Medway lies within the British Government's Thames Gateway growth area and is the largest urban area in the southeast outside of London, with a population of 250,000 people. Earlier this year Rochester Riverside was awarded £42.2m by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, following on from earlier cash awards for the scheme.

The planning vision for Rochester Riverside includes up to 2,000 homes, 7,800m 2of retail space, 12,000m 2for business use, 3,600m 2of live/work floor space, a hotel site, community facilities including a new primary school, open space, landscaping and parking, including a market site, multi-story car park, coach park and riverside walk. A secondary planning application included the preliminary infrastructure work on the new flood wall, land remediation and land raising.

Six months of work is scheduled to commence in mid-October, with Edmund Nuttall undertaking the earth works, remediation and construction of the river wall while Van Oord will dredge some 500,000m 3of material which will be beneficially re-used as fill to raise ground levels for flood protection. Van Oord will deploy the trailing suction hopper dredger HAM 311 as well as two vertical drain rigs to install the 1.8 million metres of vertical drainage the site requires.

Rochester Riverside is the first project to be let as part of the Thames Gateway vision.

Considerable future investment is likely to focus on areas along the River Lee, which was central to London's winning bid for the 2012 Olympics.

MJ Information No: 21008