Two members of the Radix Big Tent Housing Commission Leaders Group to help explain how London councils have spent an estimated £120 million on homes that have not been built.

Broadcast 2nd September 2025, Lord Best and Rick de Blaby were interviewed on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme, highlighting urgent concerns around housing delivery in the UK.

The broadcast begins, 'it's now quite widely agreed across the political spectrum that one of the central challenges this country faces is just how hard and expensive it is to build stuff, whether property or infrastructure. London Councils have spent an estimated £120-million on homes that have not been built, according to FOI requests put in to all 33 local authorities.'

Lord Best shares his insights at 2:50:50, discussing how housebuilding has become 'more difficult' and that 'we need to do the bureaucracy a lot faster, meaning more resources for the building safety regulator.'

Rick de Blaby explains at 2:53:00 'the statistics are pretty stark - if you take 300,000 homes a year that need to be delivered, about 80,000 of those need to come through in London, and about 5% are coming through at the moment.'

Listen to the full interview - BBC Radio 4

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