The tower next door: will infrastructure keep up with new neighbourhoods on the Isle of Dogs?
Developers want London’s lonely island to become a residential hub but locals are sceptical about growing the concrete jungle before infrastructure is ready
On August 26th 2024, One Canada Square, Canary Wharf’s iconic pyramid-topped skyscraper, celebrated its 33rd birthday. Meanwhile, two East London tower blocks went up in flames. Our collective memory turned immediately to 2017’s Grenfell disaster, the spectre of smoke that still hangs over the housing system.
Thankfully, no injuries were reported as a result of the two fires on August 26th. There are clear parallels with Grenfell; one of the buildings, Spectrum House, in Dagenham, was completed around the same time as Grenfell in the 1970s, and was in the process of having flammable cladding removed, a process that began after Grenfell burned.
The other burning building, Blackwall’s Charrington Tower, was completed the year Grenfell was destroyed. From the outside, it has much more in common with One Canada Square. Its sleek modern design and gleaming glass panels are quintessential Canary Wharf. One Canada Square was London’s tallest building when it rose in 1991 and now Charrington is one of its tallest residential towers.
Spectrum House and Charrington Tower also have plenty in common. Both are part of the East London redevelopment rush that began with offices in the 1980s and has shifted to residential builds in its attempt to address London’s housing crisis whilst making a profit. Spectrum is an office-to-residential conversion. Charrington is one of the new skyscrapers taking over the Isle of Dogs which replicate the look of Canary Wharf’s towers but substitute homes for offices.
Déjà vu
For many Isle of Dogs locals, the recent fires confirmed their worst fears of where development could lead. As we have already pointed out in this series, residents are not anti-development; they are worried about unsustainable development that ignores the island’s resource shortfall. One Isle of Dogs resident Mira Patel voiced her concerns after the Charrington Tower fire:
‘Tower Hamlets should be funding a new tall ladder for the borough given how many high-rise buildings there are,’ Patel said in a Facebook post. ‘Unbelievable that they don’t take fire safety seriously. They’ve had the S106 money for New Providence Wharf a long time ago!’
Andrew Wood, a former councillor and now Chair of the Isle of Dogs Neighbourhood Planning Forum, shares Patel’s concern that the government is yet to provide the London Fire Brigade (LFB) with enough equipment to tackle with high-rise fires, especially given the number of tall blocks planned for the island. The LFB currently has three 64-metre tall ladders, two of which were donated by a charity. Charrington Tower is 136m tall.
In March 2024, the government passed a new law requiring all buildings over 18 metres high to have at least two publicly accessible staircases. This slowed down developments on the Isle of Dogs, and will hopefully help protect residents when the buildings go up. Yet the fact that this law is so new underscores the lack of attention paid to fire safety until recently.
Charrington Tower is not the remnant of a bygone era in which safety was an afterthought. It is a new, luxurious development, yet this is the second time a fire has broken out in this development. Another building at New Providence Wharf caught fire in May 2021 due to flammable cladding. There was a dispute over whether or not leaseholders would pay for the cladding’s replacement – not unlike what residents on the nearby Barley Mow Estate have faced, after learning their council block required structural work to continue to be habitable. The Landmark Pinnacle, situated on the Isle of Dogs’ west side, is Europe’s tallest residential building. Like many older (and shorter) council blocks, the 75-storey tower has a single staircase. The problems of luxury and social housing continue to blur.
From residents’ point of view, if either private property developers or the council fail to step up service delivery to the island as it is now, they can forget about being able to handle the influx of residents they are proposing.
Why buildings are getting taller
Isle of Dogs residents know that developers see their neighbourhood as a treasure island. In our series so far, we’ve focused on the potential impact of new developments on social housing. However, when you ask people living in the area, their concerns go beyond gentrification.
People are not completely pessimistic, and as our previous stories mentioned, the community is proactive when it comes to voicing their concerns. Still, people are haunted by the ghosts of buildings to come. If all the residential projects currently slated for the island go ahead, the area south of Canary Wharf will probably look much more like Canary Wharf – or at least, its skyline will. More towers, more storeys and more people – that is the plan.
