Is Boris Johnson's housebuilding record as bad as Ken Livingstone claims?

"The latest quarterly official data from the HCA London shows there were just 56 new starts of affordable homes, as opposed to over 11,000 new affordable home starts in London in 2008."

London Policy Conference, 13 December 2011

Ken Livingstone announced his plan for a 'London living rent' at a speech to the London Policy Conference, which he claimed would help young people struggling with housing costs in the capital.

The speech focussed on the difficulties Londoners face when buying or renting in the capital which he claimed was due to a severe fall in the building of new, and especially affordable, housing.

But are his figures correct?

Analysis

As Mr Livingstone indicated, the claim that there were "just 56 new starts of affordable homes..." supposedly derives from official statistics of the Homes and Communities Agency.

As the table below shows, while the 56 figure is correct, the period actually covers April-September 2011; six months, rather than the quarter cited by Mr Livingstone.

But what about the claim that there were 11,000 starts in 2008? The Homes and Communities Agency, which was set up in 2008, only has data stretching back to 2009.

However the Department for Communities and Local Government does record similar figures in its report on 'Affordable Housing Supply, England, 2008-2009'.

This stated that: "A gross total of 55,770 additional affordable homes were supplied in England in 2008-09 [and]...London and the South East accounted for 23 per cent and 19 per cent respectively of new affordable homes in England in 2008-09."

This would suggest that 12,827 affordable homes were built in London in this period, comfortably above the 11,000 suggested by Mr Livingstone.

However there are some problems with this approach.

Firstly, the DCLG statistics refer to an increase in the affordable housing stock - encompassing new homes completed and older housing added to the affordable housing pool - rather than the number of affordable housing projects whose construction had started in that period. It wouldn't therefore be correct to refer to this figure as the number of "housing starts".

DCLG does publish housebuilding data by region however, and this shows that in the 2008 calendar year 17,880 housing projects were begun in London, of which 5,780 were started by social landlords.

This is clearly much lower than the number claimed by Ken Livingstone, although it is not clear what proportion of the projects started in the private sector were eventually ascribed to affordable housing projects.

However, whether we should be comparing these statistics with the Homes and Communities Agency data at all is dubious.

A spokesperson for the HCA confirmed to Full Fact that they and the DCLG record housebuilding starts differently, meaning the data may not be comparable.

While the HCA counts a new home start when a provider enters into a build contractor with the builder, and contractor has then started work on site, the DCLG data come from building control officers who are responsible for visiting building sites and certifying that new homes comply with building regulations.

Conclusion

We have attempted to contact Ken Livingstone's team to clarify the source for the 2008 statistics, and will update as soon as we know more.

Most of the numbers seen by Full Fact do suggest that the 56 homes started in London between April and September this year is very low compared to previous years.

However given the methodological differences between the available data sets, these comparisons may prove problematic, and until we know more we remain cautious about the specifics.