Sadiq Khan: A long list of failings including ‘housing’ – Russell Quirk shares his thoughts
Headline hitters both of them, though the mayor of London has by far a longer list of mostly failures whereas Russell Quirk is still very much respected by his industry peers following taking his idea (Emoov) from start up to nationally recognised online estate agency brand and now leads a fast growing and widely used PR agency servicing the UK property industry – Properganda PR.
The mayor of London is known for declaring figures that he bluffs his followers that he can achieve and in most situations fails miserably to keep. Headlines such as ‘knife crime remains at near record levels in London with more than 40 offences reported every day‘, ‘Crime is up by 12 per cent since he took office, with a far bigger rise in murders‘ & ‘For the first time in 25 years, public transport use is falling‘ and this within news publications that are fairly central / left in their views – This does not touch upon on central / right publications!
His recent rants against President Trump including the battle of the balloons as well as him supporting a second people’s vote and happy to highlight this failed campaign on London Transport brought about even more headlines such as:
‘GLA Conservative leader Gareth Bacon slammed Sadiq for permitting the prohibited ads: “This is disgraceful behaviour from Sadiq Khan; he’s allowing public resources to be used for Remain propaganda.‘
So what about the housing situation and the promises to build more affordable homes? Again we get headlines such as from respected news sources as Inside Housing ‘failing to meet his targets on affordable home starts‘ and from City AM ‘2,400 affordable homes have been built in the first six months of this year, far below the mayor’s annual 14,000 target‘.
Ultimately the requirements are not being fulfilled and figures are below what is expected though this blame will not all fall upon his shoulders as battles need to be fought against the government, land owners and especially those keeping hold of brownfield / planning permitted plots, restrictions on planning and purchasing powers of local councils and more. There is no magical wand, though a pot of £1.67 billion should really be making his job a lot easier and gaining better housing results surely?
Russell Quirk recently shared some Tweets relating to this subject to include ‘The Mayor fudged his answers and incorrectly declared ‘record’ housing starts last year. In fact, actual starts were DOWN 52% on 2017.‘ so I thought I would ask him a couple of questions:
Has the current mayor of London any real grasp as to the declining situation of housing in London? Is he familiar with the targets set for affordable housing in your mind?
The mayor certainly puts investment of money and time in to a second referendum, is though enough being done in your mind with his budgets towards affordable housing in London – Is there in-deed any realistic possibility to meet the required 65,000 new homes per year (50% affordable)?
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