With the Mayoral Elections coming up and housing being one of the biggest issue in London, we thought we would look at the evolution of Council owned housing stock between March 2016 and March 2023.
The data comes from this official data set.
Sadiq Khan is claiming that he will build 40000 Council homes by the end of the decade, ie 2030, if reelected.
So let’s look at what happened between March 2016 and March 2023.
New council homes built but a fair amount demolished! Between March 2016 and March 2023 7243 Council homes were demolished and 8219 built so a net gain of 976 Council homes in 7 years when taking into account builds versus demolitions!
There is also a change of tenure in the overall Council owned housing stock.
- Total Council housing stock reduced by 1.5% between March 2017 and March 2023
- Council Housing stock at social rent levels reduced by 2.6% between March 2017 and March 2023
- Council housing Stock at “affordable rent” levels increased by 224.2% between March 2017 and March 2023
So yes new Council housing units have been built but what the PR doesn’t mention is the number of demolitions and change of tenure in the Council owned housing units.