Ealing Council’s affordable home building plans have been given a further boost with new grant funding from the Greater London Authority (GLA).
The council has been awarded almost £110million from the GLA’s Affordable Homes Programme, to continue its genuinely affordable housebuilding programme over the next five years.
More than 500 new socially rented homes for Ealing
The new funding for 2021-26 will help pay for the construction of a total of 1,032 new homes around the borough. 561 of the new homes at those sites will be let by the council at genuinely affordable rents priced within the means of local people on low incomes. The remainder will be available as shared ownership, helping first time buyers get onto the property ladder.
This new award follows a previous round of funding for 2016-23, in which the council successfully bid for almost £100million from the GLA, which is now helping Ealing deliver on its ambitious target of delivering 2,500 genuinely affordable homes by April 2022. The council is now more than four fifths of the way towards meeting its target, despite the labour hours lost to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Modern, energy-efficient homes which local people can afford”
Councillor Lauren Wall is Ealing Council’s lead member for genuinely affordable homes. She said: “This funding will help us continue to build the new affordable homes that Ealing desperately needs. There are currently almost 11,300 households waiting for a socially rented, affordable home in our borough, but last year only around 430 council homes became available to rent to new tenants, while we also lose around 100 socially rented homes each year through Right To Buy sales.
“We are urgently addressing this affordable housing crisis by building modern, energy-efficient homes which local people can afford. With one of the most ambitious council homebuilding programmes in London, we are already well on our way to building the next generation of genuinely affordable homes. This new funding will help us continue to build for years to come and show that councils can lead the way in creating great places to live.”
