Mayor boosts councils’ homebuilding teams with new £10m fund

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, is today launching a new £10m fund to beef up London councils’ housing and planning teams and help boost their role building new homes in the capital (October 19th).Sadiq Khan’s new Homebuilding Capacity Fund will allow councils to bid for up to £750,000 each to boost their housing and planning teams. This could include hiring new staff to lead council homebuilding projects and develop new masterplans.Bids will be considered that help to deliver:• A new generation of council homes;• More homes, including social rented and other genuinely affordable homes, on small sites;• Proactive masterplans in areas with significant growth potential; and• Optimal density across new residential developments in an area.The Homebuilding Capacity Fund will work alongside other practical support that City Hall is providing to help councils build again. Earlier this week, Deputy Mayor for Housing James Murray launched a new Council-Led Housing Forum, run by Future of London, to provide technical advice to practitioners involvedin council-led delivery of homes.This support will help councils deliver their successful bids to the Mayor’s Building Council Homes for Londoners programme – the first-ever City Hall programme dedicated specifically to supporting council homebuilding.The programme, launched in May this year, set out to help get 10,000 new council homes underway over the next four years. Bidding closed on September 30th, and initial allocations will be announced soon.