Council home lists in Westminster now 83 years long and City of London now 105 Years long

There are 3,900 people waiting for a council home in Westminster – but only 47 council homes were built for them last year. There are more than 2000 people waiting for a council home in City of London – but only 19 Affordable Homes were built in 2017-18. 

New figures show that at the current rate of building of council and social homes (47 homes built last year), it would take 83 years to house all 3,907 people on the Westminster council housing waiting lists in a social rented home and 105 years to house all 2,000 people on the City of London housing waiting list.

The number of socially rented homes being built in Westminster has fallen from 389 in 2010/11, when the last Labour government’s funding for councils was still being delivered, to 47 in 2017/18, the last financial year for which there are figures.

The next Labour government will end the housing crisis by building the affordable homes our country needs:

1. Build over a million genuinely affordable council and social homes over 10 years, scrapping the Tories’ definition of ‘affordable’ housing and replacing it with a new definition linked to local incomes
2. End the right to buy and give councils the new funding and powers they need to kick-start the biggest council house building programme in a generation
3. Scrap ‘no fault’ evictions, control rents for private renters and give councils new powers to enforce standards in the private rented sector
4. Bring in a new Decent Homes 2 standard for all council and housing association homes to make them warm, safe, and dry, and fund the retrofitting of sprinklers in all high-rise social housing tower blocks
5. Scrap the punishing bedroom tax and introduce a new ‘zero carbon’ homes standard for new homes to reduce emissions and lower household bills

Commenting, Gordon Nardell, Labour’s Parliamentary Candidate in Cities and Westminster, said: