Zac Goldsmith insists London is gripped by a housing ‘crisis’.
The Richmond Park MP is one of the front-runners to be elected as the new London mayor, alongside rival Sadiq Khan, when the capital’s population goes to the polls on May 5.
And one of his key messages focuses on the city’s housing issues.
He told Julia Hartley-Brewer: “The reality today is if you are earning the average London salary, which is about £34,000, you have not got a hope of getting onto the housing market. It is a crisis.
"My action plan for London is to build 50,000 homes a year and I’ll do that by persuading the government to release the brownfield land and then growing the transport network to unlock that land. They need to be built in the right places, not on the Green Belt and not on our green spaces.
"To be a directly elected mayor of the city of London allows you to actually get stuff done. It’s one of the few jobs in politics where you can actually make things happen. I’m excited about the prospect of being able to solve the issues facing London."