Spotlight on Rainham Village
Total Investment: £44.5m
New homes: 101
Commercial space: 4003 sq m
New jobs: 89
Developer:
Rainham Village: expressions of interest
Lamson Rd: LTGDC
A new bus rail interchange at Rainham Village has been the engine for regeneration and re-inventing village life.
East of Barking and Dagenham and meeting the Thames and Bexley at its southern boundary, Havering is London’s far east. Known for its main shopping district at Romford and prosperous residential settlements in Hornchurch and Upminster, the story of suburban contentment and growth changes dramatically at Rainham Village.
A historic village recorded in the Doomsday book, Rainham Village’s best days seemed behind it. Unsurprisingly there was a lack of ownership for the Village. The neighbouring Tesco’s store was a typical out of town development whose main road circumvented the Village in order to establish better in routes. This sapped vitality out of the struggling Village centre with life for local shop front businesses becoming even more precarious.
A victim of fragmented development from the construction of the A113 and channel tunnel rail link compounded matters and impacted negatively on the Village. ‘These pieces of important regional transport infrastructure unfortunately separated Rainham from Havering and provided a considerable basis for the areas decline,’ commented LTGDC’s Senior Development Manager Andrew Atkins. A low value economic base and with council wards recording the highest levels of social deprivation completed the picture. But with historic land marks like Rainham Hall and St Helen and St Giles Church plus access to Rainham Marshes – one of the oldest marshlands unchanged since Medieval times – the Village had assets readily at hand that could be used to breathe fresh life.
LTGDC and partners LB Havering wanted to bring Rainham Village back from the brink. The basis for its renewal was the exploitation of readily available assets to establish a visible heart to the Village that would encourage pedestrian movement, provide a spur to businesses that were still holding on and make the infrastructure meet local community needs – not the other way round.
Rainham developments
The realisation that the vision for the Village would become a reality came after LTGDC secured Community Infrastructure Funds (CIF) to build a new transport interchange at Rainham Station. CIF funds are hotly contested and secured by beating off competition from rival schemes across the UK. A key criteria for success is to show that the infrastructure schemes planned will have a real benefit to communities beyond the infrastructure itself. The interchange scheme was the axis on which key LTGDC interventions would roll out. The interchange creation would see a link up with bus and train modes at Rainham Station, and crucially, rid the Village centre of the inconvenience of bus bays overshadowing the major cultural assets. ‘They were a real eyesore and their presence was actually undermining the character of the Village,’ said Atkins.
Putting the picturesque setting of the Village on full display has prompted Havering Council to target funds to the area to encourage businesses to transform their shop fronts to make them more in keeping with a traditional Village look and complementing neighbouring Rainham Hall. The 18th century house is getting a new lease of life with the National Trust now investing to restore the historic landscape garden that surrounds it.
The new interchange has enabled the construction of a new two storey library, lifelong learning centre, café and community facility and over 800 square metres of public open space to replace the existing library. ‘Rainham Village is a conservation area but the old library was probably one of the worst buildings in the Village. It will now be the site for new residential units and designs will be in keeping with the surrounds.’ With traditionally low levels of educational attainment in London Riverside the need to put learning infrastructure in place to garner the skills and qualifications to succeed is a major priority.
Revealing the hidden treasure of the Village and making its assets work to arrest decline was one community benefit of the Interchange scheme. The other was to use the improved transport links to support the expansion of skills training for the area. Strategic acquisition of land to the east of the Village by LTGDC will see Havering College’s new £34million building & construction skills campus that will train over 3,000 students across the region and fill a vital skills gap. The remainder of the site will be used for 50 new residential units.
Rainham Marshes
To exploit the environmental assets of the area provided by Rainham Marshes was the third objective. Leading a consortium of interested parties LTGDC funded the construction of marsh and woodland walks, visitor amenities and foot and cycle paths linking Rainham to Purfleet with the aim of bringing to life 645 hectares of park and wetland to become a major visitor destination. A marshland discovery centre now welcomes 5,000 school children and 50,000 families each year since opening in 2009.
Rainham is making a break from its past and the future is bright. Heading west, the A1306 (that skirts the Village in the north) unfolds like a corridor of opportunity for developers who now get the message that Rainham is on the up. A recent planning consent will see a major residential development by Weston Homes at Dover’s corner of 729 units. Award winning architect Alison Brooks chose Rainham to showcase her innovative conception of business units with a striking colour scheme built to a ‘very good’ BREAM rating which is raising the bar of standards and ambitions for businesses in the area. And at Beam Reach Tesco’s are building a flagship logistics centre with the potential to create 3,652 jobs.
Wildspace Warehouse – Lamson Rd
