Deputy mayor at City Hall says improvements will be seen soon while senior Tory politician warns against repeating “errors of the past”, reports Kumail Jaffer, Local Democracy Reporter

Londoners will finally soon see the light at the end of the tunnel when it comes to the city’s enduring accommodation crisis, City Hall’s deputy mayor responsible for housing has vowed.

Tom Copley told last week’s London Housing Summit, hosted by the Centre for London last week, that Londoners would start to see the benefits of new reforms in the coming months.

Mayor of London Sir Sadiq Khan has faced heavy criticism for failing to meet ministerial targets on affordable housing, while private sector housebuilding continues to stagnate.

Khan and Copley have blamed a myriad of factors for the crisis, including high interest rates, soaring construction costs and the “botched” implementation of the Building Safety Regulator (BSR) slowing down applications.

However, last year City Hall announced an emergency package of measures alongside the government designed to kickstart housebuilding, including reducing the affordability quota for developers from 35% to 20% and targeted partial relief from the community infrastructure levy for eligible schemes.

The final version of this, which included measures such as expanding the London mayor’s ‘call in’ powers to any scheme above 50 homes which is rejected by a local authority, was finally confirmed late last month.

London’s housing crisis is likely to be one of the central issues of the 2028 mayoral election. Should both a supply and affordability crisis continue to push Londoners into deeper financial trouble – or out of the city altogether – questions will be asked around whether the Labour administration is up to the task.

But Copley said Londoners should see significant progress made in the next two years. In an exclusive interview with the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS), he said 2026 is going to be “the turnaround year”.

“It is going to be the year that things begin to turn around after what was a very challenging year in 2025,” he said.

“The emergency package of measures that we announced is now just starting to kick in.

“We’re already seeing schemes now come forward that have been essentially enabled and supported by that. I believe we’re going to see many more. So I think throughout this year, we’re going to start to see a real – we’ll start to see that uptick that we need in housing, in housing starts, and in terms of affordable housing as well.”

Until recently, Khan has been able to boast of his housing record during his time in office. Up until 2023, his Affordable Homes Programme delivered more than 116,000 housing starts.

Three years later, however, fewer than 8,000 homes have been started on the next stage of the programme, leaving the mayor needing almost 10,000 more in the final three months to hit a target already lowered twice by the government.

Also speaking at the London Housing Summit last week was the Conservative Party’s shadow housing secretary, Sir James Cleverly.

He rejected the idea of having to build “soulless tower blocks” to meet London’s housing targets, and instead suggested his party would emulate Paris in building “attractive” mansion blocks across the city.

He said building “beautiful” would also see planning objections from locals in the area significantly drop, suggesting that residents oppose poorly thought-out developments rather than the housing itself.

London is currently in the midst of a severe housing shortage, with just 2,103 new homes started in the private sector during the first three months of 2026 despite an annual target of 88,000. City Hall also looks set to fall short of affordable housebuilding targets set by the government.

Cleverley’s comments echo a report from the London Assembly’s own planning and regeneration committee last month, which concluded that City Hall should pursue the much simpler strategy of “gentle density” across the capital in order to unlock more homes.

In his speech at the London Housing Summit, the senior Tory politician said: “We need to have a real commitment to build quality. We should not repeat the errors of the past.

“I reject the false choice between low-rise sprawl and soulless tower blocks. You don’t have to build badly just to build economically. And we do need to build neighbourhoods as well as accommodation units.

“Beauty matters, particularly in the public realm, because that is the beauty seen by people who cannot afford to buy beauty themselves.

“If you’re wealthy, you can surround yourself with attractive things. But if you’re not wealthy, the attractive things that surround you are things provided in the public realm. And everybody, has a right to live amongst beautiful things.

“More than that, there’s a practical approach, because beauty builds attachment, attachment encourages stewardship, stewardship encourages longevity of that housing stock.”

Meanwhile, Anna Clarke, director of policy and public affairs at The Housing Forum, told the London Housing Summit that developers must ensure new properties help alleviate the city’s housing crisis rather than accentuate it.

There are around 75,000 households in London currently residing in temporary accommodation, more than double the number 15 years ago.

Clarke said London’s “dire” housing situation was partly down to a focus on trying to hit targets rather than build appropriate homes for residents.

“We have one of the highest proportions in the country of social housing, but we still have the worst housing problems because there isn’t enough housing in total,” she said.

“We also need to look at how we can use existing stock better, and part of that’s around making sure that when we do build new housing, it helps as many people as possible.

“We’re rather too obsessed with counting the number of units, which pushes the pressure to build small housing. We’ve got an awful lot of overcrowded households in London.

“When you look at why people are on the waiting list, the large majority of them are on the waiting lists because they’re often quite badly overcrowded.

“So we really need larger homes – they take more subsidy so we might build fewer of them, but every four-bedroom house we build could house eight people.

“If we count people instead of units, we straight away can recognise that that’s making a bigger impact on more people’s lives because you’ve got more people living in it.

“And then there’s an indirect impact because that overcrowded family that moved to the four bedroom house will have released another house and you may get several different houses to re-let all getting rid of somebody’s overcrowding, making them adequately housed.

“So if we can measure that as well, it would help build an evidence base that I think would put more pressure on government and people giving out grants to recognise that they need to count the people, not the units.”

No news is bad news 

Independent news outlets like ours – reporting for the community without rich backers – are under threat of closure, turning British towns into news deserts. 

The audiences they serve know less, understand less, and can do less. 

If our coverage has helped you understand our community a little bit better, please consider supporting us with a monthly, yearly or one-off donation. 

Choose the news. Don’t lose the news.

Monthly direct debit 

Annual direct debit

£5 per month supporters get a digital copy of each month’s paper before anyone else, £10 per month supporters get a digital copy of each month’s paper before anyone else and a print copy posted to them each month.  £50 annual supporters get a digital copy of each month's paper before anyone else.

More information on supporting us monthly or annually 

More Information about donations