The London Assembly has heard that 9,500 home must be started by September if Mayor Boris Johnson is to meet his target of building 55,000 affordable homes for London by 2015.

The first quarter of this year saw just 43 starts, too short of the number needed by this autumn.

Jamie Ratcliff, Assistant Director, GLA said that the targets were manageable but would "certainly be a challenge". He stated that the team had an "incredibly successful end to the last [financial] year, where we hit a very challenging completions target and more encouraging, for me, we got a very large number of starts underway, more than anyone expected... when the focus is on, from us and providers, we can deliver a large number of starts quickly".

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To meet the March 2015 deadline, building needs to start on sites by September as it takes approximately 18 months to complete a build. However, Mr Ratcliff said that if smaller projects commenced in October it wasn't "particularly worrying".

The Committee heard that if new housing developments are not complete by the deadline of March 2015, investors will lose their grant from the Affordable Homes Programme.

(CD/MH)