House building grinds to a halt in Thames Gateway

New housing developments in the Thames Gateway will be mothballed until the market picks up, the South East England Development Agency (Seeda) has said.

The government had hoped 52,000 homes would be built in the north Kent area by 2026, but projects are being scrapped.

Chris Crooke, of Countryside Properties, which is developing St Mary’s Island in Chatham, said construction schedules would be reassessed.

“We’ve got the other phases of development that have got planning consent and we are hoping to make a start on those next year, but we will have to assess that at the time,” he told the BBC.

“We run a business, we have to make a profit and if we are not making a profit then we’ll think twice about starting the next phase of development.”

A Seeda spokesman said the pace of development in the Thames Gateway would slow down until the market picked up.

“The plans are there, the land is there, the overall strategy is there but there is going to be some sort of slowdown,” Seeda’s Jeff Alexander told the broadcaster.