By Joe Talora, Local Democracy Reporter
More than half a million homes in London could be overcrowded, based on a new report from the City Hall Conservatives.
The report, printed right now, discovered that as much as 576,000 homes in the capital could be overcrowded – nearly double the official estimate.
According to GLA figures, roughly 298,800 homes in London are believed to be overcrowded, which is 8.3 per cent of London’s households.
But a survey carried out by YouGov for right now’s report discovered that 16 per cent of grownup Londoners, greater than half a million folks, believed their homes had been overcrowded.
Assembly Member Tony Devenish, the report’s writer, mentioned that “London’s overcrowding downside is far larger than Sadiq Khan thinks”, with the survey additionally discovering that 75 per cent of Londoners didn’t imagine there have been sufficient reasonably priced family-sized homes in the capital.
Mr Devenish mentioned: “According to Londoners, there could be as many as 576,000 overcrowded homes throughout our metropolis. That’s twice the quantity City Hall estimates. For youngsters rising up in these homes, overcrowding can severely affect their life possibilities whereas mother and father face enormous struggles, notably with their psychological well being.
“The Mayor is sitting on £535 million of unallocated housebuilding money. He wants to make use of it now to start out constructing the bigger reasonably priced homes Londoners desperately want so we are able to deal with overcrowding in our metropolis.”
The report defines an overcrowded residence as one which has “fewer bedrooms than it must keep away from undesirable sharing”, based mostly on the age, intercourse and relationship of family members.
City Hall Conservatives are actually calling for Sadiq Khan to make use of unallocated cash from the Government’s £4.8 billion Affordable Homes Fund to start out work on new reasonably priced family-sized homes after it emerged that solely 2,005 had been constructed in 2019/20 in comparison with 2,892 in 2017/18.
But a spokesperson for the Mayor of London mentioned: “The newest planning knowledge present that the proportion of latest family-sized social rented homes has elevated below the present Mayor, from 34 per cent in 2015/16 to 41 per cent in 2018/19, the newest 12 months for which figures can be found.
“The finest technique to deal with overcrowding in London is by constructing extra genuinely reasonably priced homes, and final 12 months London began a record-breaking 17,000 new genuinely reasonably priced homes by way of the Mayor’s reasonably priced homes programme, together with extra new council homes than in any 12 months since 1983.
“Just three new homes for social lease had been began below the programme inherited from the earlier administration in 2016.”
Last September, the London Assembly handed a movement put ahead by City Hall Conservatives that referred to as on the mayor to present extra consideration to dwelling sizes in planning purposes following evaluation that confirmed a hyperlink between overcrowded homes and elevated Covid-19 mortality.
Pictured high: Activist group Housing motion Southwark and Lambeth (HASL) at a assembly
