London mayor Sadiq Khan has forced Transport for London to sell off a plot of land below the market rate for new homes to built, in the first such move of his tenure.
City Hall announced on Tuesday that 400 homes will be built on TfL land at Kidbrooke in southeast London, with 50% of them classed as affordable.
In a bid to meet his ambitious election pledge to make half of all new houses built in London "genuinely affordable", Khan plans to use swathes of disused land owned by TfL for housebuilding, which he has said could see 10,000 new homes built across 75 sites.
Khan ordered the sale in a briefing paper signed last week – first spotted by Mayorwatch. The paper revealed that in order to get around the Greater London Authority Act – which compels TfL to seek the highest-possible profit from any land sale – the mayor had to use his powers to force the deal through.
Technically, TfL could only agree to the sale if the plan was for 35% to be classed as affordable housing. But City Hall instead has got around this by giving the land to a joint venture of developers who will build on the land.
The briefing said: "The reduced land value and return in this instance would not prevent TfL from continuing to discharge its statutory functions in providing public passenger transport."
In a statement, City Hall was keen to point out that the Kidbrooke site has lain dormant for eight years.
Khan said: "Londoners are being priced out of their own city and we need to be honest that we’re not going to turn things round overnight. Last year my predecessor built fewer affordable homes than in any year since records began 25 years ago – fixing this is going to take time.
"Getting homes built on public land can be hard, but after being elected I set to work immediately to make sure we get building on more of the hundreds of sites owned by Transport for London, stretching right across the capital, that have been allowed to languish unused for far too long. This site in Kidbrooke will be the first of many we are fast-tracking to build genuinely affordable homes for Londoners."
Conservatives on the Greater London Authority were less enthusiastic, however, and questioned why public land needs to be sold at a loss.
The Tories' transport spokesman on the GLA, Keith Prince, said: "Selling TfL’s land with a massive 50% affordable housing requirement ensures it will be sold for well under market value.
"He [Khan] should have checked if it was legal before promising this requirement, as all bodies have to achieve best value when selling public property. The mayor should face facts and ditch this affordable housing requirement before he bankrupts TfL any further."
Also on Tuesday, Khan unveiled a new governance board, dubbed Homes for Londoners, designed to ensure the maximum number of affordable homes across the city.
It includes the deputy mayor for housing, James Murray; the leaders of four London boroughs; the commissioner of TfL; the Greater London Authority's executive leader for housing; the chair of the G15 group of housing associations; and two unnamed representatives from the property industry.
City Hall also announced a new team of experts to scrutinise viability assessments, the much-criticised financial documents that developers often use to argue the case for building a smaller amount of affordable housing.