On London Extra: How to judge a housing policy

Official figures for Sadiq Khan's programme will be released next week. Plus Tory candidate contest latest, the essential Kevin Fenton, e-bike clampdown and more

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Next week we will learn how many affordable homes have been started in London with the help of money Sadiq Khan has received from the government.

Tom Copley, the Mayor's Deputy for Housing, said in the autumn that getting 116,000 new dwellings going by the end of March this year - the goal set for the £4.8 billion received in two lumps in the first two years of his boss's mayoralty - was looking "increasingly challenging".

Tories said he was getting his excuses in early. More recently, Khan has been accused of "marking his own homework" by celebrating hitting a target for housing built by councils with his help that he himself had set.

What is the right way to judge whether a Mayor's - any Mayor's - affordable homes programme has been a success? 

The place to begin is negotiations with the government. Khan's administration maintained at the time that things had gone as well as could reasonably have been hoped for in 2016 and 2018, when Theresa May was PM. But could and should they have done better? 

The next job is to allocate the funds to affordable housing providers, namely housing associations and councils. A prospectus is drawn up and bids are submitted, with each bidder seeking a wedge to help them augment the size or the quality of their building programmes, or both. How well have the allocation decisions made under Khan turned out?