Brown's £9billion to transform Thames Gateway

Gordon Brown has sought to drive forward the project by instructing several Whitehall departments to chip in.

The long-awaited budget will pay for housing, transport and infrastructure along a 40-mile stretch of the Thames from east London to Kent and Essex.

The project is expected to bring 160,000 new homes and 225,000 jobs to the region by 2016. Almost £1.5 billion will be spent on upgrading eight hospitals and 13 transport schemes will get £100 million between them.

Three universities or colleges will be built and more than £2 billion will go on extra teaching and learning.

More than £850 million will fund 15,000 shared-ownership and social homes and regional development agencies will get £275 million for the environment. Ministers hope the delivery plan will silence critics who have attacked them over the long delay in producing a fullycosted financial package.

The Thames Gateway project, the largest regeneration scheme in western Europe, has swallowed £7billion of taxpayers' money so far and suffered claims of woeful mismanagement.

The Prime Minister was also announcing today:

An expansion of training with 13,500 apprenticeships and 10,000 new college places for local people.

The Thames Gateway will be Britain's first eco-region, with existing homes given a £15 million green makeover. Within the region a new "eco-quarter" will be built, setting up a zero-carbon community.

A "major step-change" in the Thames Gateway public transport network.

Four out of five new homes to be built on brownfield land which would be protected from flooding.

A guarantee that developers would design high-quality homes.

While the money - paid out over the next three years - is not new, it is the first time ministers have set out how the funding from different Whitehall departments, including Health, Transport and Innovation, will be allocated.

Mr Brown's commitment to the region's transport infrastructure is particularly important because without it the private sector, which will pay for most of the house and office building, will not invest.

Housing Minister Yvette Cooper said: "The £9 billion is a substantial commitment to support new jobs, new homes and also the environment in the area."

But the Government will be under pressure to prove it can avoid building soulless dormitory estates with isolated, uninspiring and low-grade housing.

It is estimated that the development will bring in 350,000 new people, swelling the area's population by 22 per cent over the next decade.

The 100,000-hectare project has come under intense scrutiny from MPs, the Government's spending watchdog, and councils. MPs on the Commons public accounts committee warned two weeks ago that it could become a "public spending calamity" if improvements were not made to management. They suggested the Communities Department was "not up to the job".

The National Audit Office warned this year that housebuilding needed to "more than double" in order to meet the 160,000 target for new homes.

Local communities have been concerned that the existing 1.5 million residents will not feel the benefit from the new jobs and public services. Many of the jobs announced will be in the Canary Wharf financial services industry.

Environmentalists have warned of the risk of flooding unless housing projects are properly thought out.