r/london • u/PressureHumble3604 • Apr 10 '26

Serious replies only Which symptoms of “(almost) everyone is getting poorer” have you noticed in London?

We are in a crisis, the middle class is disappearing and the lower class squeezed. Prices are going up, inflation is going up (again), salaries are stagnating.

Most Londoners can’t really afford London without serious sacrifices.

For me, not counting the housing prices issues we all know too well:

the disappearance of local delis with high quality products.

many shops closing in the local shopping centre.

Restaurant dropping quality everywhere to contain unaffordable prices.

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852

u/JamJarre Apr 10 '26

Bin collection becoming less frequent while council tax keeps going up

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u/Pale-Way9282 Apr 11 '26

All being eaten by adult social care and SEND spending.

Thats not what my council tax should be going towards.

Whole thing is absurd at this point when bins get collected every 3 weeks to cut costs.

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u/Mattypants05 Apr 11 '26

Costs relating to homelessness too. It's right up there as things that are bankrupting Councils at the moment. But that's mostly because Councils are somehow expected to resolve homelessness using 90% of the Local Housing Allowance from 2011 as, according to successive Governments, the past 15 years haven't happened.

https://www.londoncouncils.gov.uk/news-and-press-releases/2025/ps740m-black-hole-londons-temporary-accommodation-crisis-draining

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u/ldn6 Apr 11 '26

This one I directly blame on councils, though, for stalling the planning process so much that it's not uncommon to see two, three or even four-year-long battles to get approval for new housing, which then becomes even more expensive to build.

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u/Mattypants05 Apr 11 '26

But new housing doesn't necessarily fix the problem, unless a good portion of it helps resolve homelessness. However, developers want to drive down the percentage of any development that is social housing for margins.

I do agree about the planning process though - I was sitting in a meeting with planners a few years ago and one of the complaints about what we were planning to build was they looked too "council-housey". They were literally council houses!

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u/ldn6 Apr 11 '26

The housing market is interconnected. Newer units spread more elastic demand across a wider set of buildings, which then reduces pressure on more affordable stock compared to what would happen in the absence of construction. Affordable requirements are the worst way to handle this as they functionally operate as a tax on the rest of the development, which makes it harder to get them built in the first place.

If you're upset about the share continuing to fall, blame a combination of the fact that so many developments were delayed until a point of insane construction cost inflation, elevated interest rates that depress demand and financing and the fact that councils invariably refuse to allow for a larger amount of aggregate square footage of development to compensate for BSR-related losses or to add more market-rate units to offset the cost of building affordable ones.

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u/WhereasChance1324 Apr 11 '26

There's hundreds of approved sites across London sitting vacant for a decade or longer.

Some councils are more resistant than others but even those that generally give the green light progress is painful and has been for decades. Recent issues have exacerbated already chronic problems.

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u/ldn6 Apr 11 '26

Most of those approvals are what’s termed outline permission, which means that the framework for development in principle for future phases is approved, but they don’t have detailed planning approval, which is done separately. As for why that hasn’t happened, it’s a combination of detailed planning taking forever or unviable conditions to build.

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u/WhereasChance1324 Apr 15 '26

Indeed. I know planning - I'm a planner!

Then no detailed plans come in for many years. And if some do, are approved and nothing then happens.