Plans in for 400 homes on former gasholder site near Belvedere station

Belvedere could be seeing almost 400 new homes built near the town’s railway station as plans are submitted to Bexley Council.

The location is a former gasholder around 200 metres west of the station with Bellway and SGN behind the proposal.

One gasholder remains on site with another having been demolished in 2022. Plans are due soon to demolish the second.

Designs include three storey houses amongst blocks of flats ranging from three to five floors.

All are brick with a colour scheme comprising red and green balconies.

Affordable

The “affordable” housing element is extremely low at just 10 per cent. This is a very common theme in Bexley borough where developers almost always submit plans with very low levels.

The poor dears at Bellway struggled to a £532.6 million annual profit in their latest financial results. Meanwhile in Bexley formerly vacated homes in Thamesmead that were readied for demolition are seeing people moved in on a “temporary basis”.

Housing in the UK continues to be beyond broken.

Bellway aren’t using funds saved by allocating very few affordable homes into good quality design. The nicest that can be said is that it’s perfunctory.

Cheap is probably the more apt term. Awkwardly proportioned boxes with tacked-on balconies feature heavily.

It is though not as bad as many Bellway developments which are sometimes truly dismal. They have included decorative brickwork here on the cornices of blocks as well as at lower levels.

And not everything is flat-roofed which is another common Bellway feature. Much is – but not all.

Transport

Belvedere station offers direct links to central London stations at London Bridge and Cannon Street as well as Abbey Wood for connection to the Elizabeth line and Woolwich Arsenal for the DLR.

Thameslink trains currently do not stop.

Bexley Council have included a DLR extension from Thamesmead to Belvedere in their most recent Local Plan and listed a total of 8,000 potential homes in the town in their Bexley Growth Strategy document..

Any DLR extension appears very unlikely for decades and another option is an express bus.

In recent weeks funding for a bus rapid transit system was announced following plans for a Superloop express bus between Abbey Wood and Thamesmead.

Belvedere could well be linked to any future express bus routes. The site includes provision for such a future route through the site as seen in section eight of the Design and Access Statement – though only in one direction.

Buses heading westbound would need to take a longer and circulatory route.

The proximity to Belvedere station which is just two minutes from Abbey Wood may negate any BRT in the area for some time and making it one-way only through the site doesn’t help its prospects.

This isn’t the only large development in Belvedere currently working its way through the planning process at the moment.

As mentioned before, Bexley Council see up to 8,000 homes in the town and another application nearby contains 1,250 homes.

Approved plans in the area on a rather smaller scale also include homes and new shop units at a parade of shops near the station.

That’s already approved as is a new block to the north of the station near Lidl, Travelodge and The Morgan pub.

This will total 81 homes.

All taken together these developments total almost 1,800 homes in close proximity to Belvedere station.

The application can be viewed here.

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