Intermediate homes for London

The Mayor’s priority is to build more homes at social rent levels. However, the Mayor also wants to support Londoners who struggle to afford private rents or market sale homes to access safe and secure homes that they can afford.

There are many types of intermediate housing available in London, but they fall into two broad categories:

• affordable home ownership to support households to purchase their own home
• intermediate rent to support those who would struggle to afford private rents.

The Mayor’s Homes for Londoners Portal advertises these types of intermediate homes.

The main source of funding available to the Mayor for the delivery of affordable homes is provided by the Government through Affordable Homes Programmes. The Mayor is currently administering the Homes for Londoners Affordable Homes Programme 2021-26.

The Mayor’s London Plan sets out his preferred types of intermediate homes: Shared Ownership and London Living Rent. The Mayor wants to ensure that these homes are as effective as possible in meeting London’s housing needs.

The Mayor is committed to ensuring that intermediate housing in London meets the housing needs of Londoners in jobs that are essential to the services that Londoners rely on, who’re unlikely to secure social housing.

Following a consultation in 2020 (see below) on how to achieve this, the Mayor published a definition of key workers for the purposes of allocating intermediate homes.

He encourages local authorities and housing providers to reference and incorporate the GLA’s key worker definition - for example through planning agreements that specify who will be prioritised for intermediate homes and when allocating those homes. He issued a Planning Practice Note to highlight this in March 2024.

In all cases, the GLA expects local authorities and housing providers to adopt an equitable and targeted allocation process for all intermediate housing, having regard to regional and local eligibility criteria, and the established definitions of housing need.

In his 2024 election manifesto, the Mayor promised to create a new type of intermediate housing with rents capped and linked to key workers’ incomes. He set an ambition for the first phase of this initiative to see 6,000 being built across the city – in areas where they are needed most.

The Mayor is now consulting, with the housing sector and with Londoners, on his plans to do this. He launched this consultation on 25 November 2024. It closes on 3 March 2025.

This consultation document sets out his initial proposals. Alongside these, it includes a series of questions about areas on which the Mayor is especially keen to hear views and insights.

The Mayor welcomes and will consider all responses, but he is particularly keen to hear from:

• key workers who need homes that are genuinely affordable for them, institutions that employ these key workers, and organisations that represent them (See the GLA’s list of keyworkers)
• housing providers and developers, with whom the Mayor will work to deliver these homes, and the organisations that represent them
• Local Planning Authorities and planning consultants, who will receive, consider and advise on applications to develop these homes.

The Mayor will use the responses he receives to inform his final plans for these homes.

To take part in the consultation, please:

• read the consultation document 
• answer the questions it contains
• send your response to [email protected] by 23:59 on 3 March 2025.

If you have any questions, or need to make and special arrangements to respond to the consultation, email [email protected]