Boris Johnson’s scheme to bring empty properties back into use to help ease London’s housing crisis has slowed to a virtual halt.
New figures show that the project only managed to take eight homes in the capital out of disrepair last year.
The Mayor had planned to spend £3.6 million on the initiative in 2012/13 but in fact spent just £39,000 - just over one per cent of the budget.
The figures, uncovered by the London section of BBC1’s Sunday Politics, will be embarrassing for Mr Johnson who brought 1775 properties back into use in 18 months during his first term.
City Hall insiders suggested the scheme had slipped behind due to difficulties getting the boroughs on board, raising fears for its £6.6 million budget next year.
Labour housing spokesman Tom Copley said: “I think if after the first year of the programme, you’ve only bought eight homes back into use, most Londoners would look at that and think something is going badly wrong. The buck stops with the Mayor. He needs to get a grip on this it’s his responsibility.”
David Ireland, chief executive of charity Empty Homes, said: “In terms of marks out of ten for Boris on empty homes, I’d give him a seven or an eight for his first term. At the moment it is more like two or three.
“He needs to do a lot more in this term to get back to the levels of activity we had in the first. It is pitifully low and it does tend to show that what was quite a good programme and started out with quite a lot of energy has very seriously tailed off and that is a worry”.
