Birmingham Commonwealth Games Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Griffiths of Burry Port and Baroness Brinton

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 25th February 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

I also want to speak to the amendment on the legacy of the Games, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Addington. Moving away slightly from the issue of sports, I refer to its proposed new subsection (3)(a), where he talks about:

“the impact of the Games on the local community in which it was held”.

One of the key impacts is on capital development. I want to put on record my thanks to the Minister, and the team from Birmingham 2022, who came to talk to me about housing standards, which I raised at Second Reading. Although I will refer to it on the next group of amendments specifically in relation to disabled athletes, I want to make two brief and wider points on legacy.

I mentioned the lifetime homes standard for a very good reason: its category 2 makes just enough provision for an ordinary unit of accommodation to be adapted for less than £2,000, to be suitable for an elderly or disabled person but not somebody living in a wheelchair, whereas it takes in excess of £20,000 to adapt most units of accommodation, for example with slightly stronger walls where grip bars can be put up or slightly larger bathrooms with walk-in showers or baths. I am very disappointed to discover that, of the 1,472 plots on the Perry Barr residential scheme, only 20% will reach category 2, which is “flexible and adaptable”. The vast majority will be category 1, “visitable dwellings”. Hopefully, somebody in a wheelchair can be taken into one of them, but this category still permits steps into the building, which makes it utterly useless. Habinteg, an expert in lifetime standards, says that category 1 should not be used by the Government or anyone else and that category 2 should be the minimum. There are very few units at category 3, which is for those who live in and use wheelchairs. I will come back to why that affects sportspeople on the next group.

Having heard all that, I did some quick research. The Birmingham Mail reports that of the 1,472 units, only 58 affordable houses of family size will be built, despite there being 2,500 families in temporary accommodation in Birmingham. That is a massive missed opportunity. Over 1,000 of these units will be sold, so there will be very few left for affordable use by local communities or housing trusts. This is one lesson we can start to learn already. A large amount of taxpayers’ funding is helping to purchase and build the site—£185 million—yet the legacy of affordable housing in Birmingham has been missed completely.

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port]

My Lords, I do not want to say very much—honestly, I do not—but I have grown increasingly impatient with myself as this debate has continued. We need a full-scale debate, rather than one under the rigours of debating a Bill, about why and how the legacy of the Olympic Games did not deliver the ideals that have been mentioned, and why, despite the fine words, the legacy from these Games is just as likely not to be delivered. This involves far more than somebody putting a clause in a Bill. I put a great deal of effort into the two inner-city schools that I have some responsibility for. People can use their facilities any time they like—because we have not got any.