The £160m redevelopment of South Kilburn’s Peel Precinct is a step closer with the council’s naming of two partners.

Countryside, home builders specialising in placemaking and regeneration, has been chosen to deliver the next phase of the South Kilburn Estate regeneration programme along with Home Group, a national housing association.

The Peel development currently has approval for 226 homes but the developers wish to build 308. To build the extra homes planning permission must be approved.

Forty-two of the homes will be for social rent, whether there are 226 or 308, while 79 are earmarked for shared ownership.

The project also includes a health & wellbeing hub featuring a health centre and gym, shops and a new market square will transform the now derelict corner of South Kilburn.

But not everybody is excited about the scheme which sits next to the High-Speed Two vent shaft in nearby Canterbury Road.

Excavation work for the £56bn high-speed train line is due to start at the end of the year - the same time as the Peel Precinct.

Leslie Barson, member of the South Kilburn HS2 Action Group, said it’s a perfect dust storm for those living around it.

She added: “It’s a complete nightmare for people. Can you just imagine building work taking place infront of you and behind you. It’s not just the dust and the noise.

“Some of the roads will be blocked off and all the roads flowing from them will be flooded with lorries coming and going from each development.

“Will residents be consulted on the Peel project road layouts?

“It’s just horrible for people to have to suffer this. Brent Council can’t do anything about HS2, although they could have left it in Queen’s Park where it was originally planned, where it wouldn’t have bothered anyone, where no-one lives or goes to school directly next to it.”

Cllr Shama Tatler, cabinet member for regeneration, highways and planning at Brent Council, said the partnership was “an important step towards the regeneration of the estate and the council’s commitment to deliver much-needed new homes and facilities in the area.”