City Hall's land and property company, GLA Land and Property Limited (GLAP), is significantly behind its target of delivering 68,000 new homes by 2041, officials have admitted, citing difficult market conditions. GLAP reported that between 2016 and 2025, only 29,156 homes had been delivered or were on site, representing about 43% of the forecast. Of these, just 15,135 properties have been completed, equivalent to 22% of the goal. Last year saw only 382 starts and 1,675 completions on GLA land.
Officials acknowledge sluggish progress
David Bellamy, the Mayor's Chief of Staff, told the London Assembly Budget and Performance Committee: "GLAP is not immune to the wider pressures facing the market - it's probably worse for us due to the infrastructure needs on our brownfield sites. It is the nature of property developments that the numbers will oscillate." He added: "What's changed was, frankly, the housing market got a lot more difficult. Looking back at the housing market a decade ago in London, it probably felt challenging at the time, but, you know, it's like playing a computer game on easy level compared to where we are now, where it's just so incredibly difficult."
GLAP's history and land holdings
GLAP was established in 2012 by former Mayor Boris Johnson as the Greater London Authority's (GLA) wholly owned land and property company, and was handed a £300 million loan from the GLA the following year. It manages around 645 hectares of land across London, equivalent to 819 full-sized football pitches, including sites such as the Royal Docks and Greenwich Peninsula.
Assembly committee criticises pace
Following the meeting, Budget and Performance Committee chair Neil Garratt told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: "We've just been through a golden period for property development in London over the last 10 years. There've been cranes everywhere in the city, but during that period, [GLAP] development has been pretty sluggish. At the current rate they're going, they're not going to get them built this century and it looks like some of the early ones will be getting pulled down for being derelict and too old by the time the final lot get built. We just need to go faster, and I haven't heard anything today that explains how we're gonna do that." He added: "All of the problems we've heard are real - the frustrating thing is that they didn't pull their finger out when every other property developer in London was going gangbusters. And so now, we're really stuck in the slow lane, and we've now got all the problems that everybody else has."
Debt repayment concerns
Concerns were also raised over the slow progress of repaying the £300 million loan from the GLA. GLAP only made its first repayment in 2024 and repeatedly missed payment deadlines on the loan in the preceding six years, according to internal City Hall documents. This is primarily due to GLAP's cashflow consisting mainly of proceeds from land disposals, which depends on agreements with development partners. Mayor Sadiq Khan said last year: "The timing of these is often contingent on the timing of procurement, statutory authority consents, construction programmes and market forces and therefore highly variable and not entirely within the control of GLAP or its partners." However, officials told the London Assembly that current forecasts suggest GLAP will be making surpluses and will be able to meet its loan repayment obligations for the next five years.
