TODAY is the official deadline to object to the stupidest planning application since somebody tried to build a life-sized copy of Buckingham Palace out of processed cheese. The Olympics want to come to Greenwich Park, and aren’t we all thrilled? No, actually: of the 286 responses received by the council so far, 265 – or 92.7 per cent – are against.
That won’t be the final figure – there are some big wodges of objections still to be registered – and in practice you can carry on submitting objections until just before the planning meeting, which I strongly recommend. Over the next few weeks, as councillors look through the application, I’ll be unpicking some of its key weaknesses.
Let us start this week with London 2012 (Locog)’s legal obligation (under the Environmental Impact Assessment Regulations) to assess alternative sites and explain why Greenwich Park is better. A potentially tricky task, you might think, given that (a) the alternatives are spacious existing equestrian courses, used to hosting tens of thousands of spectators and (b) Greenwich Park is a cramped, totally virgin site, needing to be transformed from scratch, that has never handled such an event in its life.
The assessment is given in chapter 4 of Locog’s environmental statement, the key planning document (downloadable from the council website). The criteria include the ability to use “existing facilities where possible;” the ability to “provide facilities which meet International Federation and IOC standards;” the ready availability of public transport, the need to ensure “no potentially significant impact on amenity for local residents” and the need to avoid “potentially significant environmental constraints.”
That’s clear enough, then – Windsor Great Park it is! As the document admits, Windsor “has existing facilities which could be used… there are public transport services… approximately 0.3 miles from the venue… there would be no temporary loss of public amenity.”
The stunning fact is that even in Locog’s own assessment, Windsor scores higher than Greenwich Park on facilities and the ability to host the contest, and the same on all the other criteria I’ve mentioned.
And the reality, of course, is that Windsor outscores Greenwich on most of those other criteria too. Completely dishonestly, the Locog assessment scores Windsor and Greenwich the same for “impact on amenity for local residents.” But while large parts of Greenwich Park will be closed for eight months, and smaller parts for five years, no local resident in Windsor would lose a single inch of park for so much as a single day if the Olympics were held there. As the document itself admits, the Windsor site which would be used for the Games “is not currently open to the public.”
Furthermore, the number of local residents around the Windsor site, though not nil, is vastly lower than the number of people living around Greenwich Park, and the traffic problems the event would cause in Windsor are far lower than in Greenwich.
Equally dishonestly, Windsor and Greenwich are given the same score for “environmental constraints.” But they would not have to chop bits off any trees to put in a cross-country course at Windsor, or level any ground to build a showjumping arena.
There is, admittedly, one criterion I haven’t mentioned on which Greenwich scores higher than Windsor – that of “close proximity to the Olympic Park.” The sole, slender thread justifying the despoilation of Greenwich is the mantra of a “compact Games” with riders able to live in the Olympic village and be “competitors, not commuters.” But this is simply not a good enough reason to ignore the advantages of Windsor.
Most riders will, in any case, not live in the Olympic village – they will stay with their horses; and since Greenwich Park is too small to stable them all, many are likely to be widely dispersed across south London. Even the Olympic village is a 25-minute commute away from Greenwich Park. The planning application predicts there will be 35,000 competitor vehicle movements to the Park during Games time – also suggesting that there will be a certain amount of commuting going on.
If the “compact Games” slogan were taken to its logical extreme, we would have the rowers on the Thames at Woolwich – never mind if they drowned in the tides or got run over by the ferry. The rowers are, in fact, going to – well, quite near Windsor, as it happens. They won’t be wedged into the Olympic village – they’ll be in spacious and almost-new student accommodation blocks at Royal Holloway College, in Egham. If the equestrianism was at Windsor, the riders could be there, too
The fact is that the riders could stay much closer to their competition venue in Windsor than in Greenwich. Royal Holloway College is five minutes’ drive from Windsor Great Park – and, contrary to another dishonest claim in the planning application, there’s plenty of room.
The only other argument produced for choosing the massively inferior site at Greenwich is the need to host the showjumping element of the modern pentathlon in London. This is true, but a red herring. The riding part of the modern pentathlon does need to be in London to be near the other four sports which make up the event. But a pentathlon riding arena is far simpler and cheaper than an equestrian one, reflecting the fact that the entire horse part of the pentathlon takes just three hours over the whole Games (90 minutes each for men and women.)
This year’s modern pentathlon World Championships – a “class A” event equivalent to the Olympics – are being held in the athletics stadium at Crystal Palace at a total cost to the taxpayer (for all five events, not just the riding) of £660,000. They could put the horse bits of the pentathlon there, or in The Valley – or indeed in a big enough back garden.
In short, Locog is asking for planning permission for a venue which is not just destructive, but which even they concede is inferior to the alternatives.
