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Boris Johnson targets brownfield housing developments

Adam Williams
Written By:
Adam Williams
Posted:
Updated:
09/02/2015

London mayor Boris Johnson has reiterated plans to build on brownfield sites in London in his speech to the Conservative party conference.

Labour leader Ed Miliband has targeted housing as a key election issue, promising to double the number of first-time buyers while creating a mansion tax to target £2m+ properties.

Johnson dismissed these ideas and said he has identified sites which could hold hundreds of thousands of new homes in the capital and said greenbelt sites would not need to be used.

“What is the real answer to our housing problem?” he said in response to Miliband.

“To put a new tax on housing, hammering those who find themselves living in a property whose value inflates through no fault of their own, punishing those who have worked hard for years to pay their mortgages and those who hope to pass something on to their children?”

“Or is it to do what all great Conservative administrations have done over the last 100 years, and to build the homes that people need and to help them on to the property ladder?”

He told the Birmingham audience under his time in office, more than 100,000 homes would be built in London and repeated plans to market homes to those already living in the capital first.

“It is not just that we have been able to build more affordable homes in the recession than Labour ever did in the boom – 100,000 over this mayoralty. We are building more family homes, places with gardens, with decent size rooms.

“And as I look at the 38 post-industrial brownfield opportunity areas I see space to build hundreds of thousands in London without carving up the greenbelt. And I want those homes marketed first and sold first to the people of this country.”


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