Thames Gateway - Profile

Profile

The area accommodates around 1.6 million people and contains some of the most deprived wards in the country, characterised by lack of access to public transport, services, employment and affordable quality housing. Its boundary was drawn to capture the riverside strip that formerly hosted many land extensive industries, serving London and the South East, whose decline has left a legacy of large scale dereliction and contaminated land, such as around Tilbury.

The area of brownfield land, farmland and marsh has been seen by successive governments and planners as having potential to act as a catalyst for the regeneration and growth and for the social advancement of the area, helping to alleviate some of the growth pressures on London and the South East. The government also believes that new private sector housing will reduce house price inflation. However, parts of the area are already densely populated with little scope for housing developments: Southend-on-Sea, for example, is the eighth most densely-populated district in the country outside London and further expansion is not possible owing to the river at the south, and its position in a conurbation that stretches almost to London already