The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has hit out at the review Michael Gove launched into The London Plan, the development strategy for the city, which is due out this week, calling it “a desperate political stunt”.

In a letter to Khan in December, Gove said he had appointed a panel of expert advisors to look into aspects of the spatial strategy “which could be preventing thousands of homes being brought forward, with a particular focus on brownfield sites in the heart of our capital”.

In the correspondence, Gove said that London was the worst-performing region in the Housing Delivery Test 2022, adding that the average number of net additional dwellings built by the GLA per year is 38,000, which he said is 15,000 fewer homes every year than Khan’s target in the London Plan.