Housing correspondent, BARRATT HOLMES, on a developer-friendly decision which might yet set the trend for all of London
Cheers: housing secretary Steve Reed has the MAGA hats and the developer-friendly slogan, but no solution to the housing crisis
This is what you get when you “Build, baby! Build!”
Merton Council has granted planning approval for 626 homes on the Mitcham Gasworks site, with not a single unit to be designated as “affordable housing”.
Streatham and Croydon North MP Steve Reed, the Secretary of State for housing, must be so pleased to see his property developer-friendly approach having such an immediate impact…
Residents’ groups in Mitcham, meanwhile, have described the council’s decision as “unconscionable”.
Properties built at the Mitcham Gasworks site by developers St William, a subsidiary of the housing giant Berkeley Homes, could have an estimated value of more than £150million. Kerrrching!!
But while the development might boost Berkeley’s companies annual profits, it is unlikely to do anything to fix the housing crisis in Merton or across the capital.
In London, “affordable housing” is anything but affordable. “Affordable” housing is capped at 80% of market rents, supposedly to help key workers and lower-income households access housing.
Hot property: the Mitcham Gasworks, on Western Road, as they were 50 years or more ago. Soon to be a housing scheme
According to the most recent available figures, the average private rent in Merton was £2,072 per month, meaning that according to government- and GLA-approved criteria, “affordable rent” would be more than £1,600 per month. Plus the deposit. Plus service charges.
For the past decade or so, the Mayor of London has been trying to hold the line that any scheme of nine units or more should at least provide 30% so-called “affordable” housing, impringeing on the property developers’ profits.
But with this Mitcham scheme, St William have been let off the hook, and it is possible that not a single flat will have to meet the affordable criteria.
Priority here has been given to private developers’ concerns over “viability”, with the implicit threat that if their demand to dodge the “affordable” requirement was not met, then there was a risk that none of the housing would get built. St William said that without grant funding being forthcoming – in other words, a hefty public subsidy – they could not deliver the 200-or-so less-expensive expensive flats that they might have done otherwise.
Had the council refused planning consent because of the failure to meet the “affordable” housing requirements, the landowners, most likely, would sit on their property and wait for a more profitable option.
There was much gnashing of teeth and wailing from Labour-controlled Merton Council, with councillors saying how the decision that they had just taken was “regrettable”. Hmmm.
Tony Burton, from the Mitcham Cricket Green community group, said: “It is unconscionable that the largest new housing development in Mitcham for a generation should provide no affordable homes.”
But imagine the precedent this decision might create for every other mid- to large-scale housing scheme brought forward in London by private developers. Build, baby! Build!
Ring around the ruses: the developers propose a round-shaped garden feature where the gasholder once was. But viability reports have not been produced
For the old Mitcham Gasworks site, this was the third version of a planning application to go before Merton councillors.
The approved scheme is different in that some attempt has been made to address locals’ concerns about the over-tall, imposing towers to be built facing Hay Drive and Portland Road. But it also increases the density on the development, from 579 to 626 units.
Those extra flats alone could be worth an additional £10million to the developers’ bottom line. Build, baby! Build!
The developers say that they are waiting on a possible grant from Merton and the GLA for at least 146 homes at social rent. This will not be confirmed until at least April 2026, when the next round of GLA funding becomes available (timing which may also be relevant in Croydon town centre).
Neither St William nor Merton Council had published their full viability assessment for the scheme. Of course they haven’t… Build, baby! Build!
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How many times does the hopeless Reed have to fail before he and the half-baked ideology he promotes yet again wastes huge amounts of public money in just increasing prices and not build numbers?
Totally useless as the Environment Minister and now as minister for housing with the construction industry forecast as in recession, he yet again puts his faith in quick-buck developers to deliver the rapid increase in building that never materialises.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/dec/04/uk-construction-sector-suffers-sharpest-slowdown-since-first-covid-lockdown
The Mitcham Gasworks site is surrounded by Western Rd (to the east), Portland Rd (to the north), Hay Drive (to the west) and Brickfield Rd (to the south). The first three of those are all mentioned in the article above, but “Brickfield Rd” suggests that there was also a brickworks on the site before the gasworks, so the ground is probably so polluted that the fast buck developers need to be made to ensure that they clear up the site before the start building all this unaffordable housing ?!
if they don’t clean it up properly it will cause health issues. Good point.
Reed is beyond awful in every way. He badly deserves to be kicked out at the next election.