In brief:
- 359 homes planned on the old Siemens factory site next to the Thames Barrier, keeping some of the old buildings. Only 12 homes will be for people on the housing waiting list.
- The Faraday Works plans were first submitted in 2019 but were held up when a key building was listed and have now been revised again.
- It is part of plans to redevelop the Charlton riverside, but councillors may object to the scheme because of the lack of "affordable" housing
Plans for over 350 flats on the site of a long-closed factory by the River Thames look to be back on, four and a half years after the proposal was first submitted.
But with just a handful of those homes currently set to go to those on Greenwich’s housing waiting list, the developer may face a battle to convince Greenwich councillors to go ahead with the scheme, with no date yet set for a decision.
Landsec U+I wants to build 359 homes at the old Siemens telecommunications works just east of the Thames Barrier, on the Charlton-Woolwich border. The factory was one of the biggest local employers for more than a century until it closed in 1968, later becoming an industrial estate.
The Faraday Works development, which would be in the northwest corner of the old factory site, would also include offices and industrial space to attract 830 jobs, and historic buildings such as the derelict wire factory to the north of the site would be retained and refurbished. Two new 10-storey blocks would be built.
LandSec-U+I hopes the mixture of industry and housing will emulate Caxton Works, a development across the Thames in Canning Town that U+I – which merged with LandSec in 2022 – completed six years ago. The two projects share an architectural firm, Studio Egret West.
When U+I first submitted its plans in 2019, it included nearly 500 homes with 35 per cent “affordable” housing on the site – a catch-all term ranging from social rent to shared ownership. One of the new blocks would have been 13 storeys tall.
But one building that had been earmarked for demolition – 37 Bowater Road, a large block facing Barrier Gardens – was later listed by Historic England.
Retaining that building – and adding three floors to the top – came at a heavy cost to the thousands on Greenwich’s waiting list. In 2021, new plans were submitted for 374 homes, cutting the proportion of “affordable” homes to 4 per cent, with just 11 homes going to those on the waiting list.
The latest plans – which take into account design alterations and changes to fire regulations since the Grenfell Tower disaster – show a slight increase, with 12 homes reserved for those on the waiting list, at London Affordable Rent, about half market rents. Another four homes would be at London Living Rent – about one third of average local incomes.
This takes the proportion of “affordable” homes to 4.4 per cent – well below Greenwich’s target of 35 per cent.
With 28,000 households on its waiting list, Greenwich councillors will face a dilemma – to approve a largely private development to secure the refurbishment of a historic site, or to hold out for more affordable-rent homes.
The Charlton riverside is an area the council has long wanted to see regenerated, but it has struggled, in part because – unlike the Royal Arsenal or Greenwich Peninsula – there is no one major landowner in the area to deal with.
To complicate matters, the communities secretary Michael Gove is breathing down Greenwich’s neck as part of the government’s pushback against London mayor Sadiq Khan’s policies for the capital.
He has said he wants to see the area redeveloped quickly as part of his “Docklands 2.0” idea – and has said he will send a planning “super squad” into Greenwich to speed up decisions. He made that announcement the day before the mayoral election campaign started, leaving councils and City Hall unable to officially respond in public.
If Greenwich refuses the Faraday Works scheme it could go to appeal and be passed by Gove, who has intervened in a number of planning decisions in the capital in recent years.
The coming general election may mean that Gove is out of a job before a decision is made on Faraday Works, but the quandary over whether to approve it will not go away.
One potential solution could be for the council to step in and buy some of the homes itself — as it did nearby on the old Morris Walk Estate and upriver at Greenwich Millennium Village — which would change the calculations on “affordable” housing in a direction that councillors would be more comfortable with. Whether that happens, or another solution is found, remains to be seen.
LandSec-U+I is also behind plans to redevelop Lewisham Shopping Centre. Last year it sold Morden Wharf in Greenwich to another developer, Galliard, which was originally involved with Faraday Works but pulled out in 2021.
LandSec-U+I told The Greenwich Wire: “LandsecU+I is making minor changes to the existing planning application following comments from the council’s planning team, and recent changes to building regulations. No date for a committee has been set as yet.”
Full documents can be found on the Greenwich Council planning website.
The Greenwich Wire has compiled the design and access statement – which covers most of the main points – into one document to make it easier to read.
Updated at 11.30am on Wednesday to include comment from the developer.
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