One of the Mayor’s solutions to the housing crisis in London is to scale down Heathrow and create a new London borough. Can he be serious?

As we all know, Boris is very good at grabbing the headlines, but how good is his delivery?  In his recently launched new manifesto for London  ‘The Greatest City on Earth’, his ambitious response to the current ‘housing crisis’ is that ‘the most effective solution is to build more homes’. This is an obvious start, but how is it going to be achieved?

The Mayor has made no secret of his opposition to the growth of Heathrow and his support for investment to create a new airport for London, far to the east away from the affluent residents of south-west London. However he has now gone even further by announcing that with the downgrading of Heathrow a new borough the size of Kensington and Chelsea, with tens of thousands of new homes could be built.

Whilst it is courageous – and potentially vote winning – to think outside the box, the practicalities of achieving this vision are substantial, and it is questionable whether it is at all realistic; after all much of the land around Heathrow which is undeveloped is Green Belt.   Is it maybe Boris-bluster to cover the fact that even with a lower than justifiable existing housing target annual delivery of new housing is still not being achieved – even in a good year.

When the London Plan was being prepared in 2010 there was good evidence that the current housing target of 33,400 per year was at the lower end of the forecast requirements.  It was accepted even then that this number would need to be reviewed immediately.  Indeed, current estimates suggest that by 2014 London should be accommodating at least 40,000 new homes per year to meet demand.

The notion of a ‘London Borough of Heathrow’ is certainly ambitious, but even if it could be achieved – and there is a long list of potential hurdles to this, not least of which is achieving national government support for the relocation of the world’s busiest airport somewhere else – it would be at least 15-20 years away before any benefits could be delivered.

Putting wild ambition to one side for now, there are some more pragmatic and deliverable proposals in the 2020 Vision document :-

• Enforcement of the London Housing Design Guide
• More cycling in Inner London
• Crossrail 2 and new river crossings
• New visitor attractions
• New tube lines south of the river
• The Mayor taking over suburban rail services
• Allowing  Boroughs to build housing for rent
• More intervention by the Mayor in the decision making of planning applications
• Forcing developers who hoard land to either build their schemes or be the subject of compulsory purchase

Boris’ passion for ‘The Greatest City on Earth’ is in no doubt, and he certainly keeps London in the news, but what will his legacy really be?  The Blueprint can be downloaded from the following link: http://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/2020_vision_web.pdf.