Boris Johnson has hailed the regeneration of a once notorious Erith housing estate while denying Bexley is the forgotten borough for transport.
On a visit to Erith Park yesterday, site of the former Larner Road estate, the Mayor of London praised the value of the scheme’s 343 new homes as "incredible".
An average three-bedroom shared ownership house in the development costs £240,000, with the homes sitting alongside properties for rent and outright sale.
The Mayor admires the view from one of the three-bedroom homes.
Erith Park developers Wates Living Space and housing association Orbit South have benefited from £23 million of funding for the project from the Mayor’s affordable housing fund.
Mr Johnson said: "If you think about it the value is incredible. We are half an hour from London Bridge.
"All a family has to do is put down a deposit of about £12,000 and then pay a steady but very low rent and they become part owners of property in London.
"I think it’s absolutely right that we should do this and make sure great London homes are available to all Londoners."
A newly-built street at Erith Park.
Boris speaks to the cameras.
The Mayor was given a tour of the site by developers Orbit South.
Proposals for a London orbital rail route are also unlikely to become reality until at least 2050.
Mr Johnson said: "Don’t forget you’ve got Crossrail coming in to Abbey Wood.
"We are building new river crossings and the new tunnel will be in at Silvertown by 2020.
"You’ve got to balance things with the need to preserve some of the character of life in Bexley and we wouldn’t want to see it turned into a too dense metropolitan area.
"Bexley has got to maintain its beautiful suburban quality."
Orbit regeneration manager Caroline Field said: "Larner Road was the last place you wanted to live in Erith.
"If your kids misbehaved you would say ‘you’re going to live in Larner Road’.
"Nobody wanted to visit their friends there but we want to make it sought after."
Left to right: Darren Hamilton, 28, Phillip Hamilton, 60, Sharon Hamilton, 53, and new neighbour Jamie Morland, 34.
The Hamilton family (pictured) were getting ready to move in to a three-bedroom, three-storey home today (January 6) after 18 years in a Larner Road maisonette.
Carer and grandmother-of-four Sharon Hamilton, 53, said: "It will be lovely. I will miss my maisonette because it has a lot of memories but I’m happy to be moving here.
"Here you don’t have to get up and down three flights of stairs with no lift, like we did before."
How part ownership works
Part owners at Erith Park purchase around 40 per cent of their homes, with a mortgage from Orbit, and pay rent on the rest.
If they want they can aim to gradually buy the home outright, with rental costs on the remaining proportion of the property they don’t own going down as the part they do own grows bigger.
Households with net incomes of between £30,000 and £44,000 a year can apply.
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