All posts in the topic Olympic Regeneration for Newham (Short link)
Summary
- There are 9 posts — by 5 authors — in this topic.
- Latest post made by David Padua at Jul 10 18:38 UTC
Caught my eye ... Newham Council plans £800m regeneration Property Week News - London,England,UK By Jennifer Rigby Newham Council in East London is finalising plans to set up an £800m vehicle to regenerate the area as an Olympic host destination and ... http://www.propertyweek.com/story.asp?sectioncode=297&storycode=3116698&c=1
Steven,
Thanks for that clip.
The idea that a council can put together £50 million worth of assets (in a
"delivery vehicle" in "partnership" with others) and presume that 5 years
later it will be worth £800 million seems a little outdated if present
trends are anything to go by. This is not to mention the contradiction
between the Town Hall as a developer and the Town Hall as a planning
authority.
John McNeill
Tel: 020 7366 6402 Fax: 020 7366 6401
An interesting and possibly bold (but most likely unrealistic) speculative
venture. However, it does beg several questions:
Where will funds be diverted from to push this forward?
How many council staff will be involved?
Will they be new employees or existing employees seconded from various borough
departments?
How will the future expected £800 Million value of this property speculation be
distributed between Newham and its "partners"?
In fact, unless these property assets are sold, how will the people of Newham
reap any benefit from the estimated future value of the proposed development?
I think we should be told.
Mike,
You raise some interesting points.
Not that long ago there were developers, there were councils and there were
people. A council's role was to provide an impartial planning service and a
balance between developer and people. The growth in the municipal-developer
which has taken place in many parts of the country changes everything. The
local state becomes incapable of mediating between people and developer
because it becomes the representative of the developer. There could be a
tendency for a council to fall short of its duty of care to its electors in
the new scenario.
John McNeill
Let me guess, another New Labour Brownite PFI venture
1) Newham hand over £50 million of land assets to their 'Partners' ie Private
speculators on the grounds that they will 're-generate' the assets.
2) a token small social housing scheme, library and/or little open space is
thrown in to abate critics
3) the 'Partners' 'regenerate' the land asset which they now own c/o Newhams
generousity, and sell to the highest commercial bidders (for probably well in
excess of the £800,000 stated.
4) Newham then lease back some of the asset (that they just gave away) for
vastly inflated commercial rents, and a few lucky homeless get to live in a
semi privatised 'social' housing scheme.
5) the New Labour Government give Newhams Mayor another laural in his cap for
asset stripping... Ooops I mean 're-generating' the borough.
6) the Olympics innit, shrouds the who deal
If I have misunderstood how this works I bow to those in the know.
Nothing to do with the Olympics but I thought these might be of interest: http://www.newhamrecorder.co.uk/content/newham/recorder/news/story.aspx?brand=RECOnline&category=newsNEWHAM&tBrand=northlondon24&tCategory=newsnewham&itemid=WeED04%20Jul%202008%2018%3A02%3A32%3A950 http://www.londonsleadingedge.co.uk/news.html The Recorder article on the Canning Town regeneration reminded me of the fact that, be it a good thing for the area or not (I suspect that the good will outweigh the bad), I still don't understand how it is going to be of benefit to local people. New jobs - Do local people have the right skills-set for the jobs that may be created? New homes - Will local people be able to afford them? Does anyone who reads this have any answers? On building 1000: I couldn't find anything on the site which indicates that Newham Council will be moving in, let alone purchased the site. And a question arises regarding this purchase: how much has the site depreciated in value from the original £75 million that was spent on it?
One thing is for sure, for all the talk of 'Olympic Regeneration', Sir Robin and the Noo Labour 'experience' still reside over a London borough that has the worst unemployment in the country, and where 2 out of every 5 children live below the poverty line. since Noo Labour have run the country for the last 11 years and run Newham since anyone can remember, this fact looks destined to remain unchanged. Source: http://news.trendaz.com/index.shtml?show=news&newsid=1239851&lang=EN
To be fair Newham doesn't have the worst unemployment rate in the country.
It has the lowest employment rate in the whole of the UK.
Similar, but different nonetheless.
You are forgetting...
7) Someone somewhere fiddles the invoices, inflates the prices or syphons
off the cash
8) Chief Executive appoints an independent advisor to investigate the claims
of dodgy dealings
9) The independent auditor finds no proof of the claims, but says there are
fundamental problems with controls and procedures and a lack of overall
strategy, control, due diligence and management direction
10) The Council receive a report containing the info, and the wasted
millions of public money. They look at each other wondering what it all means -
one mentions something about deja vu, and the other one says "yeah, i went
there on holiday last year, or just outside it, i think"
11) RW says that any new project is bound to have some teething problems and
he is happy the report doesnt actually say anyone did anything wrong, and
lessons have been learned
12) Everyone goes over to the Denmark and its doubles all round (on exe's of
course)