Question and Answer Session: Functional Bodies - London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC) (Supplementary) [9]

Andrew Boff AM (Chair):  Before you answer the question, just to say that in two minutes we will be doing the silence and the unusual interruption might occur.  Carry on.

Sir Peter Hendy CBE (Chair, London Legacy Development Corporation):  If I have got that right, the general principle of the way that we run the organisation is that we are determined to see the benefits of the regeneration apply to local people.  We have just been talking about how we have done that in East Bank and Lyn [Garner] has also talked a bit about how we are doing it more generally in the organisation.  It runs through both the philosophy of what we seek to agree with the Board, and it runs through the philosophy of what the executives seek to deal with, which is to run the place not as something applied to the community but with the community.  We do measure the outcomes and they are not always as good as we want.  We have had a lot of discussion about the extent to which the local community feels that the Park is theirs.  COVID has helped in that respect and there have been a lot more visits.

(Remembrance Day silence)

Sir Peter Hendy CBE (Chair, London Legacy Development Corporation):  Can I just finish with two points?  One of course is that we have the four Mayors and leaders of the local boroughs on our Board and I take great care to ensure that what they tell us about the views of their constituents and electors are taken into account in the decision-making of the organisation.  Then the last point is that we have a Legacy Youth Board, which seeks specifically to engage young people in the areas around the park.  We have their Chair and one or two other members sometimes at our Board meetings and we listen to them carefully, too.

Unmesh Desai AM:  Can you be more specific?  You have answered the question in very general terms.  You have been asked questions and talked about toilets, sewage, very important issues, but in terms of jobs/housing, how do you engage practically with local groups/local communities? There is still something called Workplace, which I think has now changed its name, that I was involved with many years ago.

Lyn Garner (Chief Executive, London Legacy Development Corporation):  Sorry, what was that last point?

Unmesh Desai AM:  Sorry, Workplace, the Newham Council’s job --

Lyn Garner (Chief Executive, London Legacy Development Corporation):  Yes, the Good Growth Hub.

Huge numbers of people came through Workplace, which was set up in collaboration with Newham Council to access opportunities on the park.  We have now, in conjunction with the boroughs, Newham and Hackney in particular, launched the Good Growth Hub, which is a physical space on the park that will take thousands of people through its books over the next few years.  It is being funded, at least in part, by the Foundation for Future London, but also by the Mayor’s Office itself.

We have set up the Build East programme I mentioned earlier, which is offering 500 apprenticeships locally in terms of construction.  Every year we do an East Summer School with the East Bank partners.  This time, no less than 25 Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park partners joined in those events.  It means that 300 disadvantaged schoolchildren locally get to access the best in the world in terms of talents from the BBC, the Victoria & Albert (V&A), Sadler’s Wells and so on in those summer schools and that happens every year.  We are now well over thousands of kids involved in that.

Unmesh Desai AM:  I have been to see the Good Growth Hub and Build East and I certainly was impressed.

I actually live in Newham, so I speak from some experience.  I feel that you have a lot of work to do to make sure that Londoners who live on the other side of Stratford - the old Stratford, if I could use those words - feel part of the park.  Do they use the Park regularly?  Do you have any ways of measuring how much involvement those residents have in terms of using the park and its facilities?  How about encouraging all East Londoners to feel that the Park is their park?

Lyn Garner (Chief Executive, London Legacy Development Corporation):  We have seen an outstanding increase in the number of local people using the Park.  I think one of the triggers for that was the pandemic and the lockdown itself.  We are obviously surrounded by huge amounts of flatted development that families are living in.  It was really fantastic to see, although the venues were closed, the numbers of people who were coming into the park during those times and they have stayed with us.  Our visitor surveys have really seen a tick up.  We survey people on a regular basis and we have seen a tick up in local people using the Park now, which is much better than it was actually in previous times.

You mentioned old Stratford.  We are working hand in glove with Newham Council on re-master planning that whole area.  Of course, it is going to be integral to any redevelopment that happens associated with Stratford Station, so we are joined up in that regard.