The Mayor of London has called for more stamp duty receipts to be devolved to the Greater London Authority (GLA) to help build more affordable homes in the capital.

Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan called for stamp duty receipts to be devolved to the GLA to pay for more social homes in the capital earlier today.

Due to rising housing costs in the capital stamp duty receipts generate £3.4 billion.

Stamp duty refers to the taxes paid pay on legal documents when buying a house.

Now Mr Khan says that if stamp duty receipts were devolved to the Greater London Authority (GLA) if could help build more social housing in the capital.

Mr Khan currently receives around £0.7 billion a year from the government to invest in affordable housing but says he needs around £2.7 billion to build the affordable homes that Londoners need.

He said: “London’s housing landscape has worsened dramatically over the past 30 years, and we now risk a whole generation of Londoners being blocked from enjoying the benefits of a good quality, genuinely affordable home.

“London’s rocketing house prices mean we are contributing billions of pounds in stamp duty to the Treasury, when we could be using it to build new social rented and other genuinely affordable homes.”

New figures have also revealed that in 1990 more than half of 25 to 34-year olds were home owners.

But now less than 30 per cent of young people in the same age group own their own home.

A GLA ‘Housing in London’ report which was published earlier this year has shown that because of the Right to Buy scheme more than 300,000 homes in London have been sold by councils in 1980 but only one in five of these social homes has been replaced.

Labour’s London Assembly spokesperson for housing, Tom Copley, said: “Londoners have long been let down by a government unwilling to deliver anything more than warm words and failing abysmally to support councils in getting building again.

“It’s time politicians in Westminster got out of the way and gave London the financial powers we need to tackle our housing crisis.

Mr Copley also said that not just stamp duty needed to be devolved to London but all taxes from properties and said this would put London in the “best possible place” to deliver genuinely affordable homes.