Planning our future London

It's fairly simple, we need more council housing. Housing of a good quality that will last, in places people want to live not just thrown out on the edges. Also built with the idea of creating a community within, green spaces, shops, pubs and community areas. Flats are not popular but the need is so high we have to build up.

It seems everytime the phrasing affordable housing is used it's more or less a lie. As affordable to who? It's certainly not any normal person. Too often any pledge to build 40%-50% affordable housing is watered down by either developers or the council's anyway. Look at Lambeth and Greenwich. 

We need council housing for the young, poor and old to live a life, to tackle homelessness, give families a chance to save some money and better their lives. Private sector investments rarely do this. Houses are for living in not an investment opportunity. 

Affordable housing is not just a necessity; it is the very cornerstone of a healthy and thriving society. Housing should never be a luxury only accessible to the privileged few; it should be a right granted to all ages and groups in our community.

The lack of affordable housing affects not only individuals and families struggling to make ends meet but has a cascading impact on society as a whole. When housing costs skyrocket, it leads to increased inequality, homelessness, and displacement of communities. It affects the young, the elderly, families, and every vulnerable group within our society.

Affordable housing empowers individuals to plan for their future, contribute to the economy, and provide a stable environment for their children. It fosters a sense of community and belonging, creating stronger neighbourhoods where people can invest in their surroundings and each other.

As a society, we must prioritise affordable housing as a fundamental right, just like access to education and healthcare. It requires collaboration between the government, private sector, and community organisations to make it a reality.

Let us not forget that a thriving society is built on the well-being of its members. By investing in affordable housing, we invest in the future of London and its people. I urge all stakeholders to continue supporting and expanding such initiatives, ensuring that affordable housing becomes an indelible part of our city's fabric.

The urgent priority is that more housing units need to be built. Housing is expensive because of low supply and high demand, the solution is to increase supply.

Others have mentioned unoccupied housing but this is a red herring. There are 34,000 estimated long term unoccupied homes per a recent BBC article - that is less than 1% of the homes in London!

The planning system makes it incredibly difficult for housing to get built. We should have a system that is more rules based, and less case by case.

Taller tower blocks allow for a large supply of good quality housing while taking up less space. They were used widely in postwar house building providing homes for many. But now, applications for such schemes are denied on the basis that it’s out of character for the area. If we only allow low rise housing, we will produce nothing but sprawl and never be able to produce enough supply for prices to become truly affordable.

we need more homes for families too - they're often forgotten about by landlords and the rental market but are being priced out of inner London (zones 1-3). The older style social housing (council flats of 1970s and earlier) had decent size bedrooms, often 3, and small gardens or outside spaces too, everyone should have access to a balcony at the very least. Some so-called affordable housing doesn't even provide access to communal gardens for families living on upper floors (such as the block I live in, in SE15). People need to be able to walk their kids to school too, it reduces traffic and creates local friends and communities.  

More low cost housing for young people is imperative. The cost of renting is becoming unattainable in London for them even if they have decent salaries and at the same time the rental housing market is shrinking. Housing supply and increased social housing has to be addressed.  I would like to see my adult children have real options to become independent and leave home without having to move to the other side of the country. They are Londoners and would like to continue to live in the city they were born in.

I would also like to see business rentals and leases tackled, which are forcing out local independent businesses. This is leading to less opportunity and diversity on high streets and an increase in newer 'chains' which were previously smaller indies such as Joe the Juice etc. 

Is there a plan for under used office space? Can any be converted to housing? Can affordable co-working spaces be set up, cheaper office rental be encouraged? Can these be utilised later in the evening?

It’s simply absurd to stand by and watch the eye watering costs of rent and properties in London rise year on year, new homes need to build urgently. There is no accountability for failing to do so. It’s also outrageous that the survey asked what would make transport better and affordability was not an option. It’s one of the most expensive cities to travel around, forget live in! I was born and raised in London but as I approach 30, the chances of me ever being able to purchase a home where my all my family and social ties are is practically impossible. And it feels as if renting will also become an untenable option. 

