Homebuilding Capacity Fund

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has announced that local authorities, will receive a share of his new £10 million fund to help deliver more council, social rented, and other genuinely affordable homes.

The money will help councils to deliver the Mayor’s flagship ‘Building Council Homes for Londoners’ programme – the first-ever City Hall programme dedicated specifically to council homebuilding. Through this, the Mayor agreed plans last year worth more than £1 billion with 27 London boroughs to start building 11,000 new council homes at social rent levels by 2022.

Thirty London local authorities will receive funding up to £650,000 to help with:

• building a new generation of council homes
• building more homes, including social rented and other genuinely affordable homes, on small sites
• proactive masterplans in areas with significant growth potential
• planning for optimal density across new residential developments in an area

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said: “London’s local authorities have seen their budgets slashed year after year through government cuts. This has hit their services across the board – and has severely hampered their ambitions to build more affordable homes."

The Homebuilding Capacity Fund works alongside other practical support that City Hall is providing to help councils build again, including the new Council-Led Housing Forum, run by Future of London, to provide technical advice to practitioners involved in council-led delivery of homes.

The Homebuilding Capacity Fund is funded through the Business Rates Retention Pilot, which saw the capital retain 100 per cent of the increase in business rate receipts above the government’s baseline during the financial year 2018/2019.

Projects funded via the Mayor’s Homebuilding Capacity Fund ended in October 2021 and the Homebuilding Capacity Fund is now closed. The GLA commissioned an independent evaluation of the Homebuilding Capacity Fund at the end of the programme, which was completed in December 2021. The Homebuilding Capacity Fund Review & Evaluation: Final Report is published here.

Download Homebuilding Capacity Fund prospectus

Download Homebuilding Capacity Fund - frequently asked questions

Download Homebuilding Capacity Fund - OPS bidding guidance

Download Standard form of GLA contract