Ebbsfleet
Key facts
- Led by Ebbsfleet Development Corporation.
- Up to 15,000 homes and 30,000 new jobs.
- Brownfield sites.
- Timeline: completion by 2035, with rapid growth of up to 11,000 homes by 2026.
- Region: South East.
Ebbsfleet’s vision
Ebbsfleet Garden City, will be a Healthy New Town of 33,000 new residents and up to 30,000 new jobs, embracing the existing communities of Swanscombe and Northfleet. The Garden City will create 7 major City parks and deliver a strong blue and green infrastructure to support healthier lifestyles. The development is focussed around 4 strategic sites; Ebbsfleet Central (to include Ebbsfleet International Station, 4,000 homes and a health employment focus); Eastern Quarry (will include over 6,000 new homes across 2 new villages); Northfleet Riverside (will re-open public access to the Thames and include a new linear park); and Swanscombe Peninsula (will include a new park and is the site of a proposed new theme park).
The development sites are sandwiched between the River Thames and the North Kent greenbelt ‘where London meets the Garden of England’ on the Highspeed1 trainline. Adjacent to existing urban areas with significant health inequalities, the new development will provide an attractive environment that promotes active and sustainable healthy living. Will deliver new models of care, built around people not organisations, and will embrace the third sector and local community networks creating opportunities for co-located services that support strong multi-generational communities.
Priorities
Improving overall Quality of life indices by 10% by 2021 including:
- Reducing childhood and young adult obesity.
- Improving healthy eating adults.
- Improving access to green space and water for everyone.
- Reducing incidences of Diabetes related hospitalisations.
- Reducing health inequalities across and between neighbourhoods.
- Delivering new and refreshed health services which put local people in control of managing their health.
- Delivering new homes that allow residents to live independently.
- Delivering an accessible and inclusive blue and green infrastructure that promotes healthy lifestyles.
- Promoting and sustaining a vibrant civic life which fosters community activity and cohesion.
What have Ebbsfleet done so far?
- Strategic partnership developed consisting of the key founding organisations. Developed a strategic business case for the delivery of an innovative Health, Education Innovation Quarter as the focus of employment at Ebbsfleet Central.
- Baseline of healthcare service usage of new Garden City occupants completed.
- Quality of life baseline data established enabling programme development to focus on the most important issues facing our communities.
- Incepted the Edible Ebbsfleet community food growing project to deliver widespread food growing across Northfleet.
- Launched the Digital Movement Project that utilises personal fitness devices to encourage greater physical activity among Garden City residents and workers. The Project will also provide GPS data on movement and usage, to inform EDC investment in major city parks, green spaces, walking and cycling routes.
What do Ebbsfleet plan to do in the future?
- Deliver the design concepts and business case for the development and delivery of the Health Education and Innovation Quarter.
- Deliver an international landscape design challenge to stimulate creativity in the use and design of the built environment to encourage healthier lifestyles at a range of scales.
- Act as a co-lead on the community engagement collaborative.
- Inclusive growth and community leadership: in partnership with Barking HNT, research and test evidence and good practice in ‘inclusive growth’, ensuring benefits extend to new and neighbouring communities.
- Support the local community to establish the community led Healthy Lifestyle Café in Northfleet.
- Developing HNT Principles to be embedded within EDC Planning processes, Implementation Framework, Corporate Plan, Business Plan and Programme Management.
- Developing the Ebbsfleet Garden City Kite Mark in partnership with targeted developers and landowners to help define the principles of a 21st century healthy garden city.