Why is building social housing so important in London?

Chair, I would like to thank the Member for continuing to raise these important issues since his return to the Assembly last year. Building more social housing is my top housing priority because the need for more local rented housing is overwhelming. Of the total 65,878 new homes that the London Plan’s Strategic Housing Market Assessment shows are needed each year, two-thirds should be social or genuinely affordable. This need has been reinforced by the impact of COVID-19. Polling also suggests a quarter of private renters have fallen behind with their market value rent during the pandemic.

That is why I am proud that over half of the homes delivered under my new Affordable Homes Programme will be for social rent, and of the building progress made over the last four years, hitting every single delivery target in the Affordable Homes Programme for 2016 to 2023. To the end of December 2020, our delivery partners started 62,428 homes for the programme, 4,290 new council homes were started in London last year, the highest number since 1983, and 3,300 of these were supported by City Hall.

Thank you, Mr Mayor, for that response. As you know, I concur with you on that front. What I want to bring up though is the scale of complaints in social housing. It is pertinent to come to you about this. You have mentioned your Affordable Housing Programme. You have environmental standards and design and safety standards. What thought have you given to customer service standards and the funding to ensure people living in homes receive the best possible customer services from the providers as well?

You raise a really important point and it is a point raised regularly by the Deputy Mayor for Housing and Residential Development with colleagues at G15 and elsewhere, the housing associations. The GLA is not a regulator of social housing. I want to be quite conscious not to be ultra vires in relation to what we do. I am concerned about the number of cases around the poor service standards from some of our social landlords. We are looking at what we can do, in a collegiate way, to improve the quality of service many received. One of the reasons I have been lobbying for a Commissioner for Social Housing Residents is to push this very issue, because you are spot on in relation to the experience many of our residents have.

Thank you for that. My observation is that it is from Barking Riverside all the way to Orpington in the west, it is not just people in social housing and shared ownership, and it goes beyond cladding issues. It is important we get the G15 housing association group on side, on their service levels. What can you do to improve them immediately?

In relation to levers, we have very few. It is about conversations. One of the things that Tom [Copley, Deputy Mayor for Housing and Residential Development] has been doing is engaging with them to address this issue. They recognise it, by the way. I do not want to give you the impression they are mala fides. They do get it and they do want to address this really important issue. That is why I think having a regulator would help them raise their game or provide the pressure that is needed to have service level agreements and quality of service commensurate with the challenges and the concerns raised to you and to me and others as well.

I have referred some of these complaints to the Regulator of Social Housing and I have not got very far at all, unfortunately. I personally would like to see the Mayor of London have some regulatory powers, but that obviously needs primary legislation for that to occur.

What I do want to see, hopefully, Mr Mayor, that in a second term you would take on board these concerns when you are making allocations. There is a clear-cut pattern emerging. It is particularly with the big housing associations. They have properties all over the place and I am not sure their management systems are fit for purpose for covering all that ground. A local authority at least has it concentrated in a particular area. That is what I think is not happening with the G15. I think you are in a position in a second term to ask for that when you are making allocations for the future programme; that you have certain service levels that their residents and tenants can expect and that they will be maintained in future.

The challenge is enforceability. We have built in, in the allocation of funds, standards around design, sustainability, safety and equalities. That is one of the reasons why I am lobbying for a Commissioner for Social Housing Residents, who would be that powerful voice to make sure, once a home is built and somebody has moved in, there is proper consistency and good quality of standards.

Unfortunately, on the point about the Regulator of Social Housing, their remit is more around economic and governance standards rather than consumer standards. The Greater London Authority Act limits my powers, but I would be more than happy to look into this with a Government willing to give us the powers. The Commissioner for Social Housing Residents, would it not be great if the Commissioner was a social housing resident him or herself? That would be really powerful.

I look forward to that appointment in a second term.