Barking & Dagenham’s development company, Be First, is to acquire 936 homes at the £1bn Beam Park development.
The homes in the latter phases of Countryside and L&Q’s south Dagenham development comprise 50% affordable homes and 50% private housing.
The council has approved plans to enter into a development agreement with Countryside Properties to deliver the units across development phases 3, 4 and 5, on a turnkey basis.
Development will be backed with a £309m loan from the council’s general fund. It will also use £30.5m in affordable housing grants from the Greater London Authority.
Be First’s acquisition is expected to bring forward the development by four to five years, from a previous plan of an on-site start in 2026, with completion in 2032. The homes will be held and operated by the council’s housing company, B&D Reside.
Countryside and L&Q received planning consent for the 3,000-home scheme at the former Ford assembly site in 2018. It has since started on site with phase 1 and sold a block of 80 flats to BTR investor Sigma Capital.
Beam Park is the last of more than 1,000 acres of GLA land to be released for development, after Boris Johnson pledged to release all City Hall-owned land for development.
Countryside and L&Q were selected to develop the 71.7-acre site in 2016. The site sits within the London Riverside Opportunity Area, which has the potential to deliver 26,500 homes and 16,000 jobs.
Be First aims to support the delivery of 50,000 new homes in the borough in the next 20 years. The council-owned developer is one of the most prolific in London, backed by a total of £110m in grants from the GLA. Its current developments include the 400-home Crown House scheme, 526 homes at Gascoigne East and 850 at Gascoigne West.
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