minutes talking about that subject, which is close to my constituents’ hearts.
It is worth setting out some context. Since 2001, London’s population, and therefore the demand for housing, has increased by 1 million. That is equivalent to creating a new borough every two and a half years, such is the speed of growth. That means we have to respond to the challenging housing needs with innovation and imagination. To borrow the words of the former Housing Minister, the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford), who I think struck the right tone when talking about the failure over 30 years, we also need to find some common ground, particularly if we are to deal with some of the challenges in London.
As the Mayor has rightly identified, if we are to catch up and keep pace with demand in London alone, we will need to provide about 49,000 accommodation units every year for the next 10 years. To put that in context, that has not been achieved since 1930, an age when building on the green belt was not an issue and we did not face the challenge of having to develop brownfield sites, which I believe offer a big opportunity in London. It is probably accurate to say that we have been building, on average, about 20,000 units a year over the past 30 years.
We now have a situation, as Members on both sides of the House have rightly pointed out, in which rents and the cost of purchase in London are so disproportionate to the rest of the country that supply is clearly the key. Let us face it: we cannot simply wave a magic wand, whether at local government level, mayoral level or here, but we have to pull whatever levers we have at our disposal to try to help drive the supply solution. I have looked with interest at some of the proposed measures for doing that, and at one in particular, which I will speak about shortly—the housing zones, which were recently announced in my constituency.
So tricky is the problem we face that we are looking at more imaginative ways to provide more housing. The Mayor’s land and development programme is effectively bringing forward surplus public land owned by the Greater London authority to regenerate areas and help provide housing. About 60 live sites are already under way, which will hopefully deliver at least 40,000 homes over the period of their development. There are 20 housing zones—I will outline this later for the benefit of the House—which are ambitious plans to create 50,000 much needed homes. It is crucial, as I think we all agree, to target those on low and middle incomes who are seeking to buy affordable homes as well as those seeking to rent.
A considerable number of empty homes in London need to be brought back into use. Between 2008 and 2012, around 5,000 empty homes were brought back into use, and I am sure that we can do more. We have more funding to bring another 1,100 empty homes back into use. In fact, there are now about 25,000 fewer empty homes in London than there were in 2008. Supplying new homes is crucial, but so is work on decent homes—restoring the stock we have to make them liveable—and restoring empty homes. In my borough we have benefited from £44 million, which we are halfway through spending between now and 2015, just on decent homes alone.