Homes at Peabody and Berkeley Homes’ West Thamesmead gateway now on sale in Hong Kong
A development of 1,750 homes near Plumstead bus garage is now on sale in Hong Kong.
The homes are part of Thamesmead’s Housing Zone.
When announced, Housing Zones were to see “Local authorities identify and package together brownfield land which could be used for development into a housing zone, remove all unnecessary planning restrictions across it and partner with a developer to build new homes.
The absence of planning constraints in these zones will significantly accelerate construction.”
Since the zones were established in 2015, Peabody have only built around 150 homes out of a planned 2,826 homes at Housing Zone sites across Thamesmead in both Bexley and Greenwich boroughs.
Infrastructure improvements reduced
When plans for 1,750 homes were approved, proposals to improve infrastructure including the gyratory separating two sides of the site was heavily watered down.
Plans to covert three lanes of one-way traffic into a two-way road was cancelled. There was no funding for pedestrian improvements heading to nearby Plumstead station.
A promo video for the new development portrays a green area containing slogans such as ‘Quality, Nature, United’.
The model of selling homes overseas to alleviate housing shortages in the UK appears to have failed, with data out today showing another sharp increase in households in emergency and temporary housing, with numbers up by almost 200 adding to costs pressures on the local authority.
Slow build rates across Housing Zone sites have coincided with households in insecure, temporary and emergency housing including B&Bs rising rapidly in Greenwich borough.
In addition, the numbers unable to buy and living in private lettings has also increased sharply recently.
Location, location, location
Berkeley Homes have decided to state it’s Plumstead and not Thamesmead in marketing material, though the most prominent marketing location is “Royal Borough of Greenwich”.
A sales event for this development is to be held 25–26 September 2021 from 11am – 6pm at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel.
Berkeley are not showing asking prices on their UK site, but the Hong Kong event does show sale prices. Prices start from £367,500.
Thank you for this information- thoroughly depressing!
Our councillor Peter Brooks is as useless as a chocolate tea pot having committed every problem under the sun and never done a single thing. The walkways here are the pits, constantly flooded when it rains, no CCTV, broken lights and incredibly unsafe. This development could have taken the antiquated motorway road provision and turned it into more of a neighborhood. Instead absolutely nothing and the sense of complete hell hole walking to plumstead or Macdonald’s will continue forever more. Great job Greenwich council, no wonder the plumstead positive party exist.
Berkeley’s promotional video is a hoot. Would be buyers should walk the area via streetview. However, Hong Kong buyers typically leave properties empty and those purchases are purely for investment.
@ John SmithThank you for this article very informative.
@ Matt W Totally agree with you this area is completely unsafe and action needs to be taken now.
Even when you do report rstreet faults to Greenwich Council nothing is done. Street lights remain out of action for weeks or months in some cases longer.
@ anonymous201481 you are not wrong in what you say.
We need new homes which local people can afford to buy or rent and move in to rather than leaving the properties empty. Many new homes still remain out of reach for local people to buy or rent privately on their salaries.