Train dependency Plans to extend the DLR to Dagenham Dock have been scrapped, threatening the viability of a new community. Is this politically motivated or a sensible act during a downturn? Paul Norman reports
The annual Thames Gateway Forum will have a different focus than anticipated when it opens this week.
The debate over how layers of bureaucracy, agencies and authorities can be co-ordinated to ensure the development advances is likely to be overshadowed by questions as to how much projects need to be scaled back in the face of the economic downturn.
In this climate, a hot topic will be London mayor Boris Johnson’s announcement this month that Transport for London is scrapping the £750m Docklands Light Railway extension to Dagenham Dock.
Labour on the London Assembly immediately drew an apocalyptic picture, accusing Johnson of “ripping the lifeline from outer London” by “wielding his axe over another key local transport scheme”.
The DLR extension is intended to run from Gallions Reach in Beckton to Dagenham Dock via five new stations: Beckton Riverside, serving the area between the River Thames and the A1020 near the proposed Thames Gateway Bridge Creekmouth, Barking Riverside and Goresbrook stations, which would be located to best serve those who will live and work in the massive Barking Riverside development and Dagenham Dock station.
Unsurprisingly, the most vocally disappointed are those planning to build the Barking Riverside scheme – Bellway and English Partnerships.
Proposals for the scheme include 10,800 homes as well as 600,000 sq ft of shops and offices on a 442-acre site.
The new community has been 20 years in the making and is key to the proposed connection of major housebuilding to the regeneration of Barking town centre.
The good news is that the Homes & Communities Agency wants to use the scheme as a public/private partnership model on which it will base plans to buy land while it is relatively cheap for affordable housing.
Employment areas
The bad news is that ambitions to use the project to create a mode of sustainable regeneration across the Thames Gateway rely heavily on the DLR extension connecting the new community to major employment areas, such as the Royal Docks and Canary Wharf, as well as the City.
Barking & Dagenham council says that, unless the DLR extension goes ahead, thousands of the planned homes may not be built.
Council leader Charles Fairbrass warns: “Without the crucial DLR extension, only 1,500 of the planned 11,000 homes at Barking Riverside will be built, and the regeneration of the area will grind to a halt.”
A source working on the project, who refused to be named, agrees: “The extension is already connecting in two places up to the town centre, so the consented projects will go ahead. But one now has to wonder about the viability of the later phases, given the connections the planned line has to important employment locations further east.”
Stephen Oakes, English Partnerships regional director for London and the Thames Gateway, and director of Barking Riverside, says the project will go ahead. “We are confident we can work with TfL, the mayor and government to find a funding solution,” he says.
Also reliant on the extension are plans for major commercial development around Dagenham Dock, including Gazeley’s 234,000 sq ft Voltaic business park. TfL has previously argued that the extension to Dagenham Dock is vital if the area is to be developed in a sustainable way.
Most significantly, the London Development Agency, the London Thames Gateway Development Corporation and Jones Lang LaSalle are working up plans to create the 60-acre Sustainable Industries Park at the Dock.
The park will be built using renewable materials and power supplies, and will sit alongside a proposed 215,000 sq ft Institute of Sustainability, providing space to businesses involved in sustainable technology and associated industries.
A source close to the project says: “The whole logic of the project is that we are able to develop off the back of the train extending to the dock, so that the area can be truly sustainable.”
For those attending this year’s forum, the delay in funding the DLR extension raises wider issues about whether the credit crunch will necessarily prompt a radical rethink of what can be done in the area, particularly in terms of sustainability.
Questions will also be asked as to whether the new Conservative mayor will be less inclined to throw his weight behind development there.
Certainly, Barking’s Fairbrass, who is Labour, has been quick to suggest that the decision is a politically motivated snub: “Assurances were given by Ken Livingstone and the then transport secretary, Ruth Kelly, that the DLR would be extended to allow this development to proceed, and it is astonishing that the new mayor has decided to stop these homes being built just as works are about to start.”
Labour’s transport spokesperson, Val Shawcross, has ratcheted up the political overtones: “Sadly, it’s no surprise to us that the mayor isde-prioritising those transport schemes that would regenerate poorer areas of London.”
Other projects that the mayor has scrapped include the £500m Thames Gateway Bridge, connecting Newham to Greenwich, the £1.3bn Cross River tram and the £370m Greenwich Waterfront Transit, a bus route linking the O2 Arena with bus and Tube stops and the East London transit line.
The London Thames Gateway Corporation remains understandably tight-lipped. In a statement, it said: “Our proposals for a Sustainable Industries Park at Dagenham Dock still stacks up even in these straitened economic times. With investment in the DLR and Crossrail, it has the potential to be the best-located industrial and research park in London, creating 1,500 jobs.”
In response, the mayor and TfL have portrayed the move as a prudent response to the credit crisis.
A spokesman for the mayor says: “What we want to do is stop pretending the tooth fairy will come. We just don’t have the money for some of the plans, and the others were never very good ideas anyway.”
Of the DLR extension, he adds: “This is simple logic. The mayor believes that it is completely wrong of assembly members to suggest that this is anything other than taking a responsible approach to the new economic reality.”
What remains uncertain is whether the mayor can be quickly persuaded of the project’s importance, or whether he will let it slip off of his list of priorities.
“What we don’t want is for this to become a political football to be kicked around by the mayor,” warns one senior developer in the region, who asked not be named. “It is certainly very unhelpful now given the multi-layered nature of the Thames Gateway. But there is still time for the mayor to relent, and that is what everyone developing in the region must hope.”
