New homes for Londoners a priority, says Labour leader

Ed Miliband, the leader of the Labour party, has vowed to help plug the housing shortage in London by restricting developers from selling homes in the capital to overseas buyers.

Despite the growing supply-demand imbalance in the capital, and with a high number of Londoners struggling to find suitable accommodation to buy or rent, many London-based residential property developerscontinue to target wealthy international purchasers.

But Miliband promised that a future Labour government would prohibit developers in the capital from being allowed to offload new homes in London to foreign investors until local people have had a chance to buy or rent.

"Londoners must be given a real chance to buy or rent these new homes," Mr Miliband said. "We will stop developers advertising properties overseas first and ensure they are available for the people that really need them."

Labour has pledged to develop at least 200,000 new homes annually by 2020 if it wins the 2015 general election by creating a new generation of garden cities, targeting land-banking by developers with a ‘use it or lose it' policy and giving councils powers to force neighbouring authorities to co-operate on planning proposals designed to boost the volume of new homes being built.