Affordable Housing Monitor 2025

Introduction

The Affordable Housing Monitor 2025, released in July 2025 by the London Assembly Research Unit, provides a critical annual examination of affordable housing delivery across the capital. As London grapples with a deepening affordable housing crisis, this report tracks the Mayor of London’s progress against his affordable housing commitments, focusing primarily on homes delivered through the devolved Affordable Homes Programmes (AHPs) managed by the Greater London Authority (GLA).

The document covers data up to March 2025, spanning two overlapping funding periods: the now-finished AHP 2016-23 and the ongoing AHP 2021-26, which ends in March 2026. This summary distills the key findings, challenges, and trends from the report, offering an essential resource for policymakers, housing professionals, and residents concerned about the future of affordable housing in London.

The Scale of London’s Affordable Housing Need

The report opens with a stark reminder of the demand-supply gap. According to the GLA’s 2017 assessment, London requires a net addition of 42,841 affordable housing each year between 2016 and 2041 to meet existing and future need. A “net” figure accounts for new builds and acquisitions minus losses from demolitions, Right to Buy sales, and shared ownership staircasing.

In stark contrast, the net number of affordable housing completed in London in 2023-24 stood at just 7,674. While this is an improvement from the negative net figure of -169 in 2016-17, it represents only 18% of the annual requirement. Total affordable completions (gross) in 2023-24 were 12,719, but losses due to demolitions (1,579), Right to Buy sales (1,217), shared ownership sales (1,201), and other sales (1,048) significantly eroded the net gain.

Furthermore, the Mayor’s London Plan set a strategic target that 50% of all new build homes each year should be “genuinely” affordable. However, in 2023-24, only 37% of new build completions were affordable. Although this is a substantial rise from just 19% in 2016-17, it remains well below the target. Only 15% of new build completions were grant-funded affordable homes, highlighting the heavy reliance on other funding mechanisms like Section 106 agreements.

How Affordable Housing is Funded in London

The report explains the complex funding landscape. The primary source of grant funding is the Affordable Homes Programme (AHP), a government grant devolved to the GLA for London. Other key sources include Section 106 agreements (where developers provide affordable units in exchange for planning permission) and council borrowing or rental income.

In 2023-24, grant funding (mostly AHP) supported 37% of affordable completions – a decrease of 5 percentage points from the previous year. Meanwhile, Section 106 agreements accounted for 49% of completions. However, only 0.2% of starts in 2023-24 were Section 106-funded, indicating a lag between planning approvals and construction. Other funding sources, such as borrowing and market sales cross-subsidy, made up 13% of completions.

The GLA has received a significant portion of national AHP funding. Since 2016, London has accounted for 40% of total AHP funding, and the GLA’s delivery makes up a comparable proportion of all affordable starts and completions compared to Homes England (which manages the AHP for the rest of England).

Affordable Housing Programme 2021-26: Falling Short of Targets

The AHP 2021-26 is the flagship programme for the current mayoral term. Originally allocated £4 billion, the target was for 35,000 starts. Due to a “challenging delivery context” – including rising construction costs, labour shortages, and economic uncertainty – the target was first reduced to between 23,900 and 27,200 in 2023, and then again in 2025 to between 17,800 and 19,000 starts.

As of March 2025, only 5,188 starts had been achieved under the AHP 2021-26. This represents just 29% of the lower target. With one year remaining until the March 2026 deadline, the GLA needs to deliver between 12,612 and 13,812 starts – roughly three to four times the 3,411 starts made in 2024-25. For context, in the final year of the previous AHP 2016-23, there were 25,658 starts. The report notes that completions under this programme are even lower: only 871 homes completed by March 2025, or 17% of started homes. The deadline for all completions is March 2030, leaving a minimum of 16,929 homes to finish.

Comparatively, Homes England (managing the rest of England) had started 77,207 affordable homes under its parallel AHP 2021-26 by March 2025, completing 32,201 (42% of starts).

Social Rent: A Bright Spot Amidst Overall Underperformance

One of the few successes highlighted in the report is the Mayor’s focus on social rent, the lowest-cost tenure and the one for which the GLA states “the most acute housing need in London exists.” The Mayor set a target that at least 60% of homes under AHP 2021-26 should be for social rent.

As of March 2025, the GLA is on track to significantly exceed this target: 84% of starts and 77% of completions under the AHP 2021-26 are for social rent (including London Affordable Rent benchmarked at social rent values). This marks a dramatic shift from previous programmes, which focused more on shared ownership.

However, the report also notes a trade-off: social rent is the most expensive tenure for housing providers to deliver. The GLA has acknowledged a balance between the number of social rent homes and the overall number of homes that can be delivered.

Outside London, Homes England has delivered a lower proportion of social rent. As of March 2025, Homes England’s starts under its AHP 2021-26 were predominantly “Affordable Rent” or “Affordable Home Ownership,” with a significant number (45,727) still listed as “Affordable Tenure TBC.”

Affordable Homes Programme 2016-23: Legacy and Backlog

The previous AHP 2016-23 was originally allocated £3.15 billion, later increased by £1.67 billion, bringing total funding to £4.82 billion. The target was 116,000 starts, with the original deadline of March 2021 extended to 2023 due to additional funding and the pandemic. There is no deadline for completions under this programme.

By March 2025, 65% of started affordable housing under AHP 2016-23 had been completed, leaving 40,854 homes that have been started but not yet finished. The GLA expects most of these to be completed by 2029, with a small number stretching into the early 2030s. When combined with the AHP 2021-26 target completions, the GLA still needs to complete roughly 60,000 affordable homes in the next five years – a massive logistical and financial challenge.

Social Rent Waiting Lists and Geographic Disparities

The report underscores the immense pressure on social affordable housing. As of March 2024, local authorities in London had a cumulative 336,357 households on their waiting lists – 25% of England’s total. This represents a 48% increase from 227,549 in March 2016. Individual boroughs like Newham (38,417), Lambeth, and Brent each have over 30,000 households waiting.

Between April 2023 and March 2025, there were 4,612 social rent starts across all GLA-funded programmes. However, delivery is highly uneven. Greenwich (706), Tower Hamlets (407), and Southwark (401) saw the most social rent starts, while eight boroughs recorded ten or fewer. Crucially, Lambeth, Brent, and Newham – which have the largest waiting lists – collectively recorded just 153 GLA-funded social rent starts in that two-year period.

In some boroughs like Enfield, Barking and Dagenham, and Tower Hamlets, nearly all GLA-funded starts were for social rent. Conversely, Barnet, Sutton, and Islington saw less than 7% of their GLA-funded starts as social rent.

Decline of Shared Ownership and London Living Rent

The report notes a deliberate policy shift away from homeownership tenures. Under the AHP 2016-23, at least 50% of homes were targeted for shared ownership or intermediate housing. Under AHP 2021-26, the focus has moved to social rent.

Consequently, since April 2023, starts of Shared Ownership and London Living Rent (LLR) have decreased significantly. From April 2017 to March 2023, these tenures accounted for 36% of all GLA-funded affordable starts. In 2024-25 alone, Shared Ownership made up only 12% of starts, and LLR just 1%. Since April 2017, there have been 36,275 shared ownership starts and 3,043 LLR starts across all programmes, with Ealing seeing the highest completions (2,390) and Westminster the lowest (46).

Council Homes: Meeting One Target but Facing Delivery Gaps

The Mayor has made council homes a key priority. In his 2024 re-election manifesto, he committed to 40,000 new council homes by 2030 (though specific definitions are pending) and 10,000 acquisitions by councils over the next decade.

Since 2018, there have been 25,359 council home starts and 12,552 completions under Mayoral programmes, with most funded through the AHPs. The Mayor met his earlier target of 20,000 council home starts by March 2024. However, as of March 2025, 51% of started council homes (12,807) were not yet completed.

In 2024-25, council home starts increased 41% to 1,328. But delivery is concentrated: Enfield and Hillingdon alone started 47% of all GLA-funded council homes. Meanwhile, 13 councils – mostly in Outer London – started none. Southwark has the highest number of council home completions since 2018 (1,373), while boroughs like Ealing and Croydon have relatively few council home completions compared to their total affordable completions.

Acquisitions play a growing role. Under AHP 2021-26, 27% of council home starts (505) and 63% of completions (406) have been acquisitions, taking advantage of a 30% cap on acquisition funding. Under the previous programme, acquisition rates were lower (8% of starts).

Supported and Specialist Housing: Mixed Results

Supported and specialist housing (SSH) – for disabled people, older Londoners, homeless individuals, and domestic abuse survivors – remains a small but vital segment. The AHP 2021-26 targets 1% of total homes (roughly 178-190) for SSH. By March 2025, there had been 286 SSH starts under this programme alone, exceeding that target relative to the lower overall start goal.

In 2024-25, SSH starts jumped to 508 (from 167 the prior year), funded by a mix of AHP 2021-26 (212 starts) and the Single Homelessness Accommodation Programme (SHAP – 296 starts). However, the SHAP, which ran from 2023 to March 2025, delivered only 176 completed homes against a target of 800 (22%), and 346 starts (41% of the completions target). This represents a significant underperformance in housing some of London’s most vulnerable residents.

Other Mayoral Programmes

The report briefly touches on smaller programmes. The Community Housing Fund (£38m) aimed for 500 affordable housing but has seen only 74 starts and completions since 2021. The Land Fund (£736m) targets 8,000 homes (not all affordable) by 2030, with 406 starts since 2019. The GLA’s own land portfolio (635 hectares) aims for up to 68,000 new homes over 25 years, with a 50% affordable target; since 2015, 630 starts and 781 completions have been recorded.

Conclusion: A Widening Gap

The Affordable Housing Monitor 2025 paints a picture of mixed progress. On the positive side, the Mayor has exceeded his social rent target under the new AHP, delivered over 25,000 council home starts, and shifted policy toward lower-cost tenures. However, the overall numbers are sobering. Net affordable housing supply is less than a fifth of what London needs. The AHP 2021-26 is on track to miss its starts target by a wide margin – needing to triple or quadruple its current annual output in the final year.

Over 40,000 homes from the previous programme remain unfinished, and specialist affordable housing programmes like SHAP have delivered only a fraction of their goals. With waiting lists up 48% since 2016, and boroughs like Newham facing over 38,000 applicants, the gap between housing need and delivery continues to widen. The coming years will test whether the GLA and its partners can accelerate completion rates and secure future funding to meet even the reduced targets.

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