Investing in the community: St John's Wood flats in NW6 are part of new wave of council-led building in Camden

Camden council architecture department had a pioneering period in the Sixties and Seventies, a special time in London’s housing history.

Inspired by Le Corbusier, the great modernist of an earlier generation, the borough triumphed with high-quality social housing, designing a number of low-rise concrete estates, now listed, including Bloomsbury’s brutal but beautiful Brunswick Centre.

Now, with Theresa May relaxing rules introduced when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister that outlawed the building of new council homes, Camden has come up with a Community Investment Programme, allowing it to sell land and bulldoze estates to raise more than £1 billion.

More than 3,000 flats are being built and this time around, many of them are for sale on the open market.

Abbey Road Cross, with 75 private flats, is part of The Camden Collection.

Just north of St John’s Wood, the NW6 address looms over a busy junction and butts up against train tracks.

Architects Pollard Thomas Edwards have designed distinctive linked apartment blocks clad in kiln-fired red bricks with a stand-alone 13-storey tower in smoked blue brick.

Flats have set-back balconies and 28 different floorplans.

Prices start at £565,000. Call Savills on 020 7409 8756.

Proceeds from these private sales are ploughed back into neighbourhoods in the form of new social housing, better public and green space, new schools, shops and facilities.