They are some of the last to be built under Barking and Dagenham Council’s ten-year housebuilding programme, reports Nick Clark, Local Democracy Reporter
More than 380 new council-owned ‘affordable’ homes have been completed in Barking and Dagenham.
The homes will be some of the last to be built under Barking and Dagenham Council’s ten-year housebuilding programme.
Labour council leader Dominic Twomey said: “Bringing more affordable homes to Barking and Dagenham has been a longstanding priority of ours and I’m pleased to see over 380 completed in the borough recently.”
Of the 386 new homes, 334 are at the Gascoigne East estate in Barking and 52 at Beam Park in Dagenham.
They were built through the council’s wholly-owned private regeneration company Be First and will be managed by its private housing company B&D Reside.
Their completion means that the council has built more than 2,900 homes of a planned 3,600 through Be First.
Be First says the remaining homes are set to be finished over the next two years.
It comes after council leaders agreed last year to wind down the regeneration programme it started through Be First in 2016, as debt mounts and returns diminish.
The council has borrowed over £1billion to fund Be First’s regeneration projects through a programme known as its Investment and Acquisition Strategy (IAS).
It says the money it would earn back in rent would be enough to pay off the debt and interest, as well as provide extra funding for council services.
However, rising construction costs and interest rates, coupled with development delays, mean the investments have recently started to deliver less income than the council had hoped.
The council revealed last month that the IAS strategy was £10.4million over budget by the end of last year, which it covered using reserve money set aside to manage IAS shortfalls.
It has since told the Local Democracy Reporting Service it expects the homes it has built to start delivering surplus income for the council once the final ones have been completed.
Council leaders agreed last year not to build any more homes through the IAS than those already planned. Any further projects will instead be done in partnership with private developers.
Cllr Twomey added: “There’s a real lack of housing across the capital and it’s great that Barking and Dagenham is leading the way in completing the high-quality, affordable homes that people need.”
