WALTHAM FOREST: £7.6m boost for borough (From East London and West Essex Guardian Series)

WALTHAM FOREST: £7.6m boost for borough

8:19am Monday 7th April 2008 in

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A £7.6 million pound Government grant will help pay for regeneration across the borough over the next three years.

The boost will pay for the revamping of the Blackhorse Lane area, Walthamstow town centre and support emerging work on what the council calls the North Olympic Fringe.

Most of the money, nearly £7m, will be spent building two new roads which will allow access to industrial areas behind Blackhorse Lane and improve traffic flow by by-passing the junction at Blackhorse Road station.

The council has set aside £700,000 to buy land in the same area, where it hopes to tackle the borough's housing shortage with 2,000 new homes.

It also plans to improve congestion in Walthamstow town centre by pedestrianising one of the bridges over the train line in Hoe Street and changing bus routes from the north of the borough.

Eco-living, the Walthamstow Masterplan and a similar plan for Leyton are also on the cards.

Cabinet member for enterprise and investment, Cllr Terry Wheeler, said the new roads would help open up industrial land which could be used for a mix of housing, commercial and industrial use.

"We're looking at how we can make much better use of the land that's already in the borough. Argyle Way for example is a shambles of 30s and 40s brick built low-rise buildings whereas Orient Way, where businesses were located from the Olympic site, is a much better use of the space."

Cllr Wheeler said the council was very interested in the Thames Water waterworks plant on Walthamstow Marshes and had been talking to the Lea Valley Park Authority and the Waterways board about how the Lea Valley could be improved.

He defended spending half a million pounds on studies and masterplans at the same time as services were being cut.

He said: "Sometimes you've got to set aside money to improve longer term things. If you don't reinvest then things go steadily downhill and while our priority has been on services in recent years we are now able to move on and look at other things."