Residential development is focused on high-rise towers for the obvious reason that you can fit more people into them without needing a large plot of land. Given that the number of rough sleepers has risen by 61 per cent in the last decade, this sounds like a great idea. If only it were that simple.
On paper, the Isle of Dogs is a desirable place to live, especially compared to 40 years ago before Canary Wharf arrived along with shopping malls and improved transport. Now mostly privately owned many people hope to make money from the business which is to be developed on the island.
The buildings will be tall enough to accommodate the increased population and meet affordable housing requirements – but that doesn’t mean that the buildings are there primarily to offer affordable housing. Indeed, the height of the buildings is being pushed to the limit so that affordable housing quotas don’t detract too much from the developer’s profit margin gained mostly from the 65% of market-rate housing.
Expansion without infrastructure
To grasp the scale of population growth intended for the island, we totalled the number of new residential units currently under construction or seeking planning approval from ten key developments.
These include Ballymore’s Cuba Street project, plus two neighbouring towers at 30 and 56-58 Marsh Wall, a co-living complex at 54 Mastmaker Road, the regeneration of the Barkantine, St John’s and Kingsbridge estates, the Westferry Printworks conversion, the Crossharbour Asda redevelopment and the CWG’s Wood Wharf.
If completed, these projects will add more than 11,700 new homes to the Isle of Dogs. If you assume each home brings one new resident (and most are bound to bring more, as this figure includes homes with multiple bedrooms), the Isle of Dogs would see its current population of 54,000 (based on the latest census data) grow by at least 20 per cent in the next decade.
Andrew Wood is doubtful the island’s infrastructure will hold up to this growth unless service delivery significantly improves.
‘They love to cram new buildings onto the Isle of Dogs, but there is no collective picture as to how this will work,’ Wood told Poplar LDN.
‘There’s a game of chicken going on as to who will provide electricity to a queue of new developments. They’re demolishing the petrol station next to Asda. The Council is now on its fourth attempt to build South Quay Bridge.’
Speaking of Asda, it’s the only large supermarket on the island ‘for those of us whose budget doesn’t extend to Waitrose’, as one local Facebook user put it. The store is likely to close for several years of redevelopment, which will see it rebuilt on a smaller scale and partially replaced by flats.
The private sector’s interest in the island has become a double-edged sword, with the council relying on corporations to provide public services. When projects stall or companies fail to deliver, the council still does not take the lead, Wood said.
‘Historically Tower Hamlets Council didn’t have to worry about attracting developers, so there’s a lack of investment from the local government and the Mayor of London. They talk the good talk, but never deliver.’
Wood is among the multiple residents who mentioned a litter problem, mainly south and east of Canary Wharf. They’re also concerned about basic service provision. The island’s police station was sold to a private buyer in 2022. In an ironic twist of fate, Met officers were called to their former base a few months later, when they discovered it was being used to grow cannabis.
Build-and-run
Locals keep returning to one simple request: fix the island’s infrastructural problems first, then build more residential units. Paurav Chudasama, who lives on the island with his wife, told us:
‘All of these new construction sites should be stopped. Look at the facilities for the existing residents first, prioritise them, and then decide what should be allowed. The roads are in terrible condition… There are no shops…the GPs are already overflooded… It’s all just going from bad to worse,’ Chudasama said. ‘I’m not saying we should have lots of police stations, but crime has risen [since the station was sold]. Now if I make a call I don’t know when the next police car will be coming.’
The problem with relying on private developers to deliver community infrastructure, Chudasama suggested, is the fact that their interests don’t lie in improving the area for locals. ‘The problem is they are going to be business-minded and business-oriented. Once they’ve sold the houses, they move out.’
Section 106 (S106) agreements or Council Infrastructure Levy (CIL) payments are supposed to ensure that development also brings infrastructure, but many times, they’ve failed to do so on the island.
The Westferry Printworks development, which was approved on August 29 2024 after eight years of controversy, is a good example. The original application included a new secondary school as one of the key public benefits and was approved in 2016. The school was delayed when the developers resubmitted a proposal with more luxury flats and taller towers. Despite promising to build the school by 2022, the developers refused to sign the lease to the Department of Education that would allow it to be built. Andrew Wood explained this to the Council’s Strategic Development Committee before they voted on the latest proposal.
