London: More than 3,000 homes are to be built at the eastern edge of Canary Wharf after Tower Hamlets council gave the green light for the project, the first extension to the financial district since the banking crisis struck in 2008.

Canary Wharf Group, which is majority-owned by Songbird Estates, has been granted planning permission to build 30 new buildings, comprising 4.9m sq ft of homes, offices and shops, at Wood Wharf, east of the existing Canary Wharf estate. Its centrepiece is a cylindrical residential skyscraper on the most south westerly corner of the site, designed by Herzog de Meuron, the Swiss architects behind Tate Modern (including its extension which is being built at the moment) and the “Bird’s Nest” Olympic stadium in Beijing. About a quarter of homes will be earmarked for affordable housing, built around nine acres (3.6 hectares) of parks and public squares, including hundreds of metres of dockside paths.

Developers have been rushing to build more luxury homes in London to exploit booming property prices, with Canary Wharf Group just starting construction of its first residential building in the financial district, the 58-storey Newfoundland tower (nicknamed the Diamond tower) with 566 apartments, which is due to be completed in 2018.

More than 100,000 workers commute to Canary Wharf, which opened in the early 1990s, each work day. Sir George Iacobescu, chief executive of Canary Wharf Group, reckons the eastern extension will almost double the number of people working and living in the area within the next ten years.

Work on the Wood Wharf site is expected to start this autumn with the first buildings occupied at the end of 2018, to coincide with the arrival of Crossrail, which will run east-west across London.

Shops and cafes

Homes at Wood Wharf will range from park-side town houses to a selection of towers. The new area will also include offices targeted at the creative media, technology and telecom sector, with a 420-place primary school, an NHS medical centre, a hotel and more than 100 shops, restaurants and cafes.

The project, the biggest in the developer’s pipeline, is expected to create more than 17,000 jobs during its construction, ranging from architects and planners to electricians, with 3,500 earmarked for local residents. Canary Wharf Group paid £90 million (Dh563 million) to buy outright control of the Wood Wharf site two years ago from its joint venture partners Waterways and Ballymore.

Canary Wharf is home to the global headquarters of Barclays and HSBC, and the London headquarters of US investment banks JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley. It will lose the Financial Conduct Authority, which is moving to Stratford by 2018.

Venturing beyond the Docklands, Canary Wharf Group, whose parent Songbird is part-owned by Qatar Holding, the investment arm of the Gulf state, is also revamping London’s South Bank around the Shell Centre tower in partnership with Qatari Diar, the state’s property investment company.