Met Police officers and other key workers to get subsidised London homes under plans by Tory mayor hopeful

Festus AkinbusoyeFacundo ArrizabalagaRachael Burford, Chief Political Correspondent @RachaelBurford1 minute ago COMMENTSNews Briefings

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Metropolitan Police officers and other key workers would get subsidised housing in inner London under plans unveiled by a Tory mayoral hopeful.

Former Bedfordshire Police and Crime Commissioner Festus Akinbusoye is in the race to be the Conservative candidate for Mayor of London.

Ex Home Secretary Sir James Cleverly is favourite to be selected to take on Lord Sadiq Khan or another Labour candidate if he does not stand in the 2028 election.

But Mr Akinbusoye, who is a councillor is Westminster, is seen as a strong outsider with a campaign focused on housing and crime.

London “absolutely has to have” cheaper homes for Met officers, nurses and teachers to “benefit everyone in the capital”, he told the Standard.

Festus AkinbusoyehandoutHe argued that high rental costs are pushing key workers out to the home counties or mean they are unable to start families in the city.

Under the policy, key workers could be provided a subsidised home for the first three years of their career.

The average starting salary for a Metropolitan Police officer is around £43,000, but typical private monthly rent in London is £2,272 a month, according to recent data from the HomeLet Rental Index.

Mr Akinbusoye said he would set up a housing delivery unit in City Hall and work with developers and other bodies to build the properties.

“When a lot of Londoners complain that we don’t have Met officers who live in London, who know London, it’s not because the Met doesn’t want to recruit from London, it’s because people can’t afford to live in London”, Mr Akinbusoye said.

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He added that there are some “pockets” of key worker homes in the capital, managed by housing associations, “but we need a lot more so we can get the police officers, the nurses, the teachers, the key workers living in London because we have a demand here and all of those cost pressures push people out”.

“Maybe it would be for the first three years of your career,” he said.

“Because for many of these jobs in the public sector, you don’t make the most money in the first year or two but then it starts to increase rapidly after that.

“I think we can do it so you are going to be in there for three years, you then have to move on, but by then you should be able to move up the income ladder.”

Mr Akinbusoye said he would also scrap affordable housing targets in London, with the allocation each scheme has to provide being assessed on a case by case basis.

The target are putting off developers from building homes altogether and further exacerbating the city’s housing shortage, he argued.

“If we don’t sort this issue, seeing a five year old in London in ten to twenty years time will be like seeing a Dodo because anyone of child rearing age won’t be able to afford to live here,” he said.

Ex-Foreign Secretary Sir James, the MP for Braintree and a former London Assembly member, is the favourite to be selected as the Tory mayoral candidate, having already won the support of more than half the Conservative councillors in London.

He faces competition from Mr Akinbusoye, chair of the London Assembly Andrew Boff and businessman Alex Challoner.

A final candidate is expected to be chosen in December.