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What can an Olympic Park development tell us about the future of London regeneration?
As London’s development landscape falters, Places for People is pushing forward with the next stage of its Eastwick + Sweetwater development on the edge of the Olympic Park. Jess McCabe reports
As London’s development landscape falters, Places for People is pushing forward with the next stage of its Eastwick + Sweetwater development on the edge of the Olympic Park. Jess McCabe reports #UKhousingIf you go and visit the new V&A East Storehouse museum in Stratford, one of the first things you will see is part of the façade of the old Robin Hood housing estate, lovingly installed in the new museum. You can even see inside one of the maisonettes, with its mid-century decor preserved down to light switches and wallpaper.
But Inside Housing has come to see what’s on the other side of the street: the partially complete Eastwick + Sweetwater project. It is being developed by Places for People (PfP) and will ultimately deliver around 1,800 homes.
The development, a joint venture between the housing association and Balfour Beatty’s investment arm, is just one of the projects that makes up the vast regeneration of east London that started after the 2012 Olympic Games. More than a decade after the Olympics finished, the area has transformed – but work is still very much “in progress”.
As part of Inside Housing’s Spotlight on Regeneration series, we wanted to take a look at the project, and find out more about Places for People’s Greater London development team – a new division with major projects in the pipeline at a time when government is desperate to unfreeze development in the capital.
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Eastwick + Sweetwater may be half-built, but it has already become something of an exemplar. Inside Housing tagged along to a tour organised for a delegation of urban planning professionals from Malaysia, who had travelled to the UK to learn about development and placemaking.
“I wanted you to come somewhere to see, ‘what can urban renewal look like?’” says Dr Gemma Burgess, a housing academic from Cambridge University, who is conducting the tour as part of a collaboration between the university and the Malaysian government. “This is a flagship regeneration site, this is land that’s been redeemed. It’s a long timescale.”
As Dr Burgess explains, this is a project delivered by public-private partnership, which includes public space and community facilities as well as housing, all of which are unfamiliar to the Malaysian policymakers looking around (they also ask a lot of questions about how shared ownership works).
“We’re really trying where we can to continue the momentum... and progress on the sites that that we’ve already got, while also looking to grow our pipeline at the same time”
The Eastwick + Sweetwater project is being built in three phases. Phase one was completed in 2021, and residents have moved in. It is made up of 302 homes, 130 of which are taken by Places for People. Most – 112 – are shared ownership, with nine social rent and nine affordable rent. Another 105 homes are for private rent, and 67 are open market sale.
All this is being built on public land, owned by the London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC), set up by the mayor of London in 2012, to lead on the regeneration of the former Olympic site. Grant funding is coming from the Greater London Authority (GLA), but Homes England has also extended a loan facility to make this possible.
The second phase is 210 homes and reached practical completion in February of this year – 165 for open market sale and 45 London Affordable Rent.
“It’s a challenging project, it’s complex,” says Samantha Steele, managing director for Greater London at Places for People, speaking on Teams later.
Eastwick + Sweetwater has been designed around communal spaces and to create a street life – it has a rather fancy dog groomer, a nursery and a coffee shop.
The location has a lot to recommend it, sandwiched between a prestigious new museum and the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. The development will also sit alongside and has helped fund Waterden Green, a “hangout” space in the park, which is being designed specifically for teenage girls, who tend to be under-served in London’s green spaces.
This project is made up of low-rise blocks, and there has been an effort to integrate the development into the street and make it approachable. A row of 15 townhouses looks directly out onto the new park, and it’s not surprising to hear on the tour that that they sold out immediately off-plan (these were priced from about £1m for a three-bedroom house).
The delegation, with me trailing along behind, goes into one of the spacious show homes. More than 300 of the total homes had been finished on the day of Inside Housing’s visit.
Near to the development is Hackney Bridge, a cluster of five buildings stuffed with food vendors, artist studios and shared office space, alongside public space. This ‘meanwhile’ development is slated to last 12 years, before the site is turned into more housing. Places for People sees Hackney Bridge as a way to attract interest in the area, while the neighbourhood is being built.
Hackney Bridge has been developed by Make/Shift, the same company behind the popular Pop Brixton project and Peckham Levels in south London. Pop Brixton, which involves repurposed shipping containers, has been in place for more than 10 years, so successful as a meanwhile project that it draws a million visitors a year.
I first spoke to Ms Steele about the project last summer. “We’ve got construction activity at a time where it is really difficult, and we’re currently out there selling in the market,” she said at the time, as we chatted over Teams.
“We’re really trying where we can to continue the momentum... and progress on the sites that that we’ve already got, while also looking to grow our pipeline at the same time.”
London’s housebuilding slump
At that time, PfP – like many in the housing sector – was in a hopeful frame of mind, despite headlines already popping up about development stalling in London. The government that had more or less delivered the housing sector’s wishlist on housing delivery, the global economy looked like it was improving, and there were widespread expectations of interest rate cuts.
