City Hall becomes active developer with £100m equity investment in 7,000-home Silvertown development

The mayor of London has announced a £100m equity investment in a major regeneration scheme in London as City Hall becomes an active developer for the first time.

The Greater London Authority (GLA) will take a 50% stake in the Silvertown Partnership alongside Lendlease and deliver 7,000 new homes on the site of the Royal Docks, in Newham, east London. Around 1,000 of the new homes are expected to be under construction by 2028.

The investment is the first under Sadiq Khan’s new ‘City Hall Developer’ initiative, which he says is influenced by a “Singapore-style” approach to housing delivery.

It is designed to intervene in London’s land market “to maximise affordable housing delivery and accelerate the speed of building, rather than solely funding or supporting third parties”. The initiative is backed by £2bn in grant from government and low-interest loans at 0.1% interest.

A GLA spokesperson said: “The model draws on the way many new homes are built in Singapore which has seen strong government involvement in housing for decades, with the state responsible for building around 80 per cent of homes and owning the vast majority of land.

“This approach has enabled sustained, large-scale delivery of housing and integrated urban development supported by long-term public investment.”

A revised masterplan to regenerate the long-dormant Silvertown site was signed off by Newham council in December, to deliver 7,000 homes, 1,800 of which are for affordable tenures. The 60-acre site is owed by GLA Land and Property.

The first phase of development is delivering 1,032 homes, with more than half of those affordable. The Guinness Partnership welcomed the first residents on site earlier this year. Work is underway to deliver a total of 7 million square feet of residential, commercial and public space.

More broadly, the Mayor plans to build more than 36,000 new homes and create 55,000 new jobs across the Royal Docks as a whole.

Earlier this year, Khan announced that his new City Hall Developer Investment Fund (CHDIF) is making £1.5bn available in very low-cost interest loans for housing associations, helping to accelerate the construction of new, affordable and social housing across the capital. It brings the fund’s total investment to £1.82bn, close to City Hall’s £2bn ambition.

Khan said: “This is a new era for housebuilding in London, with City Hall investing directly in new homes, unblocking stalled sites and speeding up development.”