Three Games Monitor romantics paid a visit to the ODA Planning Decisions Team office in Burford Road, Stratford on St Valentine’s Day. We wanted to view the new Olympic Planning Application which is contained in 53 document folders containing hundreds of individual documents, plans, drawings, etc, numbering in excess of 10,000 pages (these were still being uploaded on to the website when this article was first written). It is difficult to determine the exact number of documents from the website as many refer to different aspects of the application. The documents should soon be available to the general public in a set of dvds at a cost of £25 plus postage and packaging or in hard copy at a purchase price of £500.

We were shown into a kind of short corridor the size of a walk-in cupboard, with a couple of bookcases, a small table, two chairs and a small counter on one wall. Another planning Valentino was already studying a set of documents when we arrived.

ODA PDT staff were helpful if slightly embarrassed by the short, narrow space we were jammed into. We were told that originally this area was supposed to include a neighbouring corridor but this had been disallowed on health and safety grounds. No other rooms were available.

The new design certainly had its own health and safety problems. The table was too small to properly accommodate anything more than a couple of documents and we and the other visitor had to manoeuvre past each other or the staff to reach the files in the two bookcases. There might even be a danger of visitors or staff poking each other in the eye with files or injuring one another on the corners of the table. In the interests of safety perhaps this miniscule facility should be closed down by the same health and safety officers and merged with the corridor thus eliminating the consultation space altogether! We had a discussion with staff about the possibility of placing another table in the front lobby although this would not fundamentally alter the situation.

Members of the public will have about a month, until 19th March, to study the multitude of documents and present their objections, although they should continue to send in comments even after that closing date as these will still be made available to the ODA planning committee. The ODA, who have made the application along with the LDA, have been working on this latest application since June 2006, when they made their second revision to the original plans and are, of course, very familiar with the issues.

Just in case you are confused let me explain the ODA is divided in two, the planning decisions section and the application section which are two separate entities. However, the ODA planning committee, part of the planning decisions section, includes two members of the ODA Board, part of the application section, along with four councillors from the Olympic Boroughs all of which are signed up to the Olympics, plus a group of five other committee members who are described as ‘independent’.

The five ‘independent’ committee members, as described on the London 2012 website, are a director of a major construction company who is involved in a masterplan-led scheme adjacent to the 2002 Commonwealth Games stadium in Manchester; a former Hackney Councillor and Planning sub-Committee Chair; a former London Local Authority Chief Executive and director of a consultancy company; Swindon’s Deputy Chief Executive who was involved in setting up the Bristol Development Corporation; and a Board member of the London Thames Gateway Development Corporation who was formerly employed by the London Docklands Development Corporation.

We were told that, as of now, the planning decisions team has seven members, a team leader, two deputies and four planning officers. The ODA and LDA, henceforth known jointly as LODA (see article 'A Who's Who of 2012 organisations), on the other hand, employ several hundred staff. These seven officers will present a report on the application which will include details of objections. As yet they have not received their own dvds although they do have hard copies. The application will also be made available to the general public in central libraries in Hackney, Newham, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest. However, viewing conditions will be similar to Burford Road as no special facilities will be laid on.

LODA have made much of their consultation with the public. Of course this consultation has included strong messages of support for the Olympics as can be seen on the London 2012 website and blog. When asked, at one consultation, why the Olympics shouldn’t simply be based at a permanent site in Greece the consulting chair replied that this was not a matter for discussion as he wanted the consulted to focus on how to make these Games a success! The cupboard sized consultation space provided for the public to view the application certainly bears out this ambition! What need of objections in the march towards a successful Olympics?