Work has started on 172 new council homes in Haggerston, Clapton and Stoke Newington as Mayor Zoë Garbett calls for funding to build more.
The new homes are being built on underused council-owned land - including former garages, disused offices and car parks in seven locations across Hackney at Pedro Street, Blackwell Close, Nye Bevan Estate, Morris Blitz Court, Frampton Park Estate, Fellows Court and Weymouth Court.
In place of the old buildings, the Council is developing spacious, light-filled and energy-efficient council homes, prioritised for local people who need them.
The projects are the first to start on site under new Mayor of Hackney, Zoë Garbett, and mark the start of what could, if properly funded by the government, begin a new era of scaled-up council house building in Hackney.
The Council currently has 972 council homes in planning or delivery. These received a total of £125m in funding from the Mayor of London’s Affordable Homes Programme between 2021 and 2026.
It is now scaling up plans to build hundreds more council homes on underused council land over the next 10 years. Large family-sized council homes will be prioritised as much as possible given families needing two or three bedrooms often face the longest wait. These plans depend on securing further government funding.
If properly funded, the Council could also buy back a significant number of homes previously sold off through the Right to Buy policy. This would quickly provide more new homes for those in the greatest need. Current government funding only allows this to be done at a relatively small scale.
More than 8,000 households in Hackney are on its housing waiting list, living in cramped hostels, temporary homes set for demolition or in extortionate private rentals where public funding goes straight into the pocket of private landlords. The wait for a two bed council flat currently stands at 12 years.
With each new council home in Hackney now costing nearly £450,000 to build, delivery relies on government funding and homes for private sale to help pay for the cost of building.
Mayor of Hackney, Zoë Garbett, said:
“Thousands of people in Hackney are in desperate need of a safe, permanent council home but the scale of austerity and the housing emergency means that we can’t afford to build or buy them back fast enough.“We’ll do everything we can to maximise new council house building - delivering existing projects like these as fast as we can - and accelerate plans to build even more homes.
“But without more government support to build, we won’t be able to meaningfully address the housing emergency and generations of children in Hackney will continue to grow up in temporary accommodation.”
Cllr Alastair Binnie-Lubbock, Cabinet Member for Regeneration, Planning and Inclusive Neighbourhoods, said:
“We’re proud to be getting spades in the ground on this new generation of council homes, where more than 70% of which are for council rent which is just fantastic.“Our ambitions are clear. We want to build council homes for the future: affordable to rent, cheap to keep warm, not for profit and managed by the council or local tenant management organisations.
“These sites show what we can do when we have funding from the government. Now it’s up to them to fund our ambitious plans for more.”
