Mayor reveals Government delay on vital fire safety rules is holding up delivery of 34,000 new homes in the capital

• Mayor writes to Housing Secretary Michael Gove calling for urgent action on impending fire safety rules 
• New City Hall analysis shows 34,000 homes on major development sites are being held up due to the Government’s delayed implementation of new rules on second staircases in residential buildings over 18 metres tall
• Mayor warns lack of clarity from Government risks setting back City Hall’s record homebuilding delivery and worsening the capital’s housing crisis  

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has today demanded urgent action from the Housing Secretary as new figures show the Government is holding up the delivery of new homes in London by leaving housebuilders in the dark about impending new fire safety requirements.  

Ministers first proposed rules requiring a second staircase in new tall buildings in December last year in response to the Grenfell Tower fire in June 2017. In a speech in July, the Housing Secretary, Michael Gove, committed to this major change for new blocks over 18 metres tall - about six storeys - and promised a transition period that would ensure “there is no disruption to housing supply”. 

However, new data from City Hall reveals there are now 34,000 homes on major developments being held up due to a lack of clarity from the Government on these new fire safety requirements. This figure only includes the biggest developments (those that require Mayoral planning sign off), meaning thousands more homes will also be affected on other smaller developments across the capital. With construction costs rapidly rising and developers already warning they could be forced to down tools [1], this delay from the Government could cause some schemes to be abandoned altogether. 

The Mayor has used his London Plan and funding programmes to go further than the national building regulations with a push towards greater building safety, for example requiring sprinklers, and a complete ban on combustible cladding on all new homes.

Local authorities and housing developers currently have no guidance on what the promised ‘transition period’ will cover, nor have they been informed what technical requirements they will need to meet to satisfy new rules – for example, whether the two staircases will need to be entirely separate or whether they can be contained within the same building core.

This lack of clarity from the Government comes at an already challenging time for housebuilding across the country. The Mayor wrote to Michael Gove last month warning that housing experts are forecasting a major drop in housebuilding driven by high interest rates and building cost inflation, which could see housebuilding across England fall to the lowest level since the Second World War. [2]  

It could also put the capital’s housebuilding boom, which has been growing ever since Sadiq became Mayor in 2016, at risk. In recent years, City Hall has completed more homes of all types than at any time since the 1930s, built more council homes than at any time since the 1970s, and exceeded its ambitious target of building 116,000 new genuinely affordable homes in the capital by the end of the last financial year.  

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said: “While I strongly support the highest fire safety standards for new buildings, the chaotic way these new rules are being put in place by the Government is now holding up the delivery of thousands of homes across the capital. 

“We’ve made huge progress in London since 2016 – building more new council homes that at any time since the 1970s - but we still have a long way to go to fix the housing crisis.  We simply can’t afford this confusion caused by the Government to slow down crucial housing delivery in our city. 

“Ministers must cut through this bureaucratic dither and delay to urgently bring clarity on these new fire safety rules. This should be done alongside the other steps we know are needed to help fix our housing crisis, including investing the £4.9bn a year the capital needs to meet the demand for new, high quality genuinely affordable homes.” 

Stephanie Pollitt, Program Director for Housing at BusinessLDN, said: “Building more residential developments at pace is vital to combat London’s housing crisis. The Government must provide urgent clarity on building regulations– including the requirements for second staircases – to enable developers to build the homes that Londoners need. Providing this certainty is critical to help the industry deliver high-quality and well-designed homes that meet the highest safety standards.”

ENDS