Is High Rise the Way Forward for Ealing Borough?

Councillor Gary Busuttil considers the options to deal with the housing crisis

Cllr Busuttil in front of the tall towers in North Acton

June 8, 2023

For many years we have heard that there is a housing crisis here in London. Election after election we hear about how bad housing waiting list are, the number of families in temporary accommodation, and promises to tackle the housing crisis with building x number of dwellings.

Targets are set and never achieved. Currently, London needs roughly 83,000 new homes a year to but manages to achieve less than half that according to National Residential Landlords Association. The housing crisis is a crisis in affordable rental homes where the demand is the greatest. Affordable, in Ealing Council terms, is rent that should cost no more than a third of your income.

It is no secret that land values in London are some of the most expensive in the country and space is at a premium, so to make the best use of limited space is to build up. One of the arguments about increasing the supply of much needed homes is to build taller.

However, is building taller really necessary or even the best way to achieve the much-needed homes, particularly affordable homes, that we require? According to The Economist, apparently not.

To build the required homes we need in London will mean increasing the density of our city. Density in itself is no bad thing. After all, London is a low density city in comparison to New York, Seoul or even some cities on continental Europe. A report in The Guardian even suggested London could sustain more people living in it. However, it seems that increasing density, hence our need for housing, means building higher.

According to Centre for Cities, a think tank, if 5% of London matched Maida Vale’s density with mid-rise mansion blocks, it is estimated we could accommodate 1.2 million homes. Not only does well designed and built mansion blocks achieve the required homes we need, but it is also plus on an environmental and sustainability point of view.

In recent years there has been many campaign groups that have sprung up in Ealing to campaign against the rising number of tall buildings. It has featured as an issue in the last two local elections here in Ealing and is creating animosity amongst residents. It seems that we can achieve a win-win situation if look at different methods to increasing the shortage of housing, such as the greater use of low-rise mansion blocks, like those on the Green Man estate and Acton Gardens and residents dislike for tall buildings.

Councillor Gary Busuttil

Deputy Leader, Group Whip & Opposition Spokesperson on Finance and Resources for the Liberal Democrats