Living in Barking and Dagenham

Barking and Dagenham stretches along the north bank of the Thames on London's eastern edge, and it has the lowest rents and house prices of any London borough. Its identity was forged by industry and public housing. The Becontree estate, built between the wars, was one of the largest council estates in the world, and Ford's Dagenham works was for decades one of the biggest car plants in Europe, employing tens of thousands of local people.

Barking, in the west, is the borough's main town and transport hub, with the District and Hammersmith & City lines, the Overground and fast c2c trains to Fenchurch Street. Dagenham, further east, is more suburban, served by the District line. Barking Riverside, a large new town on former industrial land beside the Thames, has its own Overground station and river bus pier.

The borough has a young and rapidly changing population, with large African, South Asian and Eastern European communities alongside long-established white working-class families. Green spaces include Barking Park, Mayesbrook Park, Parsloes Park and Eastbrookend Country Park, and the Thames riverside is being opened up as development continues.

For renters, the appeal is space and value: houses with gardens and flats at rents far below inner London, with journey times to the City that can be surprisingly short from Barking itself. The trade-offs are distance from central and west London, fewer amenities and nightlife, and neighbourhoods that are still working through the effects of deindustrialisation. Beyond Barking itself, Dagenham, Becontree and Chadwell Heath are worth a look for anyone whose first priority is the rent: the District line still runs through them, and three-bedroom houses with gardens come up at prices that would barely rent a one-bed flat in Hackney.