A new canal-side housing development on the Limehouse Cut has been unveiled as a major element for rejuvenating a large swathe of London’s deprived East End.

A consortium of housing associations and contractors is investing in upgrading the green space and play areas of Poplar’s Bartlett Park with new sports and leisure facilities, as part of the ‘Dockyard’ complex of 150 new homes.

The scheme by East Thames, Telford and Poplar Harca Housing includes a café and a waterside centre giving children canoeing facilities on The Cut.

The Bartlett Park project forms part of East Thames’ wider plans for Tower Hamlets, including £250 million investment in new housing in the last five years.

East Thames started construction in March on the £220 million final phase of regeneration of Stepney’s massive Ocean Estate. Three “poorly-designed” post-war blocks put up in the early 1950s are being demolished to make way for 225 new homes for affordable rent and shared ownership.

It has already completed 800 new homes and transformed the area around Ben Jonson Road, once in the top 10 per cent of the country’s most deprived housing estates.

London Mayor Boris Johnson recently named the revamped estate as “the best new place to live” in his 2015 London Planning awards.

Meanwhile, families on the New Union Wharf estate in the Isle of Dogs move into their new homes in September. They have remained on the estate while an intensive reconstruction operation has been under way, replacing the 189 homes built in the 1970s with 399 new apartments. The second phase of new properties for sale and rent go on the market in 2017.

The regeneration projects across the East End have also created 35 apprenticeships with 55 unemployed people getting construction qualifications.