Written evidence submitted by Eastway
Users' Group
Our Group is concerned to ensure the re-provision
of an amenity on a site that had designated status as Metropolitan
Open Land solely because of its London-wide importance to cycle
sport. Eastway Cycle Circuit was built on a landfill site in 1975
to provide a one-mile traffic-free road circuit and it later also
became the venue for the country's largest weekly mountainbike
cross-country race series. With time-trial, road racing and mountainbike
cross-country, we already had a facility where a large cadre of
people from all backgrounds and age-groups taking part in three
Olympic sport disciplines on a site in Inner E London. We seek
to protect the people who voluntarily take part in and organise
such events throughout the Olympic developments and beyond into
legacy.
It is our Group that took the loss of amenity
before the Planning Inquiry into the Olympic Park land assembly.
In order for us to withdraw our objection to the compulsory purchase
the LDA eventually proposed it could offer a proper relocation
to a Crown Estate site that we located in Redbridge.
Initially there was to be no offer of relocation,
so we secured that as of right in the planning conditions. Later
when an entirely inappropriate site came to be proposed we raised
our objections and found a suitable site.
To conclude the process, we signed the legal
agreement binding the developer to this suitable relocation and
we subsequently negotiated the provision of an interim facility
when the site could not be prepared in time. However, we still
lost two seasons of racing and suffered the displacement of events
before the relocation belatedly opened in 2008. so it is evident
that the planning process was not protecting our interests as
well as it might have done. Having to go through all the stress
induced by the planning process shows the developer did not make
anything easy for us although it got exactly what it wanted when
it took possession of the site in October 2006.
This history makes us very concerned to ensure
the Olympic Legacy for our sport disciplines is absolutely defined
and that the necessary funds for its legacy-time development are
protected from any re-evaluation of the budgets and spending on
Olympic Legacy within the relevant planning zones.
We have lately spent over two years in many
detailed meetings with the developer, the Games company and their
architects to bring an acceptable plan for the Velopark into being.
We were horrified when we first saw the plans for legacy and to
their credit LOCOG, LDA and the ODA took our views on-board in
order to make their plans more sustainable. This resulted in a
plan of which we can approve, subject now only to the detailed
planning of the off-road elements such that the Olympic Sport
of Mountainbike Cross-country will again be possible on the site.
We also found the backing of the site's prospective
operator, the Lee Valley Regional Park Authority (LVRPA) which
has consistently engaged with our Group's approach because it
reflects the reality of promoting cycle sport events and running
cycle clubs—activities in which our membership is actively
engaged.
[In reading the most recent evidence presented
by the LVRPA I have had cause to query the wording of a clause
in the Authority's memorandum in which it states: "19. The
velodrome replaces the Authority's Eastway Cycle Circuit, built
in the 1970s which had reached the end of its working life."—I
am advised the Authority intended to put the word "Velopark
instead of "velodrome; but you would be advised to check
with the author.]
Our Group would welcome further questions from
or engagement with your Committee where the matter of Olympic
Legacy and provision for cycle sport is concerned. Since the development
got going, since the London Games and the Olympic Lands Assembly
have become a reality we have seen many other interests and priorities
seeking to over-write the history of the site. It is as if the
protection for our sport of Metropolitan Open Land, or as if the
prior planning conditions to ensure we receive a legacy had never
existed.
We welcome the currently published plans for
the Olympic Legacy and would like to see them delivered in full
as a worthy reinstatement of Eastway Cycle Circuit that we had
to give up in order to make way for the Olympic Park.
March 2010
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