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Thames Life Thames Life aims to create positive spaces and opportunities for resident empowerment and wellbeing!

Whose story of Barking Riverside is being told?After continued opposition to the proposed development of riverside flats...
12/10/2026

Whose story of Barking Riverside is being told?

After continued opposition to the proposed development of riverside flats along Barking Riverside’s natural Footpath 47, concerns raised by local groups including Ripple Effect Group, Barking and Dagenham Heritage Conservation, and Butterfly Conservation Essex have now been joined by another important voice, the Ramblers Association.

The Ramblers are Britain’s largest walking charity, working to protect the places where people walk, improve access to nature, and defend the rights of communities to enjoy and connect with green spaces.

The story of Barking Riverside is often presented through the language of:

Art.
Heritage.
Nature.
Community.

All of these are positive things.

But when these activities are funded by a developer, residents are entitled to ask harder questions.

Why are Drum and Point being moved?

How do the three nearby incinerators, with their associated air quality concerns, fit into the environmental story being presented?

And what happens to Footpath 47, one of the area’s last natural, vehicle-free green corridors along the Thames?

Havering & East London Ramblers have followed this development since 2015. In their objection to planning application 24/01141/OUTALL, they raised serious concerns about Footpath 47, describing it as a rare off-road walking route connecting Renwick Road to Choats Road.

We support artists.
We support community creativity.
We support projects that bring people together.
We support the Ramblers and their work protecting access to nature.

But we do not support positive community activity being used to hide or distract from the environmental and social consequences of development.

Community participation is not community consent.

The question remains:

Whose story of Barking Riverside is being told, and whose voices are being left out?


**Celebrating 9 years of Thames Life and building our future together**We recently marked the 9th birthday of Thames Lif...
12/10/2026

**Celebrating 9 years of Thames Life and building our future together**

We recently marked the 9th birthday of Thames Life Community Development Hub with a special staff and trustee away day at the beautiful Valence House.

It was a day of reflection, connection and imagination as our team came together to look back at our journey, celebrate what we have achieved, and explore where we want to go next.

We were joined by **Jump In Puddles**, a B Corp certified innovation and change consultancy founded by Barking born and bred Janine Chandler.

Using the LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® methodology, we built, shared and explored our strategic direction together. This powerful approach helps uncover different perspectives, reveal subconscious ways of thinking, and create space for deeper conversations that might not always emerge through traditional planning methods.

Through building, storytelling and listening to each other’s ideas, we were able to see our organisation from new angles and strengthen our shared understanding of the future we want to create.

Nine years of Thames Life has been built on community, collaboration and the belief that people coming together can create meaningful change.

And who would have thought that one of the ways we would discover our next strategic steps as an organisation would be through LEGO play?

How cool is that?




Looks kind of built up already but there's tens of thousands more flats to come. Planning expert Duncan Bowie has quest...
07/10/2026

Looks kind of built up already but there's tens of thousands more flats to come. Planning expert Duncan Bowie has questioned the development model behind Barking Riverside. His argument is essentially that the model doesn’t work.

Very high housing density is being concentrated in a relatively isolated location, without the transport, jobs, social infrastructure and services needed to support a community on that scale. The original transport assumptions changed, yet the drive for density remained.

Bowie argues that Barking Riverside could instead have provided genuinely affordable family homes, including three-bedroom homes with gardens, at a more appropriate density and with proper infrastructure.

The issue isn’t whether we need new homes. We do.

The question is whether it makes sense to keep building more and more homes according to a development model that was flawed from the outset. And saddle the community with the responsibility to make it work once the developer circus leaves sometime around 2045 or probably beyond

Something about this diagram / picture - it is describing how the public sector with its sometimes jagged teeth bears do...
07/10/2026

Something about this diagram / picture - it is describing how the public sector with its sometimes jagged teeth bears down from the clouds and sky - down on to the community (pictured as grounded in the earth), with forums and networks in between - and all of this is seen as a being like a dance! a socio-eco dance in fact

Come one, come allThis Saturday at the Barking Food Forest🫶🏾Let's repair and celebrate together
06/10/2026

Come one, come all
This Saturday at the Barking Food Forest🫶🏾
Let's repair and celebrate together

Join the monthly planning forum online coming Wednesday
02/10/2026

Join the monthly planning forum online coming Wednesday

We mentioned how last week Michael Ball from Just Space walked us through the Mayor's London Plan at our housing justice...
23/09/2026

We mentioned how last week Michael Ball from Just Space walked us through the Mayor's London Plan at our housing justice meeting and one thing was clear: when communities organise and push back, profit-driven developer plans can be overridden.

This is our chance to shape the place we live in. Community-led planning that keeps residents and our green spaces at the heart of it, not an afterthought.

What you can do:
📝 Respond to the London Plan consultation by 15 Oct — does it make sense? Does it meet the Good Growth objectives? Is your lived experience evidence of its wisdom, or a work of fiction?
🏘️ Embed yourselves in the Council's Characterisation study
🗺️ Develop and use your own alternative community-led plan





📣 Come to the Just Space conference!

Sat 3rd Oct, 10am–2pm (lunch included) @ Cruciform Building, Gower Street, WC1
🚇 Euston Square / Warren Street
🔗 https://justspace.org.uk

Will you take a moment to support a community crowdfunding campaign led by Thames Life to help local people prepare for ...
23/09/2026

Will you take a moment to support a community crowdfunding campaign led by Thames Life to help local people prepare for heatwaves, flooding and extreme weather?
The British Red Cross has identified Barking & Dagenham as a priority area, and every donation unlocks match funding by London Resilience team and Aviva, helping your contribution go even further. Together, we're raising £5,000 for practical, resident-led resilience projects.
Together, we can make Barking & Dagenham more resilient.

Your donation supports practical, resident-led projects that help local people prepare for climate emergencies. Every contribution also unlocks match funding so your impact is doubled. Small donation. Big impact.



https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/climate-ready-barking-dagenham

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Bastable Avenue
Barking
IG110FU

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