Barnet started 876 affordable homes in 2025-26, second only to Tower Hamlets, as London beat its target with 21,001 starts. City Hall figures, 10 November 2026.
Barnet started building 876 affordable homes through City Hall’s programmes in 2025-26, more than any London borough except Tower Hamlets, according to figures the Greater London Authority published on Tuesday 10 November. The same day the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, announced that London had beaten the top of its Government target for the 2021 to 2026 Affordable Homes Programme.
City Hall recorded 21,001 starts under that £4 billion programme, 2,001 above the upper target of 19,000.
Barnet’s numbers
The borough figures come from Table 2 of the GLA’s starts and completions spreadsheet, which counts every affordable home started on site in each borough through any GLA programme. Barnet’s year-by-year starts were:
- 2021-22: 1,207, fourth highest in London
- 2022-23: 951
- 2023-24: 58
- 2024-25: 36
- 2025-26: 876, second only to Tower Hamlets (1,050)
- April to September 2026: 493, fourth highest in London
Of the 876 started last year, 776 are for social rent (the GLA counts London Affordable Rent at social rent benchmarks in the same column). Barnet also completed 629 affordable homes in 2025-26.
Added up across the five years from April 2021 to March 2026, that is 3,128 affordable starts in Barnet, the fifth highest total of London’s 33 local authorities behind Ealing, Southwark, Greenwich and Newham. Those five-year totals cover all GLA programmes, so they are not the same thing as the 21,001 counted against the Mayor’s target, and the GLA does not break that 21,001 down by borough.
The two lean years were London-wide, not just Barnet’s. Across the capital, GLA programmes started 2,358 affordable homes in 2023-24 and 3,991 in 2024-25, against 25,687 in 2022-23 and 9,366 in 2025-26.
This year has started strongly. Of Barnet’s 493 starts between April and September, 367 are for social rent. Barnet completed 320 affordable homes in the same six months.
Council homes
City Hall keeps a separate table of council homes built through its programmes. It shows 245 council home starts in Barnet between April and September 2026, up from 89 in the whole of 2025-26 and 34 in 2024-25. Barnet recorded 58 council home completions in the first half of this year.
What the Mayor and the Government said
City Hall says the target was reached despite “higher construction and borrowing costs which have made it harder to get developments under way”, and that new building safety requirements and delays at the Building Safety Regulator have added to the pressure on housebuilders. The target itself was moved twice: set at 35,000 in 2021, cut to 23,900 to 27,200 in 2023, then to 17,800 to 19,000 in March 2025 “after significant increase in inflation and borrowing costs”.
Sadiq Khan said: “I’m hugely proud that we’ve exceeded the Government target. Councils, housing associations, and housebuilders across London have worked hard to get these homes under way in some of the toughest conditions for housebuilding in years, and today’s figures show that our collective work is delivering for Londoners.
“Building more social and affordable homes is a top priority and I’m taking the tough decisions needed to get them built.
“I know we’ve still got a long way to go to tackle the housing crisis. I’m working closely with the Government to agree temporary emergency measures to get stalled sites moving. We’ve also secured funding to help build thousands more social and affordable homes over the next decade to ensure we deliver the homes Londoners desperately need, as we build a better London for everyone.”
Angela Rayner, the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, said: “Londoners deserve decent, affordable homes and it’s encouraging to see the capital exceeding its target, as we continue to turn the tide on the housing crisis.
“We know we need to go further though, and we’ll continue to work closely with the Mayor, with up to £11.7 billion made available to get stalled sites moving and build the social and affordable homes families desperately need.”
What comes next
The next programme, the London Social and Affordable Homes Programme for 2026 to 2036, has up to £11.7 billion of Government money behind it. City Hall says it has already offered at least £6 billion in the first round of allocations, with 60 per cent going to councils to build council housing. It has not said how much of that has been offered to Barnet.
In March, the Mayor and the Government also agreed a package of temporary measures for stalled sites, including a time-limited fast-track planning route for eligible developments and £324 million for City Hall’s Developer Investment Fund.
What it means for you
A start is not a finished home: it means work has begun on site, and the homes counted last year will mostly be let or sold over the next few years. For households on Barnet’s housing register the wait is still long. Barnet says only around 650 social homes become free to let in a typical year, and we set out how long each priority band waits when SNG agreed 82 social rent homes at Brent Cross Town. If you are in temporary accommodation, the Ombudsman’s recent finding against the council sets out what it must do when a placement is unsuitable.
City Hall publishes the next quarter’s figures, covering April to December 2026, on Tuesday 9 February 2027.
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