Plans to comprehensively redevelop some of east London’s waterfront sites will be blocked by new proposals to safeguard wharves.
The policy, unveiled this week by mayor of London Ken Livingstone, will force owners of 52 riverside sites to preserve them as industrial and waste recycling wharves, or face having the sites compulsorily purchased by the mayor and the London Development Agency.
An additional 26 wharves along the Thames have been marked for preservation, on top of 26 previously safeguarded by the Port of London Authority.
While most are active wharves, 15 are derelict sites that have not been in use for as long as a decade.
But Livingstone said the policy, contained in the mayor’s wharves report, was “not an anti-regeneration policy”.
“Developers should not be concerned that these sites are being safeguarded at the cost of losing development land,” he said.
“The sites make up less than 5% of land along the Thames.”
Eleanor Young, the mayor’s planning adviser, said: “Safeguarding the wharves for recycling is more important in the long term than any other regeneration, as EU directives require recycling to increase by six to seven times in the next two years.” But Young acknowledged that the policy would make it difficult to develop adjacent land: “If you have aggregates or waste and a luxury residential development cheek by jowl you are going to have problems. But that’s the policy.
“If we can’t work with developers, we will use compulsory purchase order powers,” she warned.
Owners will have 12 weeks to comment on the policy before the mayor asks the government to confirm the safeguarding in the late autumn.
References: EGi News 14/04/03
