Olympic Games 2012: Legacy

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer Excerpts

Thursday 24th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer]

My Lords, I want to mention the green legacy of the Games. The big space of the legacy park in east London presents us with an opportunity to create a green lung for that area. It could be a place where urban wildlife thrives and an outdoor classroom for many of the schools in the area. I hope that woven into the design will be the spaces, and even the messy areas, that wildlife needs—for example, along the edges and on the riverbank—and the sort of meadows that the London Wildlife Trust has developed so well. The trust’s membership demonstrates that just as many people who are interested in all these things live in that part of London as anywhere else. In fact, urban wildlife can be more thrilling than rural wildlife because it is often in much greater proximity to us, so we can see it better—indeed, going back to Lambeth the other night, I met a fox not a half a road-width away and it was quite exciting.

The green legacy is important, but I want to talk about one particular aspect of it—one particular community that had to make a big sacrifice for the Olympic park and one very special space that was lost. I shall say why the promises that were made when that sacrifice happened need to be kept. The space that I am talking about is the Manor Garden allotments that used to be beside the River Lea. The land was given before the First World War by Major Arthur Villiers, who bequeathed it for use in perpetuity by East End families, whom he saw as being in great need of allotment space because their diet was so poor. In the Second World War, the allotments became a model for the grow-your-own Dig for Victory campaign. There was some hope at the beginning of the development of the park that perhaps the allotments could be kept, with their 100 year-old apple trees and fig trees, as a model of Englishness—because allotments have a lot to do with what Britishness is. The community that ran the allotments, the Manor Gardening Society, was a very good model of community, being mixed in age, background and ethnicity, but it was brought together by a common interest in growing food. However, the difficulties in keeping the allotments where they were were considered too great and they were relocated temporarily but with a crucial promise that, when the compulsory purchase order was granted, they would be given a space in the legacy park that was equivalent both in size and quality once the Games were over.

Now we are into that period of looking at the legacy. The space that has been offered is split between two different sites. Although the area is exactly equivalent in size to the former allotments, it does not have any of those margins around the edge of the river bank. In theory, this is more provision than the society originally had, but that is only if one counts the actual allotment space and not the surrounding wild land verging on the plots. It is that combination of both allotment land and land for wildlife that can create symbiotic biodiversity, meaning that pollination takes place, that people are concerned about the wildlife and that you can create a very living green lung. We need to ensure that. I hope that the members of the corporation who are here today will take this back and think about it. The Manor Gardening Society has struggled on through its relocation. It has been difficult. Some members gave up because they could not travel as far as their temporary plots. However, its waiting list has grown.

That brings me to another issue that needs to be solved. The offer of replacement allotments now appears to be only to individual plot holders, not to the society as a whole. The society is the embodiment of a particular community interested in growing. It would be a shame if as vibrant and historic a community as the Manor Gardening Society did not have its rightful place in the park. I have talked to Mr Dennis Hone about that, and he was kind enough to write back to me. He said:

“The commitment was to individual plot holders at the time and the LLDC will continue to work with those plot holders who wish to return”.

My question is: why would the LLDC want to micromanage that? Earlier in the same letter, he says:

“The ODA has worked closely with the Society on the detailed design of the legacy allotments which is something the LLDC has continued”.

On the one hand, the LLDC agrees that the society has a role to play and has extended the community space available but, on the other, it wants to deal only with individual plot holders. That may seem a detail but given the effort across London, from bodies such as the London Food Board under the terrific chairmanship of Rosie Boycott, that has gone into spaces where Londoners can grow food, and considering the effort that the Department for Education is putting into the Food for Life initiative so that schoolchildren understand about growing food, that detail must be got right for the legacy of the park. If we are interested in children having an all-round healthy lifestyle and in tackling issues such as obesity, this detail is extremely important.