Two locations in London have been officially recommended for the building of New Towns, with the potential to provide more than 35,000 new homes between them. The newly-released findings of the government’s New Towns Taskforce confirm that the Crews Hill area in Enfield and riverside land at Thamesmead in Greenwich are among 12 sites thought suitable for New Towns across England, as first reported by On London earlier this month.
The taskforce report says the Crews Hill site has the potential to provide around 21,000 new homes, bearing out suggestions in recent days that it was being earmarked for significantly more the the government’s goal of at least 10,000 for each New Town. The Thamesmead site too, has been judged able to substantially exceed the minimum target, with the report saying 15,000 homes could be built there.
The report’s definition of the Crews Hill location also encompasses the adjacent area collectively dubbed Chase Park in what it calls a “green” and “expanded development” with “an ambition for 50% of those homes to be affordable, helping to address London’s acute housing need”. This effectively combines the two Green Belt sites Enfield Council has long had ambitions to build on and has included in its new Local Plan proposals, which have been undergoing their statutory examination in public.
As Enfield Dispatch editor James Cracknell has documented for On London, Enfield envisaged only 5,500 homes for the Crews Hill area itself (top picture) and 3,700 for Chase Park, a total of only 9,200. The taskforce report has identified approximately 884 hectares (2,184 acres) for a New Town, bringing together and expanding the two sites. It says that “without new town designation it is unlikely that development will be brought forward at such a scale” or with the speed the government seeks.
The much smaller, 100 hectare (247 acre) Thamesmead Waterfront location (pictured below) is described in the report as “an opportunity which has gone unrealised for decades” to renew the original promise of the mid-1960s Thamesmead development, which is undergoing a long term regeneration. It notes a “long-standing desire to connect the Waterfront site to the London transport network” and says New Town status “could be an opportunity to finally realise this historic vision”.
It identifies as a “key challenge” Transport for London securing “confirmed government support” for its proposed extension of the Docklands Light Railway to the south side of the Thames through Beckton to its north. Sir Sadiq Khan made known his disappointment with the exclusion of commitment government funding for the project from Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s spending review in June. However, transport secretary Heidi Alexander later noted that “substantial work” had been done on the plans and would continue to work with TfL and City Hall to finalise a business case by the autumn.
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