Greenwich Council has agreed a funding deal to buy 156 new council homes at Royal Arsenal Riverside in Woolwich and Kidbrooke Village, with the first homes due to be completed in 2029. The agreement with the Greater London Authority and developer Berkeley will bring social rent housing into both regeneration schemes.
The purchase will be paid for through a combination of GLA grant and the council’s own resources. That arrangement gives Berkeley certainty to proceed with construction, while securing the homes for people on Greenwich’s housing register rather than for private sale.
The homes form part of Greenwich Builds, the council’s programme to create 1,750 new social rent homes. Council leader Anthony Okereke said the programme had already delivered more than 1,000 new council homes. The latest agreement adds a further purchase across two sites where all the homes already have full planning consent.
Homes across both sites
At Royal Arsenal Riverside, 90 homes will be delivered in a nine-storey building beside a new park. Designed by PRP Architects, the building is scheduled for completion in 2029. This is the earlier of the completion dates set out for the purchases.
The remaining 66 homes will be at Kidbrooke Village, in an eight-storey building next to Cator Park. That building, designed by Cowen+Partners, is due to be completed in 2030. The timetable means the full group of homes will become available in stages, rather than arriving together.
Across the purchase, there will be 73 three-bedroom homes, 66 two-bedroom homes and 17 one-bedroom homes. The mix gives the council properties of different sizes to let through its housing register, with three-bedroom homes making up the largest share.
That range matters because housing need is not simply a question of the total number of properties available. Households need homes suited to their size. The larger properties included in this deal will provide options for households needing more bedrooms, alongside smaller homes for those whose requirements are different.
Funding the purchase
The agreement brings together the council as buyer, the GLA as a grant funder and Berkeley as developer. Combining grant with council resources allows Greenwich to secure the properties while providing the developer with the certainty needed to move construction forward.
Full planning consent is already in place for all the homes. The funding deal therefore concerns developments with permission to proceed, rather than proposals still awaiting a planning decision. Construction and completion remain the next practical stages before the properties can be let.
Buying homes within regeneration developments is a route through which a London council can increase its social rent stock. In this case, Greenwich is securing council homes within the Woolwich and Kidbrooke schemes, rather than relying solely on homes built through separate council-led developments.
The practical importance is the prospect of permanent housing for people who need a council home, including households currently in temporary accommodation. The properties will be let to people on the housing register from 2029, although the completion schedule places the Kidbrooke homes later, in 2030.
New homes and existing estates
The purchase sits within a wider programme of housing investment. Alongside the Greenwich Builds target, Okereke said the borough was spending £430 million on transforming older council homes and estates. That work concerns the homes already occupied by council tenants, as well as the neighbourhoods around them.
New construction and improvements to existing stock address different parts of the council’s housing responsibilities. The additional homes will increase the supply available for letting, while spending on older properties is directed towards the condition of homes and estates already in use.
For households waiting on the register, the immediate significance of the agreement is that funding and planning consent are in place. The next step is construction, with the Woolwich building due to be completed in 2029 and the Kidbrooke building in 2030, bringing the new homes into use in stages.
