Thames Gateway 'calamity' feared

Plans to build 160,000 new homes and create 180,000 new jobs in the South East are at risk of becoming an expensive disaster, MPs have warned.

The Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) has failed to properly manage the regeneration of the Thames Gateway, leaving private sector partners concerned about the future of the project, according to the Commons public accounts committee.

The government, which has already spent £673m on the scheme, hopes the development of the 40-mile stretch between Canary Wharf and the mouth of the River Thames will add £12bn to the economy by 2016.

But chairman Edward Leigh, speaking as the committee published its report on Thursday, warned that the entire project was at risk because the DCLG is "manifestly not up to the job of managing the enormously ambitious enterprise of regenerating the Thames Gateway region".

"Action must be taken now to prevent the enterprise ending in another public spending calamity," he warned.

But a spokesman for the DCLG said the report "is already out of date". "We simply do not recognise many of the suggestions in the report," he insisted.

Review

The MPs' report, which follows a highly critical review by the National Audit Office, found that the scheme was made up of disjointed projects rather than a coherent programme.

Failure to motivate partners, a lack of co-ordinated objectives and progress measures were all putting the programme at risk.

Leigh said the department had not yet established the "basic arrangements for controlling the programme including – incredibly – a budget".

The Thames Gateway would need the full co-operation of a number of Whitehall departments, the report added, but Leigh warned that the DCLG - "like a small child clamouring for the attention of its bigger classmates" - lacked the influence to make this happen.

The committee has told the department it must produce a properly costed plan and target marketing at potential private investors, employers and new residents.

Its report warned: "Without significant improvement in the overall management of the programme it will remain a series of disjointed projects and is unlikely to achieve its potential to make a major difference to economic regeneration and sustainable housing."

Reaction

However the DCLG insisted that cross-government action is being taken to deliver the scheme.

"It is baffling that the report should propose handing over the Gateway to the Homes and Communities Agency, which won't actually exist for two years," the spokesman added.

"We don't believe this would help short-term delivery."

The spokesman insisted: "In the last 12 months alone, government investment and intervention have delivered major progress, with the opening of two international stations on the High Speed Rail Link, agreement on
Crossrail which will substantially benefit Canary Wharf and Woolwich and major progress on the Olympic developments and at Stratford.

"These, alongside the new port at London Gateway, are the very projects that the Thames Gateway partners identified as the major drivers for regeneration and investment.

"The government has never believed that a top-down centralised structure is right for the Gateway.

"This is an area the size of Yorkshire with dozens of individual towns and communities.

"In order to make sure that new development is properly sustainable and fits with what local communities want, it is right that councils and local agencies should be a major part of this process.

"Following the recent spending review, we will shortly be publishing our Delivery Plan for the Gateway in which we will set out fully-costed plans to continue regenerating the area.

"We have clear targets to create 160,000 new homes and 180,000 new jobs by 2016. We are on course to meet, if not exceed, those targets - that is what delivery is about.

"We simply do not recognise many of the suggestions in the report."