Croydon’s Housing Targets:  Where are we?

Croydon’s Housing Targets:  Where are we as of March 2023?

Is Croydon building sufficient new homes – and the right mix of housing for Mayor Perry not to be reeled in by either Mayor Khan or the Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities? 

The current target per annum agreed with Mayor Khan is 2,079 units starting in 2019 up to 2029. After 2029  Croydon Council are proposing around 1,200 units per annum until December 2040.  

The last time I wrote on this was in December 2023 with March 2022 data and the Council was meeting these targets and in addition had a pipeline of 11,893units. You need a pipeline to show you are going to meet the targets in future.  This data was published in the Annual Monitoring Report for 2021/2022.

I suspected that by December 2023 Croydon was well in excess of its targets given the number of blocks completed around East Croydon in that year. As I have said before, to me all this high rise development around East Croydon is on balance good.

We now have some new numbers. For the four years from the start of this plan cycle up to March 2023 Croydon has built 8,754 units vs a target of 8,316.  This is 105% of the target. Well done Croydon Council in facilitating this.

To compare this with the whole of London, the London wide target is 52,287 units per annum. So for the four years the cumulative target is 209,148 and the actual completions are 145,444. So completions are 69.54% of the total.   This puts Croydon’s performance in even better light. Especially as Croydon has the seventh highest housing target of all the 33 London boroughs and the highest for an outer London borough.  However we should have a high target as we have East Croydon Station. Can you Spot it on the “Access Map”?This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is jeremy-target01-1.jpg

However how is Croydon doing in meeting its targets on affordable homes and family homes? The answer as of March2022 was – badly.   For affordable homes the target is 50% and the current run rate is 17%. For family homes – homes with three bedrooms or more – the target is 30% and the current run rate is 16%.  An update on these numbers to follow.

This is a follow up of the original piece here

Jeremy Gill

Author: Jeremy Gill

Chair, CVRA