Just Space has today written to the members of the London Assembly Planning and Regeneration Committee, prior to their meeting on Wednesday 23rd November about the London Legacy Development Corporation and any lessons which could be learned for Old Oak Park Royal. Interested people should try to attend the meeting in the new City Hall or follow or catch up online. We wrote:
Short statement from Just Space
This meeting on MDCs has been postponed a number of times and its scope has changed. Just Space prepared a substantial submission on both MDCs and submitted it to the secretariat, by agreement, in May 2022. In the changed circumstances indicated by the Committee’s agenda, released on 16th November, and because the Just Space and other community submissions are not being circulated as supporting papers, it may be helpful if the Committee has this short summary of the JustSpace position.
Openness to community knowledge and inputs
London’s Opportunity Areas have been strongly criticised for failing to pay attention to communities of residents and businesses in and around their boundaries. These failings, by elected local governments and the GLA, were the subject of strong representations to earlier meetings of the Committee and remain unresolved.
The creation of the two MDCs could perhaps have led to reductions in this democratic deficit if they had strong enough instructions to do so. Initially the LLDC did seem to listen and create space for the Carpenters community to express their needs and develop a Neighbourhood Plan, though in the end it was Newham, as land owner, which was able to override them. In both MDCs a number of local councillors were nominated to serve as a minority on Boards and Planning Committees and this was considered by the Mayor as providing local accountability. However it completely failed, local councillors failing to open up decisions to the community and being complicit in decisions which had adverse community impacts. Where they resisted (as in the MSG Sphere case at Stratford) they were outvoted by the property industry majority on the relevant committee. Simply reverting development management powers back to the Boroughs when the corporations are dissolved is not an adequate answer.
What was valuable was that the requirement on both MDCs to produce Local Plans led to EiPs at which community groups and local businesses were enabled to argue their case, submit evidence and have some influence – just the sort of process which we have always argued should be normal in Opportunity Areas, both for initial planning and for ongoing management. This does not mean that communuty groups are happy with the resulting plans in either case, but they have at least been heard.
Community groups in both MDC areas have pointed to the conflicts of interest which exist between the role of planning authority, responsible for pursuing the public interest and following evidence of need, and development agency, responsible for promoting its developments. A further conflict is between the Mayor of London’s roles as promoter and owner of the Corporations and as ‘person’ accountable and reliable in cases of dispute.
Housing and development achievements
No amount of clever design of special agencies could solve the problem that big development on complex sites cannot be achieved by organisations which don’t own the land and don’t have the money. The LLDC did have a lot of land and should have been able to deliver the socially rented housing so badly needed in Newham and adjoinging boroughs. This priority was not clearly embedded in its foundation nor reflected in its Board members or staffing which appear to have been oriented much more to property development interests and generating capital receipts against accumulated debt. ‘Convergence’ was always an inadequate aim because it could be achieved either by the reduction of deprivation or by the dilution or replacement of deprived people by richer people.
Major urban transformations in our sort of economy boost land values both within their patch and also for miles around and for years to come but the current London model simply tries to capture some of this value through initial negotiated developer contributions from high value developments. Then, when that doesn’t offer all the social infrastructure and social housing that is needed, additional density and height are added to an extent that is unacceptable to citizens and environmentally dangerous. This will be a problem of Opportunity Areas whether or not they have MDCs, but MDCs magnify the ambition and scale of development in ways that have become harmful to sustainable development in London.
The affordability of housing for working class people in east London has been reduced by the price and rent escalation triggered by LLDC, despite the fact that a very small number of households will have benefitted from the tiny provision of ‘affordable’ homes.
The problem is even worse at OPDC where the Corporation had neither land not the capital funding needed to transform this intricate area. Even the land in the ownership of other Mayoral or government bodies was not effectuvely under the corrporation’s control.
The arguments summarised here are elaborated and evidenced in the Just Space evidence submitted to the Committee secretariat on 24 May 2022, available with other documents at JustSpace.org.uk/MDC
18 November 2022
checked July 27 2025 M E
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