The greens, housing and the rewriting of London’s planning debate.

By Sarah Wardle – Director

Long on the fringes, the Green Party is finally emerging as a serious political challenger in the capital under the leadership of eco‑populist Londoner Zack Polanski.

Hackney, Islington, Southwark and Lambeth are the Green’s key targets in May’s elections, although their impact is also likely to be felt in former Labour strongholds like Camden, Lewisham, Haringey and Greenwich. The latest MRP polling from JL Partners and the Telegraph shows the Greens with a seven-point lead in Hackney and in pole position in Haringey.

The party’s growing influence lies less in policy detail and more in their ability to reframe social issues, shifting the terms of debate through values‑led, emotionally driven campaigning.

Crucially, housing is one of the key pillars of their campaign in the capital. At the official campaign launch in Lewisham, Polanksi accused Labour of being “in the pockets” of housing developers and prioritising luxury housing over affordable and social homes.

In contrast, the Green Party’s package of reforms on housing include:

• The introduction of rent controls. 

• A minimum 50% social housing requirement. 

• Ending Right to Buy. 

• Abolishing leasehold tenure. 

• A land value tax on undeveloped sites held by developers. 

• Removing commercial housebuilders from the process of identifying potential development sites. 

If the Greens are as successful as we expect on 7th May, then the property industry needs to be braced for a challenging time ahead. The Greens are openly antagonistic towards developers and there is little baseline trust in the development industry, meaning claims made by developers are often assumed to be partial, self‑interested, or unreliable from the outset.

This will make engagement, especially around viability, exceptionally difficult with already‑fragile economics sitting uneasily with the Greens’ push for 50% affordable housing.

With traditional messaging unlikely to cut through, the most effective strategy will be to lead with real-world impact and social justice, the schemes that have transformed communities, and to let trusted third parties tell that story. Residents and community groups carry a credibility with the Greens that no developer can claim for itself.

The longer-term challenge may simply be one of patience. In their first year, Green-controlled councils are likely to confront the gap between ideology and the practical realities of delivering housing. Difficult decisions on viability, land supply and the role of private capital do not disappear with a change in administration.

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