LOCOG appear to believe that its directors all have a Get Out Of Jail Free card, or even an entire deck of them, so reckless do they seem about breaching EU and UK laws. They have had four years and, for all practical purposes, a bottomless wallet, and yet:
* a tree survey (with tree schedule) has to be part of the planning application documents (it says so in section 16) but LOCOG have not included this information. They only say that they know where there is a tree schedule that they can consult.
* LOCOG have failed to carry out an adequate bat (protected species) survey in 2009. They only promise to do so in 2010, perhaps hoping that having by then obtained planning permission they need not bother.
* the globally threatened protected species, the stag beetle, is believed to be widely distributed within Greenwich Park, but LOCOG did not carry out a stag beetle survey.
* LOCOG plan to use pesticides in the Park (Environmental Statement, Volume 1 paragraph 11.6.41) but have failed to conduct an impact assessment of the likely effect on other species in the Park (including human beings, eg children).
* as to the problem of preserving the rare acid grassland, LOCOG came up with the wheeze of digging it all up (where it gets in the way of the x-country) – Chapter 11 (11.7.9 – 11.7.15) of the Environmental Statement – and storing it for more than two years but, had they looked, they would have found masses of published research on what happens when you store soil: it starts to deteriorate almost immediately, organic carbon levels drop rapidly; stored soil contains high levels of carbon dioxide, methane, ethane and ethylene; the seeds buried within it become less viable, the friendly fungi dry up and die. I really can’t believe that the Royal Parks and the Acid Grassland Habitat Action Plan Working Group have agreed to this, as LOCOG claim.
* LOCOG have made no attempt, in the planning application, actually to detail the impact their proposals will have on the Outstanding Universal Value of Greenwich Park (as part of the World Heritage Site). Furthermore, they have not indicated fully how they believe these effects should be acceptable in the context of the protection of the Outstanding Universal Value, authenticity and integrity of the Site.
I disagree with you. It is so good for Greenwich that the Olympics are coming to Greenwich, it will be great fun, a once in a lifetime opputunity.
P Hill (see second comment above) has a peculiar idea of fun – closure of all or part of a valuable local amenity for long periods and horrendous traffic congestion. Yes, indeed, it is a once in a lifetime opportunity – to risk damage to a World Heritage Site and risk the safety of horses, riders and spectators because of the tortuous nature of the cross country course.
Andrew Gilligan is not only a very good journalist, he is clear-minded and accurate.
LOCOG simply have not thought things through in a professional manner.
The equestrian events must be moved to Windsor to avoid totally unnecessary waste at a time no such waste should be tolerated.
It seems ridiculous that all we hear is negativity about the 2012 olympics – over time, over budget etc… You’d think that with the amount of opposition & the fact that by using Windsor they would save time & money on development they would be on board! Part of the problem is that now, unless there is some sort of major intervention (and I really don’t know who could do it) LOCOG will get their way & Greenwich Park will be ruined and that’s just downright depressing, that no one really seems able to stop them.
I am just SO praying Greenwich gets the planning permission! Please please please… It really is a once in a lifetime event… And becoming a royal borough too in the same year… it doesn’t get better than that!
PS I personally heard the NOCOG nitwits outside the Greenwich park the past weekend stating LOCOG has NO budget to return the grounds to how they found them… I’ve heard it all now! Or the fact that still said many trees would be felled!
Enough said…
Have you got a link that I can use to object to the Olympics in Greenwich Park.
J J, if you can’t send your objection in via the Greenwich Council web site, then I suggest visit the NOGOE web site http://www.nogoe2012.com and follow the advice there on how to submit your objection.
To Steve: please read the planning application documents.
Yes have a read Steve!
Steve. Its not really a one in a lifetime event though. You could go to Badminton< Burley etc and see top class 3 day eventing on a proper course every single year. The % of locals attending the Eventing in the park will be tiny. The tickets will be sold to fans who follow 3 day eventing. LOCOG are just a typical state eneterprise. They spend OTHER PEOPLES’ MONEY with zero over sight or thought for tax payers.
Fat Cat, it’s a once in a lifetime event for GREENWICH.
The Committee of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society (LAMAS) is going to have to work much, much harder not to appear lazy, incompetent, ignorant and stupid.
At their meeting on 17 December 2009, on behalf of the Council for British Archaeology in respect of Listed Buildings and Applications, the Committee “deliberated long and hard on” and raised “strong objections” to a planning application (HGY/2009/2000) to build a new football stadium in Haringey – but merely “discussed the case” (09/2598/F and 09/2599/L) of Greenwich Park and the 2012 Olympics, prompted by a letter signed by Neil Smith of LOCOG, and decided that there were “no major objections”.
This is an outrageous dereliction of duty on the part of LAMAS.
Greenwich is a World Heritage Site; it has global significance, historically and culturally. Haringey isn’t and doesn’t. There is no indication that LAMAS looked at even one page of the LOCOG planning applications.
LAMAS appears to have taken down their web site, so one cannot check to see if any