The London Wide Initiative (LWI), launched at the Sustainable Communities summit in Manchester, will deliver 4,000 high quality homes on disused brownfield land, half of which will be affordable homes for key workers and first time buyers.

Three development and management partners (DMPs) have been selected to take the initiative forward with English Partnerships – First Base Partnership, Key London Alliance, and Countryside.

The aim of the LWI is to combine high quality design, modern construction methods, cost efficiencies and speed of delivery. With each partner sharing the risks of the development process with English Partnerships and spreading the costs and returns across the portfolio, the LWI should enable a more efficient and cost effective delivery of homes.

Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone announced last week that he would make more sites available to boost the delivery of the First Time Buyers initiative.

“Today’s announcement really kick starts the London Wide Initiative into delivering affordable homes on a greater scale than we have ever seen before. As we move forward the challenge is to make sure that we deliver not only affordable but high quality homes that their owners can be proud of. I am very pleased that we can speed up this initiative by making available more land under my control for new affordable homes,” Mayor Livingstone said.

The first of the areas to be developed will be in the Royal Docks, a few minutes walk from the Docklands’ Light Railway. It will form part of ‘Gallions Approach’, a major development of 2,500 homes with retail and business space.

Each DMP aims to develop a minimum of 1,000 homes as part of the pilot phase of the initiative. Schemes for the first three sites are at an advanced design stage. English Partnerships has so far acquired a mixed portfolio of fifteen sites scross the capital ranging from the former Catford Greyhound Stadium, to Adelaide Wharf in Hackney.

By David Hopkins

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