Barking and Dagenham council leader Darren Rodwell has ambitious plans for his borough, not least forging closer ties with the world’s second-largest economic powerhouse.
“Barking offers the lowest land values in London with the highest returns, so it is an attractive investment for China,” he says.
Sino-Australian investment firm ASF Group is understood to be in talks with Legal & General to buy Barking’s Eurohub freight terminal, and in discussions with other industrial landowners in the Castle Green area on the border between Barking and Dagenham. It is aiming to create a trade hub in the area, which will begin as an industrial trade marketplace for Chinese goods.
Rodwell (pictured) says: “The first phase will kick off this spring. The plan is to build a trade hub on a brownfield site… It will be a Chinese business workshop where people can showcase their products and someone can come from John Lewis and sample or customise the goods.”
Legal & General acquired the freight terminal from AXA Real Estate for £53.7m in 2015. In 2017, the first direct rail freight service from China to the UK completed its 18-day trip and arrived in Barking.
The train departed from the city of Yiwu, on China’s east coast, and travelled 7,500 miles, crossing seven countries, before arriving at the freight terminal in Barking.
Over the next decade, Rodwell would like to see passenger services running from Barking to China, but this is still in the very early stages of development.
ASF Group also intends to build an office and residential scheme at the Castle Green site, working jointly with the council. The plans include 15,000 new homes; rerouting the A13 trunk road and creating commercial buildings covering 3.7m sq ft. The gross development of the project is A$9bn (£5bn).
The council has been actively promoting the area to win foreign investment. Pacifica Ventures, a California-based studio owner, was selected last year to develop the 22-acre “Made in Dagenham” film studios in a £100m deal. Plans for the site include 12 sound stages covering 264,000 sq ft and around 95,000 sq ft of production office space.
Last year, Japanese telecoms giant NTT Communications announced plans to launch two data centres in the area, which will focus on cloud computing and digital media. The council gave permission for the two 212m-long buildings near Dagenham East station last year.
The council has also attracted domestic investment, with the City of London Corporation buying the 42-acre Barking Reach Power Station last year for more than £125m.
In addition, it is planning to increase its own property investment budget. Rodwell says: “We are investing our own money in the regeneration of Barking. We started with a smaller budget but we have increased this to up to £1bn.”
The council has increased its budget because of a rise in regeneration opportunities since Rodwell became leader in 2014.
The council’s central Barking scheme, run by its wholly owned regeneration firm, Be First, will involve a full overhaul of the town centre. The council has gained planning permission for around 2,000 new homes, alongside commercial and social buildings.
Last month, the council also bought the Londoneast-uk Business and Technical Park, which is opposite Pacifica Ventures’ film studios. The purchase forms part of its wider plans to create a digital and media hub in the borough.
Be First managing director Pat Hayes adds: “Our budget is planned at £750m for now but we could increase our borrowing. Historically we have not spent as much as this. But we think this is the cost of our plans to build 32 sites of varying scale. We are in the first year (financial year 2018-2019) of a four- to five-year programme.”
In spring this year, the council will lodge a planning request for a further 2,000 homes as part of the central Barking scheme, also known as “Mini Manhattan”.
Rodwell says the plan is to build “5,000 homes over the next five years”.
He adds that the council set up Be First to ensure the council was “clocking business opportunities”.
He says: “We have more in-house council services than any other council in London. When I became leader four years ago, my plan was to run most of our services on our own.”
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