At that point, Eastwick + Sweetwater seemed like a harbinger of better times to come, at least in housing development.
Of course, that was before the Iran conflict, and its ensuing economic fall-out.
A few weeks ago, we had another Teams call to update on how things have been going. On Eastwick + Sweetwater, PfP has decided to go ahead with phase three – the biggest phase of the project, with 411 homes.
“We want to continue demonstrating our commitment to the park. It’s a brilliant scheme down there. There’s lots to be proud of. It’s the right thing to do to continue with the next phase,” Ms Steele says, though she does seem a bit tense.
“It’s a big decision for us as a business,” she notes. “We obviously have to reassess the investment decision.”
How about the impact of London’s development problems on PfP’s broader pipeline? “It’s really challenging,” Ms Steele replies.
“London was practically ground to a halt. So, yes, of course it has made us kind of pause and reflect and rethink. But there is an appetite to be part of the solution for London. We’re working closely with the GLA, we’ve got just over 1,000 new homes at the moment which are either under construction, in legals or in planning, so there is a good pipeline there.”
The emergency measures introduced in London are a positive for PfP, she adds. Starts on new homes plunged from nearly 26,000 in 2022-23 to less than 2,500 the next year, as high construction costs, high interest rates and building regulations have combined with a slow housing market.
In an attempt to restart development, the GLA and central government have intervened with two packages of measures. These include a fast-track planning service for projects delivering at least 20% affordable housing on private land, and some grant funding for affordable homes, among other policies.
Last week, the GLA revealed that the number of starts on site for affordable homes delivered under its programme is up 135% in 2024-25. Separately, the number of starts on site on council homes funded by the body also almost tripled. While this is a huge jump, the total number was 9,366 homes, which is still well under the GLA’s target of about 18,000-19,000 starts.
Making the most of merging
The crunch in London development came at a time when Places for People was just setting up its new division to focus on development in the capital, which Ms Steele leads.
“The emergency measures that have been announced are positive for us in establishing a new London region,” Ms Steele says. The new Greater London region was set up as a result of PfP’s merger with Origin Housing in 2024, which has involved folding in the organisation’s London development pipeline.
“The first colleagues that [were] integrated [into] PfP came into my team,” Ms Steele adds. “You know, ‘no pressure Sammy, this needs to go well’.” Fifteen of Origin’s staff joined an existing PfP team of 35, bringing Ms Steele’s total team to 50.
“My main focus initially was, how do I make it as smooth for these people as possible? How do I make them feel as welcome as possible? Put myself in their shoes. What would I want joining a new business when I’ve... not made the choice to join that new business?”
Origin’s development pipeline (which was much more focused on Section 106 development than PfP) and team have now had a chance to settle, and the remaining projects are being built out.
“I’ve never done it before, going through a merger process,” Ms Steele says. “But actually, we’ve merged with a business who are very similar [in] outlook and ethos to PfP, which has really helped to smooth the way.”
The creation of the new regional department wasn’t just about the merger, though. When we first started speaking for this story last year, Ms Steele said that “setting up the new region hopefully helps to demonstrate commitment to the city”.
She added: “It’s just doing what we can in the environment that we’re currently facing.”
Ms Steele and her team are also working on some other high-profile developments. One example is the Camden Film Partnership project in Kentish Town. An application has gone in for the masterplan for this £1bn project, to add a huge film and TV production studio, as well as a visitor attraction along the lines of the Harry Potter Experience at Warner Bros. Studio.
“We’re very close to placing the first contract for a big piece of infrastructure. So that’s a really exciting one. It’s been in the process for, I’m not joking, 20 years”
The project will also add 485 new homes, of which 50% will be affordable – this is where PfP comes in. Of these, 60% will be either social rent or London Affordable Rent.
“Having residents living in such close proximity to a film studio needs some really careful planning, which we’re in the middle of doing at the moment,” Ms Steele says.
Another project is just outside London in Hertfordshire – the Gilston new town. Or, as the Guardian described it recently, “a network of seven interconnected villages”. PfP will be building 8,500 homes.
“We’re very close to placing the first contract for a big piece of infrastructure. So that’s a really exciting one. It’s been in the process for, I’m not joking, 20 years,” Ms Steele says.
The project is only likely to be fully completed in 2050. Talking to the Guardian about Gilston earlier this year, PfP’s chief executive Greg Reed said “we’re going to be in that community... as a steward for decades to come”.
To go back to Eastwick + Sweetwater, the first preparatory work is now being done on phase three. Ms Steele calls this the “chunky phase” of the project, and it will be a mix of affordable, open market sale and privately rented homes (Places for People wasn’t able to give an exact breakdown).
“We are really keen to continue demonstrating the commitment,” Ms Steele says.
Ms Steele’s team is “just lining up all of those arrangements so that we can financially close the main contract, and properly get onto site”. That should happen this summer.
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