Thames Gateway plans face revision

Building magazine reported that Europe's largest regeneration project has been 'thrown into confusion' after housing minister Yvette Cooper ordered an emergency rewrite of the Thames Gateway plan.

Last year Ministers had promised that a fully costed plan, to build 160,000 homes on a 40-mile area of land east of London, would be ready for pubication at next week's Thames Gateway Forum. Now Building says staff have been drafted in to the Government's Thames Gateway Delivery Unit to begin a rewrite after Cooper decided it wasn't good enough.

The magazine quoted a senior source on the project as saying: "It has been a fiasco. Yvette is unhappy. The plans from a week ago had to be torn up." The source added that Su Bonfanti, a senior communities department official, has been ordered to complete the rewrite.

Meanwhile, Construction News said contractors are rounding on the Government for failing to formulate a coherent plan for the area. It quoted Civil Engineering Contractors Association chairman Peter Andrews as saying: "The whole enterprise lacks the joined up thinking that is needed to realise infrastructure should go in before the homes and jobs can be created.

"It also lacks the delivery systems necessary to succeed and the leadership and vision from Government to make sure that the Gateway is an inspiration for future generations and not another Dome."

The news follows the Public Accounts Committee's (PAC) criticism last week of the Department of for Communities and Local Government's ability to manage the project, which it said risked putting off private sector investors.

Contracts Journal (CJ) reported that the DCLG was warned by PAC that the enterprise risked "ending in another public spending calamity". The department has already spent £673m on the project since 2003 without a proper budget being set. It also warned that the government's target of building 160,000 homes in the area could be missed by 65,000 unless the rate of building increased, said CJ.