Hackney’s Nightingale Estate in 1980. Credit: Alan Denney (Flickr)

Hackney Council has accepted proposals for the development of 400 new homes on Hackney’s Nightingale Estate.

The £200 million construction will start in 2017 with the aim to complete the build by 2020. This is part of Hackney’s 2,760 home estate regeneration programme, which aims to provide a mix of homes for social rent, shared ownership and private sale across the borough.

The council has stated the “regeneration is resident led” and the sales of homes in the new Nightingale development will pay for the development of more council housing in Hackney.

Councillor Philip Glanville, acting mayor of Hackney, said: “Our ambitious regeneration programme will build thousands of new homes across Hackney to ease the capital’s housing crisis – with more than half of them genuinely affordable for local families.”

The Nightingale Estate was built in 1968 next to Hackney Downs and originally consisted of six, 22-storey tower blocks. By the 1990s the estate was in disrepair and Hackney council demolished most of the buildings. Now just one of the original tower blocks remains. Since the demolition several hundred new homes have been built on the site and this latest phase of building should complete the regeneration of the estate.

The Nightingale homes have remained popular with local residents. In a recent survey, 94 per cent of residents were satisfied with the estate as a place to live, but 48 per cent said that they would like to move because their current home is too small. The new development will allow these residents to remain in the area.