Affordable housing is a UK-wide problem, but as so often is the case, the spotlight shines brightest on London.

Sadiq Khan gained office with a promise of “genuinely affordable” housing; but the Mayor’s own review at the end of July showed a pipeline of just 13% affordable homes. Inevitably, Khan blamed some of these shortcomings on his predecessor, and one of his favourite taglines is solving the housing crisis is a “marathon not a sprint”.

However, Battersea Power Station’s decision to slash its affordable housing contribution by 40% for viability reasons, a decision waved through Wandsworth’s planning committee, changed things.

The final Affordable Housing and Viability SPG published last week aimed to readdress the balance of affordable housing in London and no doubt, has been influenced by the backlash to Battersea. There’s a lot to cover, and some of which is unchanged from last November’s SPG draft, but key in my mind is the, now ‘official’, threshold approach.

So, what is the approach?

In short, viability will not be required at the application stage on schemes that have 50% or more affordable housing on public land, or 35% on private land, provided they do not receive a public subsidy and meet the specified tenure mix requirements. These numbers are ambitious, and hark back to the Mayor’s pledges during his election campaign.

For developers, reaching affordable housing targets will mean a ‘fast route’ through planning, and on a case-by-case basis higher densities may be considered. By contrast, any schemes referable to the mayor that don’t meet this criteria will be ‘rigorously’ assessed under new viability criteria.

The new viability criteria sets out some key changes, including, the need to consider CIL charges as a development cost, and a changed approach to establishing benchmark land value. Alongside changes to the criteria, any scheme amendment that changes the level of affordable housing should be directly consulted with the Mayor. It’s a bold move from Khan to have a top-down approach to a topic as controversial as viability, and one that could be prove instrumental in London’s long term affordable housing ambitions.

However, in the meantime members of the industry are naturally concerned. What about schemes that I’ve only just started looking at, do they need a complete rethink? Are Councils, already pushed for resources, going to be able to cope with a list of new criteria? Are all schemes below the threshold going to be bogged down in the mud while affordable schemes fly through?

These are just some of the questions and concerns I’ve heard from industry colleagues since the SPG’s publication last week. And, although I try to avoid this cliché, this one may just be case of time will tell…