Housing secretary Steve Reed

LABOUR councillors say they will fight for Islington to retain its 50 per cent affordable housing quota, despite new government measures to reduce the percentage to just 20.

Campaigners warned this week that the move by housing secretary Steve Reed would worsen the housing crisis, taking powers away from local councils to force developers to commit to building more affordable housing, which is desperately needed across Islington.

Meanwhile, deputy council leader Santiago Bell-Bradford told the Tribune that councillors would stand up to their Labour government.

He said: “We will put forward a robust challenge that Islington should stay the way it is. As things stand, we will still fight for 50 per cent.”

There are currently more than 16,500 people on the social housing waiting list. Mr Reed announced last Thursday that affordable housing targets would be slashed to just 20 per cent on new developments, while qualifying projects would be exempt from the community infrastructure levy (CIL).

CIL is used to fund projects around the borough – everything from repairing roads to replacing railings on estates.

“We’re about to enter a period of very low CIL, it’s just the nature of development cycles,” said Cllr Bell-Bradford. “Over the next few years we’ll get no CIL no matter what happens to developments.”

Morag Gillie, a campaigner from Islington Homes for All, branded the new policy “a complete disaster”.

She told the Tribune: “It will do nothing to resolve the housing crisis. Once again, this is in the interests of developers and builders being able to reduce the number of affordable homes they include in their developments. This is a continuation of the past 14 years and we are deeply worried that it will do nothing for low-income tenants.”

London mayor Sir Sadiq Khan has been accused of consistently watering down targets for private developers. In his 2016 manifesto he set out a target of 50 per cent affordable homes for all new developments in London, but later reduced this to 35 per cent. Under new measures, he would be able to override decisions made by local councils on projects that have more than 50 homes.

Cllr Bell-Bradford said: “I’ve always thought that decisions are best made by local people through the local authority, so that residents can say we oppose it for this reason or that reason. We’ve always had different targets to London­wide, for us it’s been 50 while the rest of London is 35. It’s still not clear to me what mechanism this would be that would allow the 20 per cent to override the 50 per cent.”

The new proposals have also come under fire from political opponents, who have accused Labour of cosying up to developers.

Former Liberal Democrat council leader Terry Stacy said: “Labour are backing a deal that lets developers get away with just 20 per cent affordable housing while slashing the infrastructure money councils rely on.”

He added: “We’ve seen how weak Labour councils have been towards developers, letting them get away with offensively low affordable provision – and now we’re seeing that baked into policy from the very top of the Labour Party in government.”

Cllr Bell-Bradford said: “When Terry Stacy was in charge of the council, they delivered 14 homes. I used to be a builder and I could have delivered 14 homes by myself, so I’d take whatever they say with a fistful of salt.

“Islington has a strong track record of delivering homes. There are 1,800 affordable homes in the pipeline and we are one of the only places in the country to have 50 per cent affordable housing.

“We are the gold standard.”