Olympics 2012: Regeneration Legacy — House of Lords, 2015-11-05
Topic: Mixed Topics
Elizabeth Deirdre Doocey (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I remember going to the site that was to become the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park just after we had won the bid to host the Games and feeling completely overwhelmed by the enormity of the task ahead of the organisers. I need not have worried, because they exceeded all our expectations and provided world-class facilities on time and within budget—a spectacular achievement. Since the Games, a team of largely unknown people has also worked tirelessly in the background to ensure a lasting legacy. We owe them our gratitude. I too pay tribute to the fantastic work that has been done by the noble Lord, Lord Mawson As the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, said, participation in sport is sadly declining again. But sport was never meant to be the prime political motivation for bidding to be the host city. Winning the Games was, as the then mayor Ken Livingstone put it, "the only way to get billions of pounds out of the Government to develop the East End" After a century of decline and decades of successive Governments’ ambivalence to the plight of those people, billions of pounds were poured into the East End—and what a difference they have made. They have transformed a blighted post-industrial desert into a blooming 560-acre park enjoyed by 8 million visitors to date Despite the fears of the doomsayers, there are precious few white elephants on the site. The press and broadcast centre has found anchor tenants and a legacy use as a state-of-the-art digital campus. The velopark, aquatics centre and Copper Box have been successfully transformed for long-term sporting use, while the stadium is well on its way to providing a new home for West Ham United—albeit at a hefty conversion cost to the taxpayer. Next month, the Lee Valley Hockey and Tennis Centre will host the Wheelchair Tennis Masters, bringing together the world’s elite wheelchair tennis players for their end-of-season final. Both the venue and the fact that four British players have qualified for the event amply demonstrate the legacy benefits of accessible and affordable sporting facilities in the heart of the East End that can also host world-class events The careful pricing of access to those venues in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park may have gone some way to allay the suspicion expressed to me before the Games by a young man at a nearby youth club. He said, "When this is all over, everything will go to the toffs and we will be left looking through the window". Those suspicions cannot be dismissed when it comes to housing and jobs, without which a new swimming pool, cycle track and tennis courts are of little use. We were promised that the most enduring legacy of the Olympics would be the regeneration of an entire community for, "the direct benefit of everyone who lives there" Yet the promises made in the bid document presented to the IOC in Singapore have already been undercut. The original pledge that 50% of new housing in the park would be affordable homes for rent and sale was initially downgraded to 35%. As the noble Lord, Lord Harris, has just said, it has now been downgraded even further to 31%. So new homes are being built and the athletes’ village converted into rental apartments, but precious few of them will be within the grasp of local residents In East Village—the new name for the athletes’ village—the cheapest available two-bedroom apartment costs £430 a week. That is the entire net median household income in Newham. At £575 per week, a three-bedroom apartment costs more than the median household income in the surrounding boroughs of Hackney, Tower Hamlets, Waltham Forest and Newham. A local family with two children might reasonably conclude that they have more chance of winning gold at the Rio Games than affording an apartment in the Olympic park My second concern is jobs for local people. They were promised that they would get "many" of the 10,000 new jobs originally forecast to arrive in the area. That loose definition should have been a clue to the vagueness of the promise and the paucity of data collected to measure its delivery. The bid pledged to transform the lives of long-term local residents—the people who had had to put up with years of disruption while the area was being prepared for the Olympics. Yet people are being counted as local at the moment, regardless of how long they have lived in the area—all they need to do is to provide a local address. This is not what was promised Similarly, it is difficult to see how the original target of getting 70,000 previously unemployed people into jobs can be measured because there is no system whatsoever in place to collect data about the long-term unemployed. A suspicious mind might suggest this lack of enthusiasm to measure success indicates an expectation of failure. If some of the badly-needed homes planned for the park are to come within the reach of existing local residents, they must have access to, and training for, those new jobs that will be based in and around the park Like the young man I met at the youth club, my fear has long been that the legacy of the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games might well be a fantastic, vibrant new quarter for London, but one which gleamed like a prosperous oasis in the midst of a deprived desert. We cannot and must not allow that to happen. I know that the London Legacy Development Corporation and local government in all the growth boroughs will strive hard to ensure that regeneration brings real benefit to local people. However, they must be long-term local people, not people who have just moved into the area to get a very nice house on their doorstep Delivering the promises made to the people of east London will be not a marathon but a triathlon. Success requires that the next Mayor of London and the Government remain sharply focused on the finish line so that the long-term residents of the area are not left outside, looking in.