Greater London's largest housing development scheme remains stalled by an austerity mentality
His big pal Boris Johnson talked it up, their political opponents talked it down. But even if George Osborne eventually stumps up for an extension of the Overground to the very large and very stalled Barking Riverside housing scheme, many people will go on wondering what took him so long.
Critics feel the project's timeline does their talking for them. The 443 acre former power station site beside the Thames was bought by developer Bellway 20-odd years ago. In 2002 the Greater London Authority took a 49% stake and a joint venture, Barking Riverside Ltd, was formed.
Five years later, Ken Livingstone's City Hall gave the green light to plans for a massive 10,800 new homes to be built there - the equivalent of a whole new Sevenoaks - nearly a third of them with three or more bedrooms, and more than 4,000 of them affordable. That's about as good as it gets in the big, bad metropolis these days.
Building began in 2010 and people started moving in to the new settlement - dubbed an evolving "garden suburb" by Johnson - in 2012. The scheme has won design awards, 300 flats for private rent are on their way, and lots of the groundwork has been done. But there's a big problem with public transport links - they aren't nearly good enough. This a bad thing of itself and also means there's less demand for properties yet to be built. Part of the planning deal says that until the development is better connected to the rest of the world, no more than 1,200 dwellings in total have to be constructed on grounds of financial viability. The 1,000 mark is now in sight. Then what?
In short, the longer-term future of Barking Riverside is pretty much on hold until it knows it will be served by rail. The easiest and least expensive solution would be adding that extra bit to the end of the Overground line route from Gospel Oak to Barking - the Goblin line as it is known - thereby joining up the new settlement with its nearest town centre and to the Underground and the c2c rail service into Fenchurch Street too.
About £180m is required. What's keeping you, George? Barking and Dagenham council had hoped he'd allocate the cash in his autumn statement last year, but got no joy while others did. Quoted in Inside Housing at the time Ken Jones, the council's director of housing, described Osborne's "interesting take on priorities" as "extremely disappointing." On the eve of the budget Cameron Geddes, the borough's cabinet member for regeneration, warned that "an unfavourable announcement" could result in "the end of the line for the whole development." A "fair deal for the people of Barking and Dagenham," was all he asked.
Well, there was an announcement and it wasn't exactly hostile. But neither did it give the go-ahead as trailed. Instead, it said only that the government "will work with" the mayor and GLA to "develop proposals" for extending the Goblin to Barking Riverside (see page 40, paragraph 1.144). "A plan for plan," snorted Labour at City Hall. The Lib Dems there were just as unimpressed. The mayor assured BBC London that it will happen in the next couple of years, but couldn't be more precise.
This is but the latest transport hold-up to slow the whole Riverside process down. One of Mayor Johnson's first cost-cutting acts after his election in 2008 was to can Livingstone's plan for extending the Docklands Light Railway from Beckton to Dagenham Dock station, taking in Barking Riverside along the way. He lifted the idea back off the shelf a year later, at least insofar as his transport strategy included getting Transport for London to re-inspect the feasibilities. However, TfL has told The Wharf it's since costed the scheme at up to £500m - far more than a Goblin add-on.
Meanwhile, Barking and Dagenham's Labour administration continues to seethe with frustration. "We've been putting money in for the electrics, lobbied for the schools and all the other amenities the Riverside needs," says deputy leader Rocky Gill. "We could have 26,000 people living there. But at the moment there's only buses to Barking town centre and that journey takes half an hour or even 45 minutes on a bad day. On the Overground, it would take about six."
The outer London borough's housing need is huge. Government projections suggest that, at the present rate of progress, by 2021 it will be around 17,000 homes short of what it will need - one of the worst of London's many looming shortfalls. The importance of Barking Riverside's potential 10,800 homes is pretty self-evident. And the site forms only part of the larger London Riverside opportunity area designated by the mayor. That, in turn, is but one element of the still wider challenge of shaping outer east London and the Thames Gateway to best effect.
It's not as though either Osborne or Johnson are averse to transport infrastructure investment as such. "Red Boris" has been banging his Londonist drum for it for years. For all his ruinous, ideological parsimony, Osborne remains hot for the £50b-plus High Speed 2. What's £180m for Barking in the greater scheme of things?
Gill acknowledges that Johnson has "shown intent," but says "the time for talking has gone." He suspects Tory leadership rivalries are getting in the way. "Boris has got to sell the deal to the chancellor. It's a no-brainer for the treasury. It's all incredibly frustrating. We're wasting time." And while it's being wasted, we are left to wonder where exactly the priorities of Johnson and Osborne lie.