Tower Hamlets gets another £19.5m to build more low-cost East End homes

Another £19.5 million has been secured to build more social housing in London’s overcrowded East End.

It brings Whitehall funding up to £50m that Tower Hamlets has received since 2011.

The extra cash from the government’s New Homes Bonus scheme gives the authority funding for more house-building in 2014-15.

The ‘bonus’ scheme is designed as an incentive to encourage local authorities like Tower Hamlets to build more. It matches the council tax raised on each new house for a period of six years with money to build more low-cost homes.

Tower Hamlets has London’s worst housing waiting list, with more than 20,000 families in the queue.

But it is building more social housing than any local authority in the country, topping the national league table for the past two years.

The recently-completed work on Stepney’s Ocean Estate made available 800 new and replacement properties, while Poplar’s massive Blackwall Reach development is to add another 1,600 homes.