Councillor Teo Benea, Cabinet Member for Regeneration, Planning and Property, made this statement on the London Housing Emergency Measures:
“While we support urgent action to unblock housing delivery, the current proposals risk doing the opposite in places like Brent, reducing the number of affordable homes delivered while significantly cutting the funding that pays for the infrastructure that our borough relies on.
“Brent currently has 2,054 households living in temporary accommodation, and tens of thousands of residents on our housing register who will face waiting decades for an affordable home; unless grant funding for building new council homes is increased.
“Lowering the effective affordable housing threshold and introducing substantial reductions in borough level Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) would remove vital investment in schools, future transport schemes like the West London Orbital, public realm improvements, as well as community and medical facilities, without addressing the real barriers to delivery.
“Our submission is clear that Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) makes up only a small proportion of overall development costs, and that cutting it would have a disproportionate impact on Brent, particularly in areas that are already growing.
“We want to work with Government to help realise their ambition of 1.5 million new homes, getting more families into secure and genuinely affordable housing, and supporting first time buyers onto the housing ladder.
“That means introducing policies that increase delivery without undermining affordable housing, or stripping out the funding needed to support growing communities. We have submitted our formal response to both consultations, urging a rethink so we can deliver homes, infrastructure and opportunity together.”
