Challenge of the Thames Gateway

By John Andrew
Local government correspondent, BBC News

See a computer generated image of one of the Thames Gateway projects in the Ebbsfleet Valley Enlarge Image

It snakes 40 miles (64 km) along the Thames, from the skyscrapers of Canary Wharf through the marshlands of Essex and Kent and on to Southend-on-Sea and the mouth of the river.

It's been described as Europe's biggest and most ambitious regeneration project, promising nearly 160,000 new homes and 180,000 jobs by 2016.

Even the architect's model of it, just finished and unveiled at a conference this week is the largest ever made in Britain - the length of three London buses laid end to end.

But ever since John Prescott launched the Thames Gateway four years ago as one of England's major growth areas, it has been dogged by critics and doubters.

Only this month MPs launched a blistering attack on the way the government has managed the project.

'Disjointed projects'

The public accounts select committee said that although the government had spent £673m on the programme, ministers still didn't know what the final cost to the taxpayer would be and that there were too many agencies and funding streams involved.

Without improved management, they warned, it would remain a series of disjointed projects unlikely to make any major difference to housing and regeneration.

Even a glossy report on the state of the project published for this week's Thames Gateway Forum, accepts that the rate of change has been slow.

New housing starts have been averaging 8,200 a year - less than half the rate needed to meet the target of 160,000 new homes by 2016.

But those running the project are sanguine. They point out that the promise to put quality first, and avoid some of the housing disasters of the past, argues against a rush to build.

New build

It is no secret that there have been tensions between builders and project managers over the extent of affordable housing in the schemes.

There have been further delays in land acquisition and planning too.

But the Thames Gateway Forum says there's about to be a massive acceleration in the rate of new build. In Barking Riverside, for example, planning permission has been given for 11,000 new homes.

Gordon Brown will confirm later that a further £9.2bn of government money will be spent in the Gateway as well as the £7bn already committed.

Much of it will go on affordable housing, hospitals, transport and other infrastructure.

He'll also announce that the promised total of new jobs will be increased from 180,000 to 225,000 by 2016.