Housing association Peabody is buying 42 acres at the former Ford plant in Dagenham, east London, for a 3,200-home development.
It has exchanged contracts to buy Dagenham Dock from Europa Capital and St Congar for around £100m.
The vendors have been in pre-application talks since 2018, working up plans for a scheme of around 3,200 homes with 50% affordable housing, a secondary school and 86,000 sq ft of commercial space, and completed initial demolition and site remediation this year.
Peabody is expected to submit initial plans for the site early next year. A development of this size would potentially have a GDV of around £1bn.
The housing association is likely to deliver a large proportion of social-rented housing, which will be enabled by an £83.7m affordable housing grant from the Greater London Authority. The finance will be the largest allocation from the £482m allocated grants from City Hall this year.
The site is adjacent to the Dagenham Dock Railway, with a 20-minute journey to Fenchurch Street. It neighbours Beam Park, where Countryside and L&Q are delivering a further 3,000 homes on the former Ford assembly land.
The Ford stamping plant closed in 2013, almost 100 years after it first opened its doors. At one point Ford owned around 475 acres and employed 2,000 people at the site.
As demand for housing in lower-value areas with good connections to London has grown, residential developers have snapped up sites. Last year, Inland Homes acquired a parcel for a £95m residential scheme and it recently secured three more sites with capacity for a further 800 homes.
Peabody has doubled down on its large regeneration plans this year, progressing plans for thousands of homes in outer London boroughs. In an interview with EG earlier this year, chief executive Brendan Sarsfield said it would slash its development targets for next year by more than a third. But it remains ambitious in the longer term, with plans expected for just under 1,000 homes at Holloway Prison and a further 1,950 homes at the Lesnes Estate regeneration in south Thamesmead.
Earlier this month, the 67,000-home business announced Sarsfield’s plans to leave his role next summer and launched a search for a new chief executive.
St Congar is a land promotion and asset management company specialising in town planning, project management and infrastructure delivery. It has been in joint venture with Europa Capital since 2009, working on the acquisition and sale of 10 land assets across southern England.
Savills advised the sellers.
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