London Mayor Khan Says New Planning Rules to Boost Housebuilding

London Mayor Sadiq Khan said new UK planning rules proposed Tuesday will help tackle the city’s affordable housing shortage by addressing the “big issue” of land value.

“We are not meeting the demand there is for affordable housing in London, and that’s where we’ve got to ratchet up supply,” Khan told Bloomberg News on Tuesday at the MIPIM real estate conference in Cannes. The Planning and Infrastructure Bill “will make it much more viable to build affordable homes,” he said, because local authorities will no longer need to take into account a property’s “hope value” – an estimate of what it would be worth with planning permission.