Question and Answer Session: London Legacy Development Corporation (Supplementary) [3]

Lyn Garner (Chief Executive, London Legacy Development Corporation):  I have huge experience in London of large regeneration schemes, and we know that this is to a certain extent inevitable as new homes are built.  The challenge for us is to make these regeneration schemes as relevant as we possibly can for local communities.

Interestingly enough, I remember saying this to Lord Hendy at my interview for this job because we were talking about East Bank, for example.  The success of East Bank is not to build three, four or five beautiful buildings.  The success of East Bank should be measured in its ability to achieve the strategic objectives set to it and they include inclusivity for local people and access, something they have indeed been good at in terms of reaching out to the community for several years, about five years now.  We can see that happening.  However, the test really is how relevant those global institutions are to local people, in my mind, in any case.

There are other ways that we can bring the local community in.  I mentioned earlier high levels of local employment in the venues and across the Park.  It is about 70% from the local boroughs.  That is good.  It is not huge numbers of people, but people can therefore feel as though they own part of that if they are working in the Park and being part of the success.  I should mention local employment through construction, which is also huge these days with Build East and so on.

The other place we can look is housing, of course.  We need to make affordable housing as relevant and accessible as possible to local people as well.  At LLDC we have a record of initially producing around 30% affordable housing and we now have Mayor Khan’s target of 50% affordable housing.  The test is how many local people are accessing those homes.  We have fairly good statistics across that, particularly in the most recent development at East Wick.  It is not fantastic.  It has followed various mayoral policies through the years and so it has changed as we have got the various planning permissions, but I am really pleased to say that we are driving hard towards the 50% now that Mayor Khan has put down in that policy.

There are those key areas where we can focus on making the Park as absolutely relevant as possible for local people.

Sakina Sheikh AM:  Fantastic.  Thank you.  Lord Hendy, just before you come in, I am just going to add another layer, if that is all right, to the questioning.  It is worth also highlighting what Tony Travers [Visiting Professor, Department of Government, London School of Economics, and Director,
LSE London] said because his contributions were really helpful in that meeting.  He went on to say at the Planning and Regeneration Committee that often regeneration impacts lower-income households the most.  Part of the issue is that people feel like they are having things done to them.

Lord Hendy, if I bring you in at this point, maybe taking a step back, what lessons can we learn more broadly in terms of regeneration projects across London and also the model of MDCs in terms of how we make sure we knit local communities and incoming communities together?

Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill CBE (Chair, London Legacy Development Corporation):  At the highest level, the reason why MDCs are a good thing is that they get things done.  I cannot envisage any circumstances in which anything like this level of change could have occurred in the local structures.  That is not because local democracy is not the right thing to do.  The resources of local authorities have been strained for years and are now even more strained.  The sorts of people who Lyn and her executive team employ are fantastic people and are dedicated to this particular activity, rather than local authorities, which have to spend most of their income now on social care and the like.  It is a brilliant model.  We get visitors from around Britain and from abroad who want to know how so much has happened in such a short space of time.

The other thing is that we always stress to them exactly what Lyn has talked about, which is that this is not being done to local people.  It should be done with them and for them.

Sakina Sheikh AM:  Absolutely.

Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill CBE (Chair, London Legacy Development Corporation):  One of the stipulations of working on the Park and having employment on the Park is to employ local people.  We always tell people about that, and people are very impressed by it, but it is not something that conventional local authorities find very easy to do.  The results are superb.

My intervention was going to be that if any of you have a spare three hours and go to ABBA, which is the most fantastic performance, which you should all do, take a minute to speak to the people who will shepherd you in, check your bag, serve you drinks, show you around.  They are nearly all local people.  They are very heavily Newham residents.  Some of them have not had a job before.  That is exactly the sort of opportunity that comprehensive redevelopment can give.  In this case, in the end, it is going to be a meantime use.  However, whilst it is there, those people are getting skills and employment that they would not otherwise have had.  That is a really good example.  There are others on the Park if you come around.

We always stress that it is not just comprehensive redevelopment.  The difference between this and the London Docklands Development Corporation (LDDC) in the Docklands in the 1980s is that the principles that we have applied for local people are much stronger here than they ever were there.  LDDC was done to people, and it was not liked.  We are not always liked but we have done a great deal.

Sakina Sheikh AM:  Thank you very much.  I will leave it there.