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Barking Riverside has been in the making for eight years now. To date, the new east London neighbourhood has welcomed 7,000 residents but it has ambitions to become home to many, many thousands more. Now, it’s been given the green light to make those ambitions a reality.
Barking Riverside Limited (BRL) has now been granted planning permission by the local council to build up to 20,000 more new homes for up to 50,000 more people. The approved proposals also includes two new public parks, an additional health facility, up to three more schools, two new community centres, enhanced riverfront access and environmental protection and improved walking and cycling infrastructure.
So far, more than 3,000 homes have been completed in the neighbourhood and hundreds more are currently under construction. Once everything’s been built, there will be a total of 4,000 affordable homes available.
Outline plans for Barking Riverside were approved back in 2018, but more detailed plans have had to be approved in phases. The detailed proposals for the 20,000 homes were submitted back in 2024, in what was the UK’s largest application for a single site.
There are already five schools, two community hubs, cycling and walking routes and several green spaces in Barking Riverside. The project also delivered a new Overground station along the Suffragette line and an Uber Boat by Thames Clippers pier in 2022.
Creating new environmental habitats has been one of the big priorities in the development project. Thus far, it has resulted in one of London’s largest water vole populations and established bat, bird and reptile species in the area.
Tom Copley, the deputy mayor for housing and residential development called Barking Riverside ‘one of the most significant and exciting housing developments not just in London but anywhere in the UK’. He said: ‘It is a fantastic example of a major brownfield regeneration, supported by City Hall and partners, which is delivering for the local community in this vibrant part of east London.’
When the plans for the tens of thousands of homes were submitted in 2024, London mayor Sadiq Khan called Barking Riverside an ‘inspiring model of how to fix our housing crisis’ and ‘a blueprint for how the next generation of English new towns could work’.
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