Sadiq Khan is facing criticism over his housing policy after it emerged that he has marketed “affordable” one-bedroom flats for Londoners which cost £2,415 per month.
The Mayor of London operates a website, Homes for Londoners, aimed at helping people in the capital on “low to middle incomes” find an “affordable home”.
This includes tenancies offering below-market rent, which are supposed to help tenants save towards a deposit to buy their own homes.
However, among the properties listed on the website are one-bedroom flats in Nine Elms Lane, close to Battersea Power Station, with prices starting from £2,415 per calendar month.
Last month, Mr Khan took to Twitter to denounce the fact that the average private rent in London had hit “an eye-watering £2,500 a month” - almost the same as the Nine Elms Lane flats.
Prices for two-bedroom flats in the development meanwhile start at £3,010.
According to the Mayor’s website, apartments in the “fabulous riverside location” feature “unparalleled amenities”, including “swimming pools, sky lounge bars, roof terraces, gyms and even pet spas, offering an exceptional rental lifestyle”.
The website adds that the kitchens “are equipped with Smeg appliances while bedrooms are comfortably furnished with plush carpets and built-in wardrobes”.
The Conservatives have leapt on the news of the expensive flats to question Mr Khan’s housing record.
Shaun Bailey, the former Tory mayoral candidate who is the party’s housing spokesman in the London Assembly, said: “There is nothing genuine or affordable about Sadiq Khan’s housing policies.
“Not only is he throwing together one-bedroom flats in a desperate attempt to keep up with his targets, he is stretching the definition of affordable by marketing them for an eye-watering £2,415 per month.
“The Mayor has had billions in funding from the Government and yet he is failing to deliver. Londoners deserve so much better than this.”
However, Mr Khan hit back at the criticism by claiming that the Nine Elms development was signed off by his predecessor, Boris Johnson, who stood down as mayor in 2016.
A spokesman for the mayor said: “These particular homes were approved by the previous mayor under his much wider definition of affordable housing which benchmarked rents at up to 80 per cent of market levels.
“Sadiq ditched this definition when he became mayor and after years of under-investment from the Government, is extremely proud to have started a record-breaking 116,000 genuinely affordable homes, the equivalent of a city the size of Plymouth, despite unprecedented economic turbulence.
The spokesman for Mr Khan added: “In the last year alone, work started on more than 25,000 affordable homes, more than treble the level managed at the end of the previous mayor’s term in office.
“His calls for Government to freeze private rents for two years to help struggling renters continue to fall on deaf ears.”
www.telegraph.co.uk
