Housing chief admits Southwark failed to start on any new home-builds last year

By Robert Firth, Local Democracy Reporter

Southwark council – which has pledged to create 11,000 council homes by 2043 – has defended its building record after data uncovered by the Liberal Democrat opposition showed it failed to start work on a single council home last year.

Cllr Helen Dennis, Southwark’s cabinet member for new homes, blamed high inflation and interest rates on the lack of council homes begun last year and said it would have been ‘reckless’ to start constructing new homes that would ‘impact negatively on funding for existing homes’.

But Cllr Victor Chamberlain, leader of Southwark’s Liberal Democrat opposition, branded the Labour administration’s failure to start a single council home a ‘dereliction of duty’, adding that the data blew ‘a massive hole’ in the party’s ‘spin about housing’.

The statistics, obtained by the Liberal Democrats through internal enquiries, show the council started between 100 and 200 council homes per year between 2015 and 2019.

Southwark’s council housebuilding programme then took off over the next few years, with the council starting hundreds of social homes each year, peaking at 898 in 2021/222. But since 2023, the number of council homes begun by Southwark has fallen off a cliff edge, with just 28 starting in 2023/24 and 0 in 2024/25.

Separate City Hall data about local authority council house building in London shows that most boroughs failed to start a single social house last year. Boroughs that managed to include Conservative-ran Hillingdon, which began 129 council homes, and Labour-run Greenwich and Lewisham, which started building 49 and 48 council homes, respectively.

Despite the lack of social homes started by Southwark last year, Cllr Dennis said the council completed the highest number of social rent homes of any borough in the city, delivering 11 per cent of London’s social rent homes.

She added: “Council homes transform lives and that’s why Southwark council has the largest council house building programme in the country. Since 2014 we’ve built or started the construction of over 3,000 new council homes. We have completed nearly 600 council homes this year, with more than 1,000 being built as we speak.”

Cllr Chamberlain said: “If our Labour council can’t stand up to developers who are putting profit before people, and it’s failing to build their own council homes, how can anyone have confidence in them to solve the housing crisis?”

Pictured top: Council homes on the Slippers estate in Bermondsey, being completed in 2024 (Picture: Southwark council)