More than a quarter of London land is publicly owned, and according to a recent report by Savills, there are around 20,000 sites across the city, totalling c.18,000 acres with some degree of development potential.

The report estimates that if all of these public land parcels were built out at local average densities, then 693,000 homes could be delivered across the city. The greatest number could be delivered in Tower Hamlets, due to the high densities that are viable in the borough.

Tower Hamlets is closely followed by Southwark, which has lower average densities of homes, particularly in the south of the borough, but greater amounts of public land in total.

Savills stated: ‘Crucially, these are the areas in which land values should be low enough to make lower-mainstream homes more deliverable. This is the part of the market where the mismatch between need and supply is the greatest, and the public land in these areas could be used to help plug this gap.’