Nobody can build faster than population increases, so street homelessness is inevitable for anyone the councils are not forced by law to put in hotels or houses or hostels. They have a legal duty to house those with babies, those who have just arrived, those who are without funds, but not ordinary respectable older English people  like the Bournemoth Bus Shelter couple, in their 90s he a wheelchair user, with some life savings instead of a private pension,  but no hope of a new private rented place after their landlord sold up, with 20 applicants for each, and priority for double high income earners. They had to live in the street, because their remaining life savings meant the council had no duty to house them. No hotels for them. No council housing. A bus shelter was their only home. That was some years ago. Population has leaped up since, and they would find people fighting them for the bus shelter. The rules have not changed. Over a million elderly people are expected to need private rental, yet no private landlord will house old retired people. It seems a shame our politicians and our tax purse is not 'welcoming' to our own silent generation, needing a hotel room to leave hospital, or to stay alive when their longterm private landlord sells up.

There’s been a lot of new homes in my area, some of which was previously office space. I think this should also occur in other parts of London if it isn’t already. It should be made clear what proportion of these new homes are for “affordable” rent. Not enough consideration seems to be made for infrastructure for these homes such as healthcare, schools and transport. For example, my local bus route had the frequency reduced at a time when lots more people were moving to the area. That’s not constructive thinking if the aim is to move people away from using their cars. In addition, not everyone can cycle and it seems that the priority has shifted from being anti-car to being anti-pedestrian such as bus stops being moved to accommodate cycle lanes and ease the flow of cars without consideration of how pedestrians will have further to walk to access public transport and what that might involve. It’s made elderly and disabled people more vulnerable. New homes need to be practical not “luxury”, more family homes. There should be ground floor homes made more available for those who would benefit from the easier access but also respecting residents need for security and privacy. 

Convert existing buildings to residential (but not shops and ground floor businesses which are not suitable as Government wishes by relaxing planning controls) and build more homes. These should be well designed, tenure-blind, net zero carbon, achieving high environmental standards and preferrably with private amenity space. Medium density but not high-rise and with full range of facilities within walking and/or cycling distance.

If there are over 1 million outstanding permissions for homes in England, why are there no incentives to require developers to actually build these?

The issue with housing is mostly caused from local authorities recieving less central government funding so they had to sell council owned land to private property developers and investors (who only care about maximising their personal profits and not meeting people's/society's needs) and the local authorities built much less of their own social housing, now most people are stuck with insanely high monthly rent costs in low quality private old builds as the demand for them is high, because the new builds are even higher in rent costs (so most of the new build flats are empty and not even owned by people living in London but by investors and rich people looking to turn their cash into property assets). But the local authorities keep agreeing to more of these builds because they need short term increase in financial income to make up from the lack of central government funding (it was also on the news that the heads and higher ups of the ex Tory Wandsworth council illegally accepted personal gifts from property developers before issuing the go ahead for the huge tower blocks in the Battersea area but that's a conversation to be had another time). 10% of the private builds go to social housing but it is no where near adequate supply for the demand. Also since the 80s when the tenant had a right to buy their council property the council's have been selling their properties and not building more to make up the numbers for what properties they've sold and the increase in population. Central government have just handed the Royal Family an extra £40 million so the money is already there to put towards actual issues, they just choose to not distribute it appropriately so society is left with all of these problems.

Absolutely agree with general theme of more affordable housing here, but want to reinforce the requirements that they either should be solely owned by the city of London or only to individuals, NOT INVESTORS! Building all new things is fine, and obviously we can now build them to modern standards of insulation and all the rest of it, but the supply of housing will not result in more affordable rents if private asset companies and mega property developers are able to monopolize the market.  affordable housing leads to more productive societies, less crime, and happier citizens. And large scale publicly owned housing like that seen in Germany and Austria (mainly Vienna) can bring all rental prices down. And fyi, public housing does not mean bare minimum homes, for a long term sustainable future and for people to be happy with public ownership of homes, they need to be built to modern standards. 

Schools near us are starting to become very undersubscribed. Our kids school should be ok but generally it seems clear we need more family homes near us. That feels to me that we need to make it easy to replace some of the 1920s semis with modern townhouses. Won't be that many in practice of course but should be allowed. Ive also noticed that a lot of the smaller blocks around us have introduced dormer windows. They seem super sensible. Add another floor and make the block look nicer. 

