Tower Hamlets Labour Group has responded to tonight’s Cabinet consideration of the council’s ‘Future Places’ prospectus by calling on Mayor Lutfur Rahman to answer basic questions the glossy document conspicuously fails to address:
what proportion of the 52,000 homes will be genuinely affordable, and at social rent?
What will the council actually receive in return for handing over publicly controlled land?
And who exactly is being prioritised – Tower Hamlets residents, or the developers who flew the Mayor’s cabinet member to Cannes?
Future Places itself is not a housing delivery programme. It is a marketing prospectus, designed to be handed out at MIPIM, and the council’s own Chief Finance Officer confirms as much: “There are no financial implications emanating from this report.” No sites committed. No social rent targets set. No transparency on terms. It is a brochure, and tonight the Cabinet is being asked to put its name to it.
This project throws into doubt the socialist credentials of Mayor Lutfur Rahman and his Aspire party officials, who have recently been involved in the founding of ‘Your Party’.
Cllr Sirajul Islam, Leader of the Tower Hamlets Labour Group, said:
“Future Places isn’t a housing plan, the council’s own finance officer confirms there are no financial implications whatsoever. It’s a brochure, designed to be handed out in Cannes, featuring a Berkeley development, by the same Berkeley that paid for the housing cabinet member’s ticket to get there.
“The mayor needs to answer why the needs of this borough and its residents don’t appear in this glossy document. Is he embarrassed of his socialism, or does he just drop it when he’s being flown to the south of France?
“An administration that helped found ‘Your Party’ is preparing to hand public land to private developers with no published social rent targets and no transparency on terms. Residents should ask who this programme is actually for. The answer is on the back page, it’s a contact sheet for developers.”
Cllr Asma Islam, Labour’s Shadow Cabinet Member for Housing, said:
“The word affordable appears throughout this document. The words social rent do not. That gap is everything for the 25,000 families on the waiting list tonight.
“Tower Hamlets is already sitting on £260 million in developer contributions, nine times the national average, that should have been spent on affordable homes, infrastructure, parks and schools.
Before this administration hands over another 46 council-owned sites, which is public land to developers, we need to see that the residents are getting the best deal especially considering that the administration needs to explain what has happened to the £260 million it already has.”
ENDS
Notes to editors
- The Future Places cabinet report was considered at Tower Hamlets Cabinet on Tuesday 24 March 2026. The council’s Chief Finance Officer confirmed in the report: “There are no financial implications emanating from this report which seeks endorsement of the Tower Hamlets Future Places framework.” (Para 6.1)
- The Future Places brochure names Berkeley as a development partner and uses a Berkeley development as a showcase image. Berkeley was one of three developers — alongside Mount Anvil and Mace — that sponsored tickets for Cllr Kabir Ahmed and officer David Joyce to attend MIPIM 2025, as revealed by LDRS Freedom of Information request (Tower Hamlets Slice, March 2026).
- Mace Consult is named in the Future Places brochure as supporting the Mayor’s Accelerated Housing Programme across 46 council-owned sites.
- The Mayor’s Accelerated Housing Programme commitment of “51% affordable” does not specify social rent in the published documents.
- Tower Hamlets holds £261.5m in unspent S106 and CIL contributions, per Home Builders Federation research published 3 March 2026 — the highest per household in England and Wales.
- The Regulator of Social Housing issued a C3 judgement against Tower Hamlets Council in 2025.
- The next Tower Hamlets local election takes place on 7 May 2026.