Sadiq Khan’s housing targets will be “enormously challenging” for Bexley as the council looks to develop its own benchmarks for new homes.

Bexley Council is currently consulting on its own Local Plan which will set out where and how many houses it thinks it can take in the future.

The council is also planning to impose a 50 per cent target for affordable housing numbers once its plan is adopted by winter next year.

It’s expected that more than 1,000 homes a year will need to be built if the borough is going to keep up with growth and with the London Mayor’s targets.

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At a homelessness scrutiny meeting, councillors were told the Mayor’s target for the borough – which is higher than the council’s – is “extremely ambitious”.

Seb Salome, head of strategic planning and growth at Bexley Council, said: “The Mayor has undertaken a London wide need calculation and he came up with a figure of around 67,000 units a year for London as a whole. The last time that amount was produced was between the wars.

“What the Mayor has also done has subdivided that need by each borough – he’s given us a requirement in his draft London Plan.

“Our figure is 1,245 – now that my feeling is that is lower than our need but we won’t know for certain until we’ve done our calculation. Irrespective of how that relates to need, that is enormously challenging.

“That’s just our requirement figure – there’s no buffer to give developers a choice. We need to find land for more than that.”

Jane Richardson, the council’s assistant chief executive for growth and regeneration, added: “It’s a massive challenge.

“There is profound concern because they truly do not believe the Mayor’s targets are achievable. Increasingly, the targets aren’t being met by any bit of London.”

Bexley is developing its own targets for how much housing will be needed ahead of the Mayor’s London Plan being formalised.

The council said it has already identified 60 sites capable of bringing hundreds of homes to the borough – the majority of which will be in the north of the borough.

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It is also planning to set a goal of having 50 per cent of houses as “affordable”, something that was not previously included.

It comes as the council also works on a new housing strategy, which the administration say will help the borough with “good growth”.

Bexley has seen huge demand for housing in recent years, and currently there are just under 1,400 homeless people living in temporary accommodation.

The council’s local plan is currently out for consultation with residents.