The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has approved plans for a new 21-storey offsite building in Croydon
The offsite building, which will be one of the tallest schemes of its kind, will have up to 100% affordable housing and is being developed by Pocket Living.
Mayor Khan gave the go-ahead to a development at Addiscombe Grove in Croydon, more than 70% of which has been secured as affordable for first-time buyers to purchase at a discount to the market price.
Pocket Living has further agreed in principle to make the remaining homes available for shared ownership, making all 153 homes affordable.
The announcement comes just months after Pocket Living agreed on a deal with Khan for £25m of City Hall funding to support 1,059 new homes from the developer, a third of which are expected to be offsite buildings. This funding has helped Pocket build more high-density flats on brownfield sites.
Pocket typically provides one or two-bed flats for first-time buyers, which are usually sold 20% below the market rate. It can afford this as it builds its flats smaller – at 38 sq m – than the 50 sq m usually required by the Greater London Authority’s London Plan.
The homes in this latest scheme are for discounted market sale and affordable with a 5% deposit to households with an income of £39,000, and they can only be sold to residents and workers in the borough.
Khan said: “Tackling London’s housing crisis requires bold new approaches. We know turning things round will take time, but offsite construction is an innovative way to speed up building the affordable homes our city needs. I invested in Pocket Living to help them build genuinely affordable homes that are sold to local people first.”
Marc Vlessing, chief executive of Pocket Living, added: “We’re delighted that the mayor has approved our exciting first scheme in Croydon. At Pocket, we always aspire to lead the way. Addiscombe Grove is a great example of this, where we are aiming to use modular construction to deliver homes faster and increase the genuinely affordable housing provided from 73% to 100%.
“Once again, the mayor has shown his commitment to tackling the housing crisis through backing innovative solutions that deliver significant levels of affordable homes.”
