The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, today announced a landmark deal to secure more than 600 social rented and other genuinely affordable homes on the former Holloway Prison site following its sale by the Ministry of Justice.

The deal, which involves a £42 million loan from the Mayor’s Land Fund, has enabled Peabody housing association to buy the site. It requires Peabody, working in partnership with private developer London Square, to start work by 2022 on over 1,000 homes, of which at least 60 per cent must be social rented and other genuinely affordable homes.

City Hall worked with Islington Council on the planning policy for the site, which set a minimum expectation of 50 per cent affordable housing. The Mayor’s loan deal requires this to rise to 60 per cent, and of these affordable homes, 70 per cent will be social rent, with the remainder either shared ownership or London Living Rent.

Making the announcement today from a rooftop overlooking the prison site, which closed in 2016, the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said: “For too long, Londoners have rightly been fed up of seeing public land sold off to the highest bidder and then developed with little or no social or affordable housing. We have made sure the Holloway prison site will be different.

“Our ground-breaking loan to Peabody means the majority of new homes on this site will be genuinely affordable – with around four in 10 of all new homes being for social rent. We’ve developed planning policies with the council that support this, and that also set out how the development should include public green space and a new centre for women.

“This shows what is possible on public land. We’ve been able to do this even with the limited powers we currently have. Ministers now need to play their part and give us the step-change in investment and powers over land we need to truly fix London’s housing crisis.”
Homes on the site will start by 2022, with the aim of completing by 2026. The project builds on the work Sadiq is already doing with housing associations including Peabody, last year starting a record number of social rented and other genuinely affordable homes and remaining on track to deliver his ambition of starting 116,000 genuinely affordable homes by 2022.