The developers have promised the school will be complete by 1 September 2027. But after the lease is signed, the developers and the Council hand over responsibility to the Department of Education, and therefore can deflect the blame for any further delays.
The whole debacle highlights how the council is treading a tightrope by relying on the private sector to fill gaps in community infrastructure. The Westferry Printworks will also include a police base, according to the developers, though they are yet to provide any further details.
‘We as the residents are being trapped,’ Chudasama said. His words capture the frustration of many residents who see their island unable to progress, with improved infrastructure hinging on additional development. They see the queue of developments headed for the island, all of which are much taller than they would be if they only provided affordable housing.
The claustrophobia is more intense for residents like Chudasama who live quite literally in the shadow of the towers. Chudasama’s wife is a RIBA-trained architect who designed their home on the island to be a tranquil retreat. Though more than willing to invest in the property, which has become something of a community hub for their neighbours, the Chudasamas have discovered they cannot install solar panels, as the surrounding high-rises have reduced the daylight the property receives. He also said trees continue to be cut down across the island, with promises of replanting never fulfilled.
Unwanted treasure
This highlights one of the great ironies of developing the island; for those who want to be here and can afford to pay more for the privilege, it is still not up to scratch. The turbulent construction landscape means it is still not as desirable as more established neighbourhoods elsewhere in the borough. Living near so many high-rises inevitably affects the feel of the neighbourhood, and whilst community spirit remains, buyers on the high end of the market remain unconvinced by the concrete jungle.
Andrew Wood has noticed a downturn in foreign investment post-Brexit. He also said poor management of public areas is turning off investors who visit sales offices. The developer Ballymore has an office next to a neglected section of the dockside. Wood suspects investors see the litter and question whether the island is worth their money.
‘The for-sale market traditionally is very much based on people from overseas coming to buy investment property – that market has gone away. In 2015 people would queue through the night to buy a development on the Isle of Dogs,’ Wood told us. ‘A lot of people used to buy site unseen. Anyone who visits the area now won’t want to buy here.’
Kieran McCartney, who works as a Sales Consultant at the nearby Rubicon Estate Agents, explained: ‘The rental yields at the moment aren’t stacking up, which is why investors aren’t coming to play.’
Instead of selling units to owners who will rent them out, developers are relying largely on the rental market directly – mirroring the shift to rental which the team behind Balfron Tower made after failing to sell a single unit in the regenerated building.
The profile of those purchasing flats, McCartney said, skews younger and more transient.
‘There are a lot of first-time buyers in the area. A lot of them would have rented in the area when they first got their jobs up in London in the financial sector, Canary Wharf or the City because the transport links here are so good,’ he told us. ‘They then meet someone, buy a bigger property, have a baby and then tend to move out of the area after that.’
New developments are not banking on people building families here. They provide the glossy private gym, the chic high-rise, and the perfectly contained public (or private) garden. Dull but essential additions like petrol stations, schools and fire ladders take a back seat.
If the fires at Spectrum House and Charrington Tower reveal anything, it is that too often, infrastructure is neglected until it is too late. It’s also easier to ignore shortcomings in areas growing as rapidly as East London. Despite building and fire safety laws tightening up in recent years, locals on the Isle of Dogs remain concerned that development will outrun infrastructure. If the Council continues to rely on new developments to supply essential public services, residents will remain in a dangerous limbo, and the Isle of Dogs will be on course to symbolise the consequences of placing profit before people.
- Article 1: Isle of Dogs: The history of a lone wolf forever searching for its pack
- Article 2: Homes versus high-rises: Will Isle of Dogs’ affordable housing survive?
- Article 3: Meet the underdogs fighting to stay on the Isle of Dogs, East London’s island of opportunity
- Article 4: Keys to paradise: Will the Isle of Dogs escape gentrification?
- Article 5: The tower next door: will infrastructure keep up with new neighbourhoods on the Isle of Dogs?
- Article 6: Permanently in progress: the future of Canary Wharf and the Isle of Dogs