The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has today launched a new £38m fund for community-led housing, enabling Londoners to play a leading role in building new social rented and other genuinely affordable homes for local people. These homes being built will help those who are looking for accommodation but cannot afford what is currently on the market. Overseeing the planning and the construction is essential during this time period with professional plumbers similar to summersphc.com/columbus/services/heating/furnace-tune-up/, as well as electricians being brought in to complete the internal and external construction by making sure everything is in working order so that people can move in.

The number of small builders nationally who deliver fewer than 100 homes has halved over the last 10 years*, and the Mayor believes that this trend needs to change in order to help tackle the capital’s housing crisis. Community-led housing allows local residents to get directly involved in building and managing new homes themselves, often through co-operatives and community land trusts.

The new London Community Housing Fund is expected to unlock 500 community-led homes by 2023 and will make grants or loans available to support building, development, and delivery. Some of the funding will also be allocated to provide financial help for potential costs such as submitting planning applications or design fees.

The fund opens today for bids, alongside a new prospectus published online by City Hall providing guidance for community groups who wish to bid, and advice for Londoners who wish to form such a group. Communities wishing to develop their own homes can also contact the London Community-Led Housing Hub, for information and advice, funding, and technical support.

The Mayor is already making small plots of publicly-owned land more accessible to London’s small and medium-sized builders – including community-led housing groups – through a simplified bidding process with standardised legal contracts. The new fund, won from central Government as a result of Sadiq’s lobbying, is significant progress towards his target of identifying a pipeline of schemes for 1,000 community-led homes in London by 2021.