Housing association Peabody and property developer Lendlease have formed a joint venture company with a view to building 11,500 homes on the waterfront in Thamesmead, the focus of one of London’s largest regeneration schemes.
The 50:50 Thamesmead Waterfront partnership follows Peabody naming Lendlease as its preferred partner for planning and building the 250-acre site back in February.
The project aims to develop 2.5 kilometres of land along the banks of the Thames and transform the existing town centre with new commercial and leisure space over a 30 year period.
Peabody has been the principal landowner across the wider Thamesmead area since 2014, and is already engaged in a major regeneration programme there, in collaboration with Bexley and Greenwich councils, Transport for London and the Greater London Authority.
Announcing the joint venture, Peabody and Lendlease have underlined the importance of extending the Docklands Light Railway (DLR) across the Thames to Thamesmead, describing it as “critical” to maximising its success in an Outer London town that has long suffered from poor public transport connections.
A new building was opened at Abbey Wood station in 2017 as part of the Crossrail project, but the Waterfront project is at the other end of Thamesmead, which in all covers are area similar in size to Central London.
Thamesmead currently has around 45,000 inhabitants living in nine neighbourhoods built between the 1960s and 1990s. The area also contains a considerable amount of green space, five lakes and seven kilometres of canals.
Peabody says its aim is to bring to fulfilment the original vision of creating a successful new town in this part of south east London half a century after the first homes were built there in 1968.
Possible options for extending the DLR were presented by TfL to Greenwich Council in February, though no funding has yet been secured for such a crossing.
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