Mayor launches small homebuilders programme with TfL pilot sites

TfL to bring forward pilot of 10 small sites for housing

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has today launched a programme to pilot bringing forward small publicly owned sites to boost the capital’s small homebuilders sector and increase the supply of new and genuinely affordable homes. 

London’s homebuilding sector is dominated by a small number of large developers that build the majority of homes across the capital, with the number of small builders delivering fewer than 100 homes having halved over the last 10 years.

Through his ‘Small Sites, Small Builders’ programme, Sadiq wants to make small plots of publicly-owned land more accessible to London’s small and medium-sized builders. To pilot his new approach, the Mayor has instructed Transport for London to bring forward 10 of its small sites for development, with capacity ranging from between two and 42 homes. The land will be made more accessible for smaller builders through a simple bidding process with standardised legal contracts, and two of the sites will be dedicated specifically to community-led housing groups.

Land at Cable Street, near the Shadwell DLR in Tower Hamlets, and a site at Christchurch Road in Lambeth, will both be earmarked for community-led housing and will deliver 100 per cent affordable housing.

The initial 10 plots of land will deliver 111 new homes, of which 68 per cent will be affordable.

The Mayor’s team has begun discussions with other public sector landowners about using their small sites for housing too, and a review of the new process for bringing forward the 10 TfL pilot sites will be carried out to determine how and when the programme can be used by other public land owners in the capital.