Olympic and Paralympic Games 2012

Baroness Ford Excerpts

Thursday 8th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ford]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, for introducing this important debate. I register my previous interest as chairman of the Olympic Park Legacy Company. I also pay tribute to the noble Baroness’s work on the London Assembly, where she led the scrutiny of the project with great distinction from day one. I am also greatly looking forward to hearing the maiden speech from the noble Lord, Lord Deighton. I had the pleasure of working with him in his most recent capacity as chief executive of LOCOG, and I know that he brings many exceptional qualities to this House.

The London Games were the first Games to be won explicitly on legacy. Whether that legacy was about inspiring a generation or transforming east London, the ambition was simply huge. Never before has a host city promised so much but, as we know, London delivered, and delivered big time, over the course of the most remarkable summer of sport that most of us will ever experience. One important legacy that we must acknowledge is the strong feeling—this is strange for us, of course—that we are all a nation of achievers now. Building complicated infrastructure ahead of time and under budget? That is us. Was it us winning an unprecedented haul of medals in spectacular fashion? Was it us staging an immaculate Olympic and Paralympic Games in a way that united the nation in pride and admiration, and in a capital city where public transport became a byword for efficiency? Yes, us. We achieved all that and so much more. We must never lose that great pride, admiration and real national self-confidence that the Games sprinkled on all of us. Let us hold on to that; it is very important.

We must never forget that a very important aspect of that success is the legacy of political partnership which characterised the project. We achieved all that over the summer partly because this great project was, from the outset, a model of cross-party support. It is often claimed that sport transcends politics, and the Olympic project demonstrated that very clearly. One of the most valuable things to emerge from this experience would be a commitment from us all, but particularly from our most senior politicians, that some issues require putting politics aside and a cross-party approach.

National infrastructure is one such area, where, if the Olympics tell us anything, it is that we can be the envy of the world when it comes to construction excellence and complex project management. The ODA demonstrated that. The execution of large projects is made immeasurably easier when there is political agreement and support underpinning them. The same goes for planning. The Olympic park in both Games mode and legacy mode was subject to some of the most complex planning applications ever seen in London and arguably in the UK and these were not without contention, as the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, hinted. But the various national and local authorities and communities came together to deliver the quickest and most efficient decisions I have seen in 30 years of working in the planning system. A worthy legacy would surely be to understand how this was accomplished and to build on this experience when over the next few years we come to renew important infrastructure, such as our main airports and power stations.

The legacy of the Olympics was about much more than physical infrastructure. In this debate, I think many noble Lords will draw attention to the sporting legacy, the economic legacy, the arts and cultural legacy and so on but for the last four years my passion has been the legacy of the Olympic park itself and its surrounding area. It is this aspect of which I am most proud and which, if noble Lords will permit me, I will draw on for a moment or two.

When the Government and the then Mayor of London Ken Livingstone promised in 2005 that the Games would transform the East End it was a massive ambition because, notwithstanding the advantages of location in terms of proximity to the City and to central London, the four boroughs immediately surrounding the park remained the most deprived in London—indeed, some of the most deprived in the United Kingdom. The big challenge was to develop a bespoke site capable of hosting the largest and most complex sporting event in the world in such a way that it could then be capable of immediate transformation into a new set of neighbourhoods, which would in turn integrate into the existing communities and assist in raising the level of prosperity and achievement across all of those communities.

That sounds straightforward when you say it quickly but in 30 years of working on large, complex brownfield sites I have never experienced anything so professionally challenging, although ultimately rewarding. As the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, has said, it is to the great credit of the ODA, the Lee Valley Regional Park Authority and the OPLC that today, a mere two months after the Games have finished, 500 workers are active on the site and that transformation from Games time to legacy time is well under way. Not only did millions of visitors experience a beautiful park in Games time exceptionally fit for purpose, but the legacy planning application for the post-Games park was approved well before the Games started, allowing this immediate transformation to take place.

The commercial planning was well under way also. The athletes’ village was sold prior to the Games to provide both affordable and market housing and is currently being retrofitted into apartments and family homes. The first are due for completion in 2013. The noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, mentioned Chobham Manor but the whole aquatic centre, the velodrome with its cycle circuit, the splendid copper box, the hockey centre and tennis facilities are all currently being reconfigured for legacy uses and all with new owners or tenants in place. I understand that the massive broadcast centre, a million square feet of commercial space, is about to be let and the magnificent parklands are being transformed as I speak.

The Mayor of London decided to take over the project personally this year and he has still to finalise a range of uses for the mighty Olympic stadium, which we all came to adore during the Games. One thing we do know from the Games is that we have a new national athletics stadium, replete with the most amazing memories and a worthy successor to Crystal Palace as our national venue. That was always the plan. Its status has been cemented by the fact that the 2017 World Championships will be held there.

If other sporting and economic uses can sit alongside athletics in that stadium, so much the better. When I began this process in 2009, that was my sole objective. It is for the Mayor of London now to deliver this. The ultimate success of the Olympic Park, due to re-open on 27 July 2013 as the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, will not be known for certain for some years. The noble Baroness is quite right: we must continue to hold to the fire the toes of those responsible so that they keep their Olympic promises, but I am as confident as I can be that the foundations for that legacy have been solidly built.