Mayor of London, Boris Johnson has revealed the city’s first ‘Housing Zones’ - nine boroughs that will receive £260m to build 28,000 new homes and associated infrastructure.

The plan is to unlock nearly 1,900 hectares of brownfield land across the nine zones. Each of the boroughs will see homes fast tracked and infrastructure boosted. They will keep their Housing Zone status until 2025.

Double the number of homes

The aim is to double the number of new homes built in London and create over 56,000 construction jobs on 52 schemes.

Also included in the nine zones will be 5 station upgrades, 5 new schools, 4 new bridges, 2 new civic centres, a new park, a new '3G' football pitch, shops, restaurants and libraries.

The plans, which will unlock publicly-owned land for development, will deliver more than 9,000 low-cost homes.  

Later in the year, the Mayor is expected to name another 20 zones, which when combined with the original nine will provide over 50,000 new homes.

Population boom

The scheme is part of a plan to tackle the capital’s population boom. London's population recently topped 8.6m - the highest since its 1939 peak.

Boris Johnson says the population is predicted to reach 11m by 2050 and that London needs a million more homes by 2025 to cope with the growing population.

The 9 zones

The first 9 London Housing Zones are, and the predicted number of new homes, are:

• Abbey Wood and South Thamesmead - 1,300 new homes.
• Abbey Wood, Plumstead and Thamesmead - 1,512 new homes, 45% of which would affordable.
• Barking Town Centre - 2,000 new homes and improved local public spaces and new culture and leisure facilities.
• Clapham Junction to Battersea Riverside - 5,000 new homes and new commercial space.
• Heart of Harrow - 5,000 homes.
• Hounslow Town Centre - 3,478 new homes, 1,383 of which will be affordable.
• New Bermondsey - 2,400 new homes.
• Southall - 4,345 new homes, 1,785 of which will be affordable.
• Tottenham - 10,000 new homes.

Ash Griffiths, Partner in Strutt & Parker's London Residential Development & Investment team, comments: “We welcome this new announcement from the Mayor. It is clear that there are a great deal of hidden opportunities to unlock in the capital in order to create much needed new homes, particularly in zones 3 to 6. The planned regeneration zones that have been identified make a lot of sense. We have already earmarked Barking town centre as an area which is likely to show strong future growth – currently under-developed and with more demand for housing than it has supply. It has good transport links and plenty more amenities planned for the future. New Bermondsey looks set to benefit from a new train station, while Abbey Wood is another good place to invest with Crossrail due to open up in 2017 making journey times into central London 20 minutes faster.

“It has been well reported that there is currently a significant shortfall in the number of new homes needed versus the number of new homes planned in London. These new enterprise zones will go some way to correct the issue. Last year only 18,750 new homes were built across the whole of Greater London – despite analysis from the Government showing that 56,400 new homes were needed. The picture does vary wildly across the capital. Greenwich and Newham Boroughs are doing well and both built more homes than were needed last year – but in contrast, Haringey and Barking were woefully short. For example, in Barking & Dagenham 1,578 are needed and only 480 new homes were built last year.

"The key will be in the detail of how these Enterprise Zones work and their ability to streamline planning, attract inward investment, remove some of the other hurdles and costs that limit development such as infrastructure investment and speed of obtaining approvals.”