12 Aug A whistle stop tour of Barking and Dagenham regen projects
Our director, Diane, returned to Barking and Dagenham in East London six years after working on a 10-year vision for the town centre.
It was fantastic to see how much development had progressed in a challenging environment and what’s firmly underway. She takes on around the areas and what she heard from former council leader Darren Rodwell about how the borough is doing thing differently.
Key takeaways
The council’s role: The ethos behind the large-scale changes, from Darren’s perspective, was that the council needed to move from a parent-style role to that of a partner and facilitator.
Raising aspirations: Creating new jobs – skilled and better paid – was a driver in raising aspirations in schools (and beyond) and keeping more money in the borough.
Housing for local needs: The housing provision is aimed at local residents, whereas so often, it’s about building ‘units’ rather than homes. While new developments are primarily in towers and mixed tenure, there is little for sale on the open market; the reason being that this is unaffordable based on local salaries (shared ownership is in the mix).
Infrastructure first: Create facilities and new offers locally so people don’t have to travel far to access them. We saw Coventry University in Dagenham (enabling local people to study flexibly), film studios offering new types of jobs and career paths, culture among the new housing developments via galleries and museums.
Work in progress
My impressions of the development so far are that it closely aligns with the needs of the borough, but I don’t have first-hand experience of this, ie. I’m not sure everyone wants to live in a tower, but we were assured that people want safe, secure homes, and that isn’t an issue.
Most of the development areas are located in former industrial areas, meaning they aren’t pretty, but this should be applauded; the land is available for large-scale development and there are green areas, rivers and landscaping nearby.
Some of the plans require imagination; for example, it will be possible in the future to walk along the River Roding from Barking Riverside to Ilford. While it’s hard to imagine now, it’s not that dissimilar to the Olympic Park or Hackney Wick prior to its redevelopment.
Barking Riverside, the new neighbourhood, felt very isolated. Despite having a recently opened train station (and buses) and regular boat services to London, there isn’t the density (yet) to make it feel like a place. Faster construction is needed here to build a larger community quickly.
Some of the earlier phases of new housing have not aged well, but we were told that conversations had taken place with developers as to how this could be improved in future schemes.
There has been extensive community engagement in the borough over many years, rather than just on a project-by-project basis, and hopefully, this means there is greater buy-in to the changes.
We saw so much on the tour, it can’t be covered here. I’m happy to share more or contact Darren directly for more background on how the projects were delivered.
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