In a statement, Peabody Chief Executive and Chair of G15, Ian McDermott said:

“We understand the challenge that government and the Mayor face in addressing what is now a significant housing market failure in the capital. London is in the grip of a housing emergency where the delivery of new homes across all tenures has collapsed. This is devastating for the hundreds of thousands of families living in temporary accommodation and in need of a social home.

Emergency times call for emergency measures, and the need for some temporary interventions to unlock stalled sites and get developers building quickly is clear. Action to reduce costs and simplify some planning requirements will help.

Time will tell if there is sufficient market demand for developers to scale up delivery on the back of today’s announcements, but the goal is to try and secure more much-needed social and affordable homes through the S106 system of developer contributions.

As not-for-profit social landlords we want to see more good quality social and affordable homes coming forward by developers. We can help and the system can work well when we’re involved with the design process from the start and involved on a partnership basis. This can deliver high quality, mixed-tenure and mixed-use places where people enjoy living. 

However, very often we’re asked by developers to buy homes that we won’t own or manage and that tie us into complex management arrangements and service charges. We know this isn’t good for the residents who move in so our appetite to buy is of course limited in those circumstances. We’ve published guidance about how developers can engage and work with us from the start and we hope as a result we’ll start to see some improvement following this package.

Housing delivery depends on the public, private and social sectors working in partnership, and hopefully today’s announcement will support better ways of working in the future. This will need culture change in the private sector and a wider package to restore housing associations’ capacity to invest in new supply, including rent convergence and low-cost loans alongside higher and more flexible grant rates. With these in place, we can work through these tough economic and market conditions to help scale up delivery and get the good quality social and affordable homes Londoners need in this parliament.”

G15 guidance for developers on S106 can be found here:

https://g15.london/news/g15-publishes-guidance-for-developers-on-s106