2012 Legacy Housing Double Counting: ODA admits housing for Athletes' Village 'would have been built anyway'.
Article | 2012 Legacy | Housing | Regeneration
The ODA has had to admit that housing for the Athletes' Village being built at Stratford City, now renamed Stratford 2011, would have been built anyway, making a nonsense of the claims of a Housing Legacy from the Village, see the attached FOI response. To justify its continued insistence that the Village does indeed have a Legacy value the ODA is resorting to the argument that the housing on the Stratford City site would not have been delivered until much later, if it had not been for the Olympics.
This, of course, is impossible to know as plainly the Olympics have interfered with the whole process and economic circumstances have changed with the developing credit crash. The rest of the Stratford City project, its commercial developments and other housing, is supposed to be delivered by 2011. The credit crash may well have delayed the construction of some housing, but this is hardly an argument for the ODA to deploy as this will apply to many projects.
In fact, because of the Olympics, the Village housing will not be available until 2013 at the earliest as it will have to be modified after use for the Games. In addition, as this section of Stratford City's housing has been incorporated into the Athletes' Village, it has become vulnerable to the credit crash, as it has to be delivered by a fixed date, and will require hundreds of millions of pound of public funds to be spent on its construction, which would not have been the case if the housing had been built on a more flexible timetable as part of the Stratford City project.
As the authorities are desperate to incorporate Stratford City into the Olympics, and claim credit for this £4billion redevelopment programme, it has been renamed Stratford 2011 and is now described as being built 'on the back of' the Olympics. It was originally referred to as a free standing project, which was not dependent on London winning the Games. Stratford City includes a large housing component of which the Athletes’ Village is just a part. Its existence as an independent project undermines the claim that the 2012 Games are essential for the regeneration of Stratford.
Neither the ODA nor the LDA have previously admitted that the Athletes’ Village housing legacy claim represents double counting of the same units. It is not surprising, therefore, that the ODA continues to insist there is a Legacy value, even though it has to acknowledge there is no additional housing and, indeed, that the amount of housing being created has actually declined from 4,500 to 3,500 units! Even this claim is disputed as, although the ODA denies it in the FOI response, there are widespread reports that the figure is now 3,300 and possibly only 3,000 new homes. It is likely that, without this interference from the Olympics, Stratford City would have delivered more housing on the Village site than will now be achieved, certainly at less public expense.
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Submitted by Julian Cheyne on Sat, 09/08/2008 - 21:08.
catalyst or interference?
Submitted by Julian Cheyne on Sun, 24/08/2008 - 21:03.
Sorry if my argument wasn't clear.
First, the LDA/ODA have, until now, always denied there was any double counting of housing at the Athletes' Village. This was their Legacy argument. They were building new housing. Not a catalyst, simply new housing. They now agree the housing would have been built anyway and is double counted. The LDA/ODA have moved the 'legacy' goalposts to timing.
Second, Stratford City (now called Stratford 2011) is to be finished in 2011. This will include some more housing outside the Village. The housing now included in the Athletes' Village would have been built as part of that programme and therefore it is unclear why the 2011 finish date should not have applied to that part of the programme. The fixed deadline means the Athletes' Village housing cannot be delivered until 2013 for ordinary use.
Third, the Olympics has 'interfered' with that programme by including part of the Stratford City site, for the Athletes' Village, in the Olympic park. Claims about possible delays to this part of the Stratford City programme are, therefore, hard or impossible to verify.
Fourth, the Athletes' Village will definitely cost the taxpayer hundreds of millions of pounds more to deliver. This is precisely because of the fixed deadline and the fact that it is an Olympic programme. There will also be the additional cost of modifying the housing for ordinary use after the Games.
Fifth, because this housing is being included in the Athletes' Village and will rely on public finance the final amount of 'legacy' housing on this site is now being reduced as the cost of construction is too expensive. Including this site in the Olympics means less housing will eventually be built there.
Sixth, the Stratford City programme would not have involved this level of public investment. The only public investment would have been the housing grant for social housing. It was a commercial development.
Seventh, contrary to recent pronouncements Stratford City was a stand alone project which would have happened regardles of the Olympics. Old websites can still be accessed to see the claims made for Stratford City when planning permission was being sought. It was/is planned to deliver 35,000 jobs and over 5000 homes (the figure may be 6000 as new densities were introduced) at a cost of £4billion.
Eighth, the Olympics has slowed down development. I suggest reading the article posted earlier on Games Monitor 'A prime opportunity for the property industry', based on statements made in 2003, and it can be seen Jason Prior stated that the Olympics may hold up development, not speed it up. (Williams reported that “Prior believes the long-term regeneration elements and development opportunities will happen with or without the Olympics. What may differ is the pace of change. In the event of a successful bid, developers in partnerships might have to play a longer-term game – the land would not be freed for its end use until after the 2012 event.”)
Ninth, all pre-Olympics planning guidance for the Lea Valley/Stratford area pointed to the greening of the Lea Valley and house building. Plenty of parkland already existed and more was planned for. The development of the area was already under way and, as Prior correctly states, stalled once the Olympic bid was won. Just walk along Stratford High Street or along the canals and look at all the flats going up. The Olympics wishes to claim all this activity for its own but actually it was already on the way.
Tenth, it has to be pointed out that the claims for housing and jobs legacies have steadily inflated and become vaguer as the Olympic programme has gone on. For example, at the time of the cpo inquiry the LDA/ODA was only claiming 6,000 net new jobs. Now they are claiming tens of thousands.
So we have a 'catalyst' which is four times over budget, will provide housing which would have been built anyway, is 'catalysing' alongside an existing £4billion programme, which is expected to produce more jobs than the Olympics is claiming for itself and, according to its own designer, will slow down development! It has displaced or demolished existing communities, facilities and businesses and, as the LDA's Gareth Blacker pointed out in the article quoted above, turned land over to a different set of owners and developers.
That is, to put it mildly, 'interference'.
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Olympics is a catalyst
The Olympics is a catalyst for regeneration. It has rigid deadlines that cannot be ignored and so ensure that the houses will be built to the stated dates. It may be true that through waiting, there would be less public expense but that is only assuming that the economy will recover in the near future. The fact is that we cannot predict the future and therefore we can not make such claims. The main point here is that the Olympics will get things going and get things going now- as with the Barcelona olympics in 1992 whereby the city was 'forced' to accelerate its previously slow progress (e.g. 40km of roads were built in 4years compared to the 4km built in 20years previously). The Olympics should be referred to as a catalyst rather than an 'inteference' for the regeneration of Stratford.