Silvertown Quay’s first block nears completion after 25 years of talk

The first block comprising flats and shops at Silvertown Quays is nearly complete in what will be the first of an eventual 6,500 homes.

Silvertown Quays is a vast site which saw little progress for decades despite excellent transport links with Pontoon Dock DLR station located nearby. Listed structure’s the Millennium Mills and D Silo are located within the overall area.

The first block to complete is supposed to be part of a future “High Street” leading from North Woolwich Road and the nearby Pontoon Dock DLR station towards the dock and elevated bridge towards the Excel centre and Custom House DLR and Elizabeth line station.

For most future residents across the site reaching Pontoon Dock DLR will be far quicker. Not least due to the bridge across the dock requiring a lift or ascending and descending dozens of steps.

Yep, that’d be a hassle each day to reach the Elizabeth line. For the vast majority getting the DLR on the Woolwich branch from Pontoon Dock station will be a lot quicker and easier to reach much of London. In five minutes you’ll be at Canning Town to change onto the Jubilee line or c2c trains if you don’t want to stay on for direct trains to Bank station in the city or Stratford.

Future

After more than two decades of talk and an abandoned festival idea seeing one block complete is at least a step forward but it’s merely a fraction of the overall 6,500-homes proposed for donkey’s years.

Plans first emerged in 2001 with plans going in by 2003. Eighteen years ago a plan was finally approved. Nothing happened. Silvertown Quays Limited and Kajima Urban Development International were removed from the project. in March 2012 Boris Johnson announced Chelsfield, Imagination Europe and First Base would develop the site. Nothing happened.

In 2023 came Lendlease and The Guinness Partnership. We now have the first block.

Aversion

One is tempted to wonder why the Greater London Authority – who own the land – wasn’t given powers to fund and build during an ever growing housing crises dating back years – much as the London County Council and Greater London Council had done in the previous century – rather than go through abandoned joint partnerships with private developers who built nothing.

That of course requires the public sector to take a strong lead and no government since this land was earmarked for development wanted that be it New Labour, Tories again or this Labour government.

Rachel Reeves made it very clear in her very first speech after the election. More public-private partnerships with the private sector taking the lead. The failed consensus of the past 40 years must continue.

A strong public body leading on development certainly doesn’t preclude the private sector, but it doesn’t place so much of the weight to carry projects forward on GLA land in their favour. That model is clearly a failure all over the capital in recent decades.

Future

So will we see building at any more than a trickle? Let’s wait and see. To build the full 6,500 homes could take decades at this rate.

We only have to look at other sites such as Greenwich peninsula not too far away as the crow flies to see another where after 25 years much land remains unbuilt. The public purse paid more than £150 million to clear the land from 1997. Private developers then sat on it. Another great public-private partnership.

And still they come. The GLA are currently looking for a private partner on land nearby near Beckton Park DLR station for another “partnership”. It’s another site with excellent transport links and where the private sector have failed to do very much in the past, so landowner the GLA now embark on another search.

In other news the bill for temporary housing in London has reached yet another record high taking councils to the brink. It’s not unrelated.

Few of the excuses for a lack of building currently seen apply to the Silvertown site. Interest rates? Ultra low for much of the period. Building Safety Regulator? Didn’t exist. Planning system? Plans did and will fly through unopposed here. Measures to pump prices higher under the guise of helping buyers such as “Help to Buy”? They were in place for a lot of it.

What wasn’t in place? A strong, well funded public body to drive it through.

Still, let’s not be entirely downhearted. At least the first block is now nearing completion and further detailed plans are approved.

Now let’s hope the ball is rolling much of this vast site starts to rise.