The UK’s first garden city in a century is expected to expand by nearly £1bn worth of new homes
Major housebuilders are nurturing Ebbsfleet’s roots with some of the biggest land buys since the project’s inception.
Countryside Properties, Clarion Housing Group and Barratt Homes have done a deal to secure land for 2,900 homes from landowner Henley Camland – which has taken over the sites from original owner Landsec.
The cost of the land is understood to be just under £300m to the housebuilders – with the finalised value of the sites nearing £1bn.
Billed as the UK’s first garden city in a century – and intended to alleviate the housing shortage in the South East – the Ebbsfleet project has seen a slow start – of the 15,000 homes planned for the site, only around 805 have been completed.
The latest land buys take in an area called Eastern Quarry – one of the three main ‘villages’ at Ebbsfleet – where three new schools, shops and community facilities are also planned.
Countryside is already developing an additional 800 homes at another site within the wider development, while this will be Barratt’s fourth site purchase at Ebbsfleet.
Henley Camland will market the rest of the land it owns in the coming months.
