Mayor of London and TfL chair Sadiq Khan said the scheme would boost affordable housing in the capital as well as helping diversify the developer industry.

The 10 sites will deliver just 111 homes but 68 per cent will be affordable and the mayor’s team is working with other public bodies to bring forward more sites in the future.

Last year’s Housing White Paper called for more diversification of the housebuilding industry. Communities secretary Sajid Javid said 60 per cent of new UK homes were built by just 10 companies.


‘Small, independent builders can find it almost impossible to enter the market. This lack of competition means a lack of innovation, which in turn leads to sluggish productivity growth,’ he told Parliament in February 2017.

Launching the pilot scheme in the capital last week, Khan said: ‘For far too long, London’s housing market has been over-reliant on large developers building the majority of our homes on large brownfield sites. The number of small sites coming forward has halved in the last decade, and we have lost almost a third of all small and medium-sized homebuilders operating in the capital.

‘Through my new small sites programme, I want to make more public land available to help contribute not only to tackling the housing crisis in London, but also to reinvigorating our small and medium-sized homebuilding sector. I also want to provide more opportunities for Community Land Trusts, which is why I have earmarked two sites specifically for community-led housing.’