Mayor hikes homes budget for London

More than 2,260  homes are to be built in London under new powers given to Ken Livingstone to spend £51.5 million subsidising new homes and repairs as part of powers to dispense £1.7bn of subsidy.

And in a further piece of good news, the mayor announced that rumours of Crossrail's demise were "rubbish".

The announcement was made this morning at the Thames Gateway Forum and comes under new powers given to him to devise housing strategy and allocate housing grant by central government,

But in a warning to housebuilders, Livingstone said: "I am not interested in giving any grant to houses that are not sustainable.  It would be tragic to build houses in the next decade that we have to rebuild because of  (changed) weather conditions in 2020.

The new housing will come under the Estates/Area Renewal Fund which is targeted to improve council owned homes, increase their numbers and create more mixed communities.

The 51.5 million package will attract additional private and public sector  funding including money from boroughs and the Housing Corporation.

It will provide nearly 2,264 new homes of which nearly 800 will be affordable.  

Mayor Livingstone also launched a consultation document on housing strategy and urged developers to give him feedback.  "I want to know what you think about it," he said.

He also said that Crossrail was  still likely to go ahead despite media comment last week that the spiralling cost of the Olympics would consume available infrastructure spending at the expense of Crossrail.  He said he had had a phone call from Ed Balls, the Treasury Minister, last week saying the media speculation was 'rubbish'. "This is not where we are going," he was told.

Livingstone also claimed that the budget for the Olympics is still on schedule.  "It would be surprising if it wasn't because we haven't even got tenders yet for the construction of a stadium," he said.