More actually affordable studio/1-bed/2-bed flats for young professionals and young people to buy and to rent for students and care leavers. Expanding right to buy discount to housing association tenants! We cannot afford to even start buying the house with the 16k discount, as the cost has shot up to 731k in 2023 from 200k in 2002 due to the crazy rent and property market in London. We need rent stablisation similar to New York. Londoners are frustrated, depressed and struggling, with young people not ever being considered.

I live in a building which is terrible for efficiency and poorly built.  It is rented privately and is not worth the money but we can't afford better.  I'd like for Londoners to be able to report buildings like this that can be forcibly purchased from the landlords and either refurbished or rebuilt for the same rent still.  It is so sad to see my friends and I who have lived here for most of our lives being forced to live in awful buildings because landlords are taking advantage of us, and we can't risk annoying them as we can't afford to move.  We just want to stay close to our families and friends but have to live in buildings which cost over half our pay just for rent, and are far too expensive to heat because the landlord hasn't fixed the windows or the insulation yet. 

Rent controls also would be good for businesses as there are so many small to medium businesses that are driven out of making a good profit from high rents. 

No offense to them but landlords really don't bring anything useful to the table, especially these days.  They could improve though! By stopping landlords from being able to charge than a certain amount (maybe what a 30/35 year mortgage would cost?  Maybe what someone on minimum wage could earn in half a month? Sorry this is just a starter idea) in rent, we could stop people who are just getting into landlording to make money from other people, and let people who may have inherited a house, or married again or something who have a family house they want to keep for example not be punished, and be able to use that house for good to house people who can't afford a home yet, whilst still allowing them to save.

I'd say it's less about location per se and more about the overall THOUGHT behind planning as well as the fact that housing has to be about PEOPLE and their HOMES instead of developer profits.

Massive developments are being built without a second thought for facilities (everyone knows it's easy for developers to get out of S106 obligations if they so choose). A lot of housing being built in undesirable locations such as next to huge roads , railways etc without any shielding from the noise, which COULD be done, but developers will do anything to max out their profits. Lax building regulations allow for the building of low quality dwellings which aren't controlled by anyone(building control is usually desktop, and done by privatised companies. New build warranties aren't worth the paper they're printed on.)

Another thing I am more concerned about than locations is tenure - leasehold should be phased out and shared ownership banned.

Build more good quality council housing. Refurbish and retrofit more, instead of knocking down structurally sound buildings just so that a developer (yes, them again) can make a profit!

As others have said there is no single solution. Build more sustainable and fully accessible homes in areas with good public transport that will allow older people to move out of larger homes and live in multi-generational neighbourhoods. Introduce rent control ( guess this is a national policy issue). Allow local authorities to borrow to build. Subsidise self build in small pockets of land in existing communities and support small builders to work in their neighbourhoods. Encourage Community Land Trusts and mechanisms that mean that newly built social housing can never be sold into private sector. Consider prefab, low cost mobile housing for sites that will be unused for 2/3 years to meet needs of people who are sofa surfing or sleeping rough; units can be moved to new locations and reused.  Encourage cross border cooperation between boroughs to develop strong communities with new homes around facilities and green spaces. 

A lot of the focus is on young people including many who aren't Londoners who come to London for adventure. 

It seriously disadvantages London born Londoners particularly the vulnerable

As London has many people from other parts of the UK moving here and the desire seems to be to make London into a worker and young people only city, Londoners in need of housing particularly the vulnerable, the disabled, and the homeless should be allowed to join housing registers anywhere in the UK. 

That would solve the problem of needing housing for the many new mainly to young people who move to London for work, as well as solving the problem of the many vulnerable Londoners stuck in housing need with no hope

Due to more people working from home, there seem to be more empty office blocks. 
Canary Wharf is a case in point. Why can’t these big empty buildings be repurposed? The taller ones could have local shops and amenities at ground level. Living spaces including low cost apartments in the lower levels. Office space in the top third plus a few expensive penthouses on the top. 
Thiscould also happen in the city where there are empty offices. 
Rather than tear down old buildings there is a strong case now for retaining them sustainably and repurposing the interiors rather than putting the original building on the scrap heap.