A game changer for south-east London: new £1 billion town centre at Thamesmead to bring 20,000 riverside homes with Crossrail connections

A new riverside town centre at Thamesmead in south-east London could be a game changer for the area.

Thamesmead rose out of the Erith and Plumstead Marshes in the Sixties, the modernist vision of the Greater London Council.

Fifty years on it is infamous as one of Britain’s great post-war planning disasters and as the backdrop for Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of A Clockwork Orange.

Decades of indifferent housebuilding have produced a sprawl of low-rise homes in a mishmash of styles, plonked in culs-de-sac, sprouting from an ugly car-dominated public realm.

AMBITION ON A GRAND SCALE

This is a regeneration ambition on a grand scale — but it has been seized by Peabody, one of London’s most influential housing associations. Thamesmead, named as one of London’s 38 Opportunity Areas, is also among the largest of these sites, covering an area the size of central London.

Peabody’s 30-year plan is to increase the existing 46,000 population to 100,000, build up to 20,000 new homes and create 20,000 jobs.

The opening of Abbey Wood Elizabeth line station in 2019 will put Bond Street within 25 minutes and Canary Wharf within 11 minutes.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan has committed to extending the Docklands Light Railway to one, and possibly two, stations in Thamesmead, with one of those serving a new town centre alongside the Thames.

“We have five kilometres of river frontage and an enormous amount of water and green space over 750 hectares. It is a massive opportunity to exploit a green and blue landscape. And the air really is fresher,” says John Lewis, Peabody’s executive director Thamesmead.

LONDON'S NEW TOWN

Peabody acquired Thamesmead in 2014. A £1 billion regeneration programme was announced last year and planning permission in principle has since been won for 3,000 new homes on several major sites.

The vision is simple, says Lewis. “It is realising Thamesmead’s potential as London’s new town. We will improve what is here. We will grow the place. And we will look after it long term.

“We are also running a Royal Institute of British Architects-led competition for a new library and community building as part of the scheme.”

Peabody has completed a £6 billion merger with housing provider Family Mosaic, and signed off on a partnership deal with the Greater London Authority, which has pledged £80 million funding.

The result is The Reach, the first development in one of London’s Housing Zones, which are designated for accelerated delivery of homes.

About to start in west Thamesmead, The Reach will provide 66 social rent and shared-ownership homes.

West Thamesmead Gateway is a much larger proposal, for 1,300 homes immediately east of Plumstead Overground station. Four private developers are competing for the deal.

Thamesmead Waterfront is the big prize, however. This 197-acre undeveloped site west of Thamesmead town centre has 1.2 miles of Thames frontage. King’s Cross is about 80 acres by comparison. There is enough space for 11,000 homes and perhaps a million square feet of commercial development.

VISION FOR THE FUTURE

“The DLR will emerge from a tunnel into the town centre. So how do we make that sense of arrival? It’s very exciting,” says Peabody’s John Lewis.

“And what is it that people will want from a town centre in 10 years’ time? This will be the real game changer for the area and make people interested in Thamesmead.” But will the likely high values of riverside development be beneficial?

“We are aware this will generate an extreme range in home values in the area, based on Berkeley Group’s experience with its development at Woolwich Arsenal, and we’ve got to be conscious that a huge uplift won’t benefit everyone. We need a mixed community.

“We have to think of Thamesmead as a town, not as a set of development opportunities. We can look at costs and values across the whole town so we can address these issues.”

Peabody will begin to look for project partners this autumn. “We hope to attract significant interest from people with major experience of place development,” says Lewis.

“It’s an opportunity to create the town centre Thamesmead never had. A centre that will be sustained by Thamesmead people, but which will also capture a huge number from a wider area — a water city centre.”