Travelling to Aman Dalvi's office on the Tube, one experiences first-hand the way London's infrastructure is creaking under the burden of an expanding population.
But the chief executive of investment agency Gateway to London is determined poor transport won't upset housing growth in the Thames Gateway, which received the lion's share of the £610m announced on Wednesday for the government's four key housing growth areas.

"What will make or break the project is infrastructure," he says. "Crossrail [the proposed rail link from Reading to Kent through the capital] has to happen – and quickly.

"Without infrastructure going in we won't be able to achieve much."

Unfortunately, last week the Strategic Rail Authority said it would not fund the Crossrail project. This doesn't mean the Thames Gateway project has hit the buffers, says Anthony Dunnett, chief executive of the South-east England Development Agency. There are other funding possibilities, such as private finance, and the prime minister is pulling together a cross-Cabinet group to support the Communities Plan objectives, with transport links at the top of its list.

Meanwhile, the Department for Transport is reviewing its 10-year transport plan and will report as part of the 2004 comprehensive spending review.

Extensive infrastructure will not only stop the Gateway from becoming a dormitory town, says Dalvi, but make it a commercial centre. Barclays bank and Clifford Chance, the world's largest law firm, are two companies setting up headquarters in nearby Canary Wharf.

Dalvi draws a parallel between London and post-wall Berlin, where west Berlin needed to expand and east Berlin was crying out for development. Like Berlin then, London now can only expand eastwards, Dalvi says.

Some transport links for the project, which covers north Kent, east London and south Essex, are already in place, such as the Jubilee Tube line extension. Meanwhile the A316 is being refurbished, the Thames Gateway bridge has got the green light from Transport for London and the Channel Tunnel Rail Link will be completed in 2007.

The current version of the Thames Gateway began life in 1991 when a government report investigated the development capacity of the east Thames corridor.

To exploit this, councils, developers and development agencies formed three partnerships in 1999: Thames Gateway London, North Kent and South Essex.

The next step is the establishment of urban development corporations, one in Thurrock, Essex, and one for sites on the river. Infrastructure, of course, will be a key part of the plans.

Source

Housing Today