Young Londoners earning £60,000-a-year can no longer afford a home in the capital, Reform UK’s mayoral candidate has said as she laid out her plans to ease the city’s housing crisis.

Laila Cunningham said her children know that they will not be able to afford to live independently in London when they leave home.

The mother-of-seven told the Standard: “I speak to so many kids who are on £60,000 in London, like top earners in the country.

“There is no way they can afford to build and have a home. And actually when it comes time for them to have kids, they move out of London.

“And that is a failure for me. Sadiq [Khan] boasts we have the greenest home building or you know, the greenest construction.

How is that helping Londoners? It's not, I want people to boast about how many young people have owned a home and built a family in London. It's very important for me.”

Ms Cunningham said that if she were to become the Mayor of London after the next election, due in 2028, she would free up TfL land for housing and cut regulations to speed up building.

She suggested that many schemes should receive default approval and it should not be up to developers to prove why a project is needed.

“What we've seen is regulation has massively reduced the amount of home building that has been built,” she added.

“And I feel that we need to look at regulation in a different way. We need to ask, is it actually defending us or protecting us from a harm? And what problem is this regulation trying to solve? And what is the economic cost of this regulation? And is it worth it? And if it isn't, then it's got to go.

“And I feel there's a presumption in London... if I go to City Hall or a council and I want to build something or create a business, the presumption is you’ve got to prove to me why that business is needed or why that building has to go up. You’ve got to go through hoops, you’ve got to pay thousands of pounds.

I want to reverse that presumption. If it's needed, it's up to me to prove why it shouldn't go up. It's not up to you to prove why it's needed.

“So if someone comes to me at City Hall and says, I want to build something, I'm gonna create thousands of jobs. Bring millions of pounds, I'm not going to ask City Hall to regulate it or create some complicated policy, I'm gonna be like, how the hell can we get this done?”