Examination of Witnesses (Questions 312
- 319)
TUESDAY 15 JANUARY 2008
MAYOR SIR
ROBIN WALES,
MAYOR JULES
PIPE, COUNCILLOR
DENISE JONES,
COUNCILLOR CLYDE
LOAKES AND
MR PETER
BUNDEY
Chairman: We now move on to the Five
Host Boroughs. Can I welcome, representing them, Sir Robin Wales,
who is the Elected Mayor of the Borough of Newham, Mayor Jules
Pipe, from Hackney, Councillor Jones, the Leader of Tower Hamlets
and Councillor Clyde Loakes, the Leader of Waltham Forest. Representing
Greenwich Leisure, Peter Bundey, the Deputy Managing Director.
I am going to ask Philip Davies to start
Q312 Philip Davies:
How do local people view the prospect of hosting the Olympic Games?
Is it universally popular in your boroughs?
Sir Robin Wales: Yes. I am sorry
it is a short answer, but yes.
Q313 Philip Davies:
We are all for short answers—that is marvellous! What impact,
if any, do you think the Games will have, during the Games, on
your local services and the local infrastructure? Will you be
able to cope?
Sir Robin Wales: As we said in
the submissions, there are clearly issues around the Games. Firstly,
there is a lot of pressure on us. The more we look at the Games,
the larger it becomes and the more opportunities it generates,
and as you look at previous Games I think it is a journey of understanding.
It is much bigger than any of us realised. Obviously, there will
be pressure. We worked with the ODA to put together a joint local
authority team that can give local authority services in the Park,
and we have done very well with the ODA and done some work with
that, but clearly we are going to have to talk to LOCOG in identifying
that. One of the things I would want to particularly stress with
this whole thing is the need to have debates early and actually
opening up the issues of concern, so that those things are widely
debated in public, which we think will, in the end, come to some
sort of resolution. I will say that, at the moment, in the governance
structure we have got in order to enable us to get decisions,
we have about one of the best governance structures on regeneration
and one that involves the boroughs fundamentally, and we think
it is a very good structure. It was a bit of a struggle to get
there but we have got something that we are able to engage with.
So there will be issues. Are they resolved yet? No. Would we expect
them to be resolved yet? No. Do we need to have that debate? Yes.
Q314 Philip Davies:
Have you quantified at all what additional costs, if any, there
will be to your Council Taxpayers to make any changes and do work
in preparation for the Games?
Sir Robin Wales: It is too early
for that yet. We have started to do some of that in terms of the
building work in the Park, and some of the support we have got—so
we have got building control and we have a unified borough approach.
So we have started doing the building work but for the Games it
is too early for that. So that is something that we will be working
through. The answer is we do not know, at the moment. We have
to engage in discussion.
Q315 Philip Davies:
Do you still think, after all that has been totted up, that support
for the Games will be as unanimous as it seems to be at the moment,
in your boroughs?
Sir Robin Wales: I think the thing
we never talk about is just what it is doing for inspiration,
with people. I have to say, for me, it is not about the physical
legacy—the physical legacy is great, smashing—but
if we are talking about getting people involved, if we are talking
about taking what is, in our boroughs, the poorest community,
the largest mass of deprivation in this country, possibly in Europe,
and actually trying to inspire people, that is what, I think,
the Olympics and the Paralympics provides us with. If we do this
right—and we are working hard to get participation; we have
got excitement in the schools and we have got kids getting involved—I
think we will end up with what we have seen in the Commonwealth
Games elsewhere; we can inspire people to do quite different things.
The answer is it is up to us. Will we do it? I do not know. I
think we will but it is a challenge for us. The answer is, yes;
I think when the Games roll into town our people will absolutely
be up for it, and they are now. Although, I would put in a bid
for free tickets from them!
Councillor Loakes: Can I add to
that? Certainly from a Waltham Forest perspective, in December,
66 of my residents got into employment (20% of those were long-term
unemployed), and that is already starting, therefore, to make
a difference to those households in areas of deprivation that
Robin has already alluded to. So we are already beginning to see
the value-added benefits of hosting the Games in 2012 in the here
and now. I would add, on inspiration, record numbers of youngsters
in Waltham Forest and across the five boroughs are now participating
in regular sport—not ad hoc events but regular sport. The
boroughs have been at the forefront of encouraging that. That
is having a snowball effect across through to older groups of
our residents and trying to get them engaged in active participation
in sport because, ultimately, the Games are a sport. It is about
the biggest gig in the world coming to East London, and we will
ensure that we maximise every possible opportunity—milk
it dry—when it comes to all the benefits that we can get
from this.
Mr Pipe: On the point of the additional
costs to the boroughs, since our submission the ODA has put forward
£32 million for the public realm issues in the periphery
of the Park, actually within the boroughs. So the principle has
been set that they acknowledge the costs, and now the debate has
got to move on between the five boroughs, the ODA, LOCOG and everyone
about, say, the regulatory issues that will arise not just during
the Games but, also, in the lead-up and the construction.
Q316 Philip Davies:
In a nutshell, what you are saying is you want all the benefits
of having the Games but none of the costs?
Sir Robin Wales: No, I do not
think we are saying that. If we are going to not develop on greenfield
sites—we are going to have to develop on brown-field sites—there
is a cost to that. We develop across the country; we invest money
in projects across the country. I would not dream of opposing
some of the developments going on. What we are saying is that
given the level of deprivation we have got—I will give you
an interesting fact: we know that the people moving into Newham
are poorer than the people moving out. So, effectively, what we
do is take in poorer people, we work with them, we have over 100
languages at school, we work with these people, we get them in
a position where they are more aspirational and they move out,
and so we import more poverty. We have, in my borough, 18,000
people who have never, ever worked—never, ever worked—in
their lives. The non-employment level in Tower Hamlets is the
lowest in the country, Hackney is the second-lowest and we are
the third-lowest, in Newham. So what I think we are saying is
that the investment that is coming to East London—it is
high time that investment went in. It is going into the poorest
area in this country. So what we are looking to do is maximise
that benefit in two ways. One is the development issue. It is
interesting, one could make an argument that the Olympics is only
the third-largest regeneration scheme in Newham, because we have
Stratford City and we have the Docks, but we are also trying to
inspire people to get them to move into work. So what we have
tried to do is take a substantial investment of public money and
try to transform our population, their expectancy and their aspirations.
At every stop on the District Line between Westminster and Newham,
there is one year less life expectancy. We have to do something
about this. This is a proper investment in an area. It is a massive
task, it is a big investment and we need to try to use it so that
in the future the East End of London will not be the poor place
it is.
Q317 Philip Davies:
Finally, after the Games, in your submission you said that you
had a fear that the desire to generate as much revenue as possible
to repay the Treasury and the Lottery might lead to unacceptable
pressures on the development of the area in an unsustainable way.
I am sure you have just heard the Mayor's Office and the LDA assure
us all that it would all be done in a sustainable way and your
fears are unfounded. Will you be reassured by what they said,
or do you still maintain those same fears?
Sir Robin Wales: I think it is
fair to say that the establishment of the steering group that
we have set up, which Neale Coleman described to you, is a major
step forward involving the boroughs in the legacy. Yes, we have
concerns. We must have concerns at this point, because if we do
not have them we cannot address them. In Canning Town we are currently
in the middle of a £3.4 billion project to knock down and
replace a load of housing that was built after the War. We cannot
allow that to happen again, where we build a load of housing and
then knock it down in 50 years. We need to develop communities.
Our job in the boroughs is to fight to develop those communities
so that they are sustainable in the long term. I think there is
a recognition from all the parties (the ODA, the LDA, particularly
the Mayor of London); they are very keen to make sure that there
is a legacy and that the communities are there. So in the Park
Committee recently, the boroughs suggested having an international
competition to see what we might do with some of the areas afterwards
to generate some employment opportunities, and the Mayor seized
on that with some enthusiasm. It is a challenge to make sure we
work with that, but I will say that if there is pressure put on
to pay money back before we develop those communities, that would
be a mistake. I would urge the Select Committee to be taking a
view that said: "Make this work so we eradicate poverty in
the East End, as far as we can", because in the long term
that will pay more money back in taxes and we will actually pay
back the money that is being invested. However, if we focus on
just the repayments that would be a mistake. There are obviously
going to be debates and we could be here till 2030 debating that,
and that is fine, but we would argue we need to get sustainable
communities because it is cheaper in the long run.
Councillor Jones: I think it would
be fair to say that we won the Games because we have the opportunity
to regenerate this area, which we did not have the opportunity
to do before. So although we see the tremendous opportunity and
we are really excited about it, we are equally excited about the
regeneration of East London. As Robin says, we must not skimp
on it, we must do it properly.
Q318 Chairman:
It is, obviously, encouraging to hear your enthusiasm for the
benefits which, clearly, will come from the Games, but they will
also put additional burdens on your services. Will you be looking
to have some reflection of that in the amount of money you receive
from government in revenue support?
Sir Robin Wales: We always look
for money from the Government. Clearly, it is part of the debate.
Yes, if there are extra costs we are going to want to try and
have discussions—sensible discussions. As Jules has said,
we had a very sensible discussion with the ODA, and as we move
forward people will engage in that debate and will look at the
costs. I am confident that we will find ways forward. However,
we have not got solutions at the moment. One of the things, I
think, that is frustrating in this debate is that we are trying
(Athens did their legacy after the Olympics) to work this through
early, and if we do not have answers it is because we are actually
trying to raise the question so we can find answers. At the moment,
it seems to me that some of those answers are coming forward in
a timely manner. Rightly, we will be raising questions about the
costs during the Games, but we have raised questions about the
costs building up to the Games, and some of that has been answered.
Not fully, as Jules said, but they have established the principle
and we move on and discuss it. We would never, however, any of
us, turn down more money from the Government, and we would encourage
the Government to give us more.
Q319 Mr Hall:
The host boroughs have been very supportive or praiseworthy of
the London Development Agency and the land assembly project, and
over to the Olympic Delivery Authority. Why are you so impressed?
Sir Robin Wales: It was very interesting,
actually. All the publicity was: "We won't build the Games
on time and it will overrun on costs". Funnily enough, the
"We won't build it on time" has begun to disappear because
they were within one week of the target of clearing the site.
That was challenging. We had a housing co-op in Newham that had
to be decanted, we had traveller sites, other people had traveller
sites, we had people on allotments and we have had lots of businesses
and very important businesses—a very, very challenging effort.
After, frankly, some errors at the beginning, it settled down
into quite a well-run operation. There were mistakes made, and
I could recount some, but actually the bottom line is, by and
large, people were got off the site on time with a reasonable
understanding of what we are trying to do. We were very supportive
of that process and worked hard at it. I have to give full credit
to our partners in working on that. The "We won't build the
Games on time" story seems to have disappeared. I am sure
it will come back, but we are on target.
|
