Vision for Old Oak Common (Supplementary) [1]

Liz Peace CBE (Chair, Old Oak and Park Royal Development Corporation):  I am going to defer on this specific one to Victoria.

Victoria Hills (Chief Executive, Old Oak and Park Royal Development Corporation):  You are absolutely right.  That is what has been identified.  Of course, a lot of it is contingent on how quickly we can encourage the developers to get going with all of this.  There is a much broader conversation on education provision which we are having with the local authorities in any event as to whether that is early years provision should be standalone or whether it should be part of the wider offering.  We have a good working assumption now with the local authorities in terms of which schools need to be provided when ‑‑

Caroline Pidgeon MBE AM:  I meant childcare.  I am not talking about schools.

Victoria Hills (Chief Executive, Old Oak and Park Royal Development Corporation):  ‑‑ and also the broad location.  What you are asking is: do we have this very detailed delivery plan which is soon to let a contract for that?  We are not there yet but there is an awful lot of work going on in support of that.  Will we be where we need to be by the time we need to be?  Yes, we will be, but it is contingent on how quickly we can encourage many of these consents we have noted today to get built.  As the planning authority, we are in very strong position to ensure that the commitments that we have secured through section 106s are delivered and that is probably all I need to say.

Caroline Pidgeon MBE AM:  In terms of childcare, you have to build that in.  If you have family housing, there is no point if you want to encourage families there.  On another area in terms of your vision, your plans for secondary care, to be honest, are lacking.  It is clear that accident and emergency departments (A&Es) in London are struggling.  Charing Cross is 30 minutes away to the nearest A&E with a 29% increase in the past two years.  What are you doing specifically to increase A&E capacity to support your development?

Victoria Hills (Chief Executive, Old Oak and Park Royal Development Corporation):  You will be aware of the various reviews that have happened and are underway and ongoing in relation to A&Es in this particular part of west London.  We take them very seriously.  That is why I appointed a part-time public health specialist not only to mainstream health planning through the development and everything we do but to be able to enable us to have the correct conversation with the various stakeholders.  It is NHS England; it is the clinical commissioning groups (CCGs); it is multiple parties and partners.

Our position is very clear.  We are not the commissioning authority.  We are not the provider.  We are there to support the organisations that make the decisions on A&E and where the investment goes, what stays open, what does not, what moves.  Those decisions are not taken by us.  We are part of the conversation in influencing where we think facilities should go, but it is not for us to get heavily involved in the specific A&E ‑‑

Caroline Pidgeon MBE AM:  You do.  This is about the support services for your 25,500 new homes and so you need to be more than just speeding into consultation.  You need to be more actively at the table on these discussions.  Perhaps you will be going forward.

Can I just ask one final area?  The recently built Crossrail depot at Old Oak cost £142 million but, in order to maximise your potential at Old Oak South, you are going to have to retrofit it or demolish it.  Estimates around say it could cost £500 million.  What are you looking at and how do you estimate it will cost to deliver?

Liz Peace CBE (Chair, Old Oak and Park Royal Development Corporation):  I am not.  That is the answer.  This is one of the decisions I took very early on: that it would be very easy to become very distracted by the whole issue of the Crossrail depot.  It is there and unmissable and it is not going anywhere for a while.  Therefore, I decided we needed to live with it for the foreseeable future.

TfL has been asked by the Mayor to look at and to examine options and I am very happy to work with them to do that, but for the moment, if we concentrate on the north of the site and look at what is achievable and deliverable there, we will make a whole lot more progress than spending time trying to do something.  Realistically, nobody is ever going to put up the amount of money we need to do what you have just said.  I had heard £1.5 billion; somebody was banging that around.  If I had £1.5 billion, I could think of quite a few other ways of spending it very usefully in Old Oak Common.

In summary, we are where we are.  We have to learn to live with it for the immediate future.  Who knows where we are going to be in 15 or 20 years’ time?  We are talking about a 20- to 30-year plan for OPDC.  All manner of different things may happen way on into the future with the Crossrail depot, with the contracts for the trains, with use for other depots near it.  It is a distraction.

Caroline Pidgeon MBE AM:  Very clear. Thank you very much.