Housing underpins everything in life. Yet without the proper infrastructure, the flagship developments of today will quickly become the social problems of tomorrow.
This is what I firmly believe and when I speak with residents who bought homes at Beam Park, a 3,000-home development in my Dagenham and Rainham constituency, that is what they believe too.
The scheme was conceived by Boris Johnson in 2016 when he was Mayor of London, forming part of the London Riverside opportunity area. Integral to this scheme and granting planning consent was the provision of a new primary school, a medical centre and, crucially, a new rail station promising a 20-minute journey to Fenchurch Street. That is how these homes were marketed.
Construction began, the primary school was delivered, and then, in 2021, the Conservative government under the direction of Boris Johnson, who approved the scheme as Mayor, pulled support for a new station. The promise was broken and residents felt betrayed.
Since that time, I have been campaigning with residents and pressing for the block on the station to be lifted. It should also be noted that we had to fight to get the promised medical centre delivered and, when it opened, further pressure had to be applied to get full primary health care screening provided on site.
Making or breaking communities
What occurs to me is that planning obligations on developers to fund and support social and transport infrastructure need to be beefed up to ensure delivery of the needed amenities. I want to see ‘Grampian’ planning conditions (a negatively-worded planning condition that stops development from starting or being occupied until a specific action has been completed) better codified and implemented across all major housing developments to prevent avoidance of their obligations by developers.
From my experience, when local communities object to housing developments, the concerns are rarely unreasonable. What school will the kids attend? What GP will the new residents register with? Who will police the new neighbourhood? How will they get to work? It is easy for some in our movement to dismiss these questions as NIMBYism, but the answers can make or break a community.
There is a nationwide need for a step change in building new homes, particularly a requirement for truly affordable homes at social rent levels, to meet desperate local housing needs. But there must be equal emphasis on infrastructure and good design, creating places people can be proud of and where families choose to put down roots.
In the meantime, I remain tenacious in my pursuit of the vital infrastructure my constituents were promised. Beam Park station is within touching distance and, despite attempts to deliver more housing without it, I am hopeful that my constituents will be on their way to Fenchurch Street soon, unlocking the potential of future homes on the site.
Placemaking
There is a lesson to be learned from Beam Park.
Moving away from an exclusive focus on housing unit delivery to a model of placemaking, with the needs of local communities at its heart, is how we win the argument for good housing developments and create a better future.
This isn’t an alien concept. The post-war Labour Government understood this and made good use of ‘Special Development Orders’ to ensure infrastructure was a key feature of their New Towns.
Labour did it before, and we can lead the way again.