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Sadiq Khan was today accused of claiming affordable homes are springing up on a string of sites — where nothing appears to be happening.

Property tycoon Richard Tice began a private investigation after becoming suspicious of Mr Khan’s claim to have met a target of 12,500 building starts. He has produced a dossier of photographs at sites where work was listed as being under way but where he could see no sign of activity by developers.

One set of pictures appeared to show a boarded-up derelict building, while another showed staff still working in an office block supposedly being demolished for new flats.

In two cases, Mr Tice claimed developments that had been registered as starts in 2017 had then re-registered as fresh starts under Mr Khan in 2018. Both were originally in former mayor Boris Johnson’s programme, it later emerged.

Mr Tice, a Conservative who has been tipped as a possible mayoral candidate, said his findings undermined the Mayor’s claims to have met his affordable homes target in April.

“The Mayor’s claims of progress fall short of his election pledges,” he told the Evening Standard. “They appear to be based on dodgy data that conceal from the public what is really going on. My investigations have found that many of the affordable flats and houses Khan has announced as being under construction are in fact phantom homes where little or no work has begun. Others appear to have been counted twice in successive years.

“The findings suggest the real number of affordable homes started last year is substantially lower than the headline figures announced by Khan.

“At best this is the result of bureaucratic incompetence, at worst City Hall is inflating the numbers to flatter the Mayor’s performance on a key policy.”

The Mayor’s office declined to respond to the claims, but a London Labour spokesman dismissed them as “utter rubbish”.

Mr Khan set himself a target of 90,000 City Hall-funded affordable homes by 2021, with at least 12,500 for the 2017/18 financial year. His record of delivering the numbers will be at the heart of the next mayoral battle in 2020.

Mr Tice noticed that projects amounting to 5,241 homes were registered as fresh starts in March, just before the deadline. He visited 25 sites to see what activity was taking place. Among the cases were:

At Portal Way, Acton, a business centre was still operating and staff sitting at their desks despite it being registered as a new “start” for the building of 164 homes on March 12. Mr Tice found “no obvious sign of on-site construction” when his team visited on May 23. One employee said his company would not be leaving until July.

A former print works meant to be turned into at least 86 homes was standing empty in Yiewsley, Hillingdon. Although registered as a housing start on March 12, three weeks before the deadline, Tice could see “no clear sign of construction on-site” on May 25. The project website said work would begin in June.

A scheme for 241 homes at Royal Wharf in Newham appeared to have been “double-counted” by being listed as a start in 2017 and then again in March 2018. Workers on site said construction had begun six months ago. Labour Party sources said the scheme had been “removed from the previous programme and re-started under a new agreement within the current Mayor’s programme”.

A former Thames Water depot in Colliers Wood, listed in March as a start for 74 homes, showed “little visible progress” when visited on May 28.

A “start” for 253 homes on the Isle of Dogs appeared to be another example of ­double-counting. It was listed in March 2017 as Millharbour Plaza and again in March 2018 as Enterprise Business Park. Work was well under way.

The Mayor’s office did not comment, but Labour said City Hall officials had checked each case and they met the official definition of a housing start, which does not require work to be visible to passers-by. The two registered twice had been in Mr Johnson’s programme but were removed and re-registered because of running late.

A Labour spokesman attacked Mr Tice’s political record as a Brexit backer, saying: “This is utter rubbish from the man who co-founded the Leave EU campaign. Sadiq is proud to have started building more genuinely affordable homes last year than in any year since City Hall was given housing powers.

“Once again, a Conservative mayoral hopeful has been caught out. This should act as a warning to all Conservative mayoral hopefuls to learn the basics before jumping in the deep end and a reminder to all Londoners that the Conservatives don’t even understand the basics of the housing crisis, let alone have a plan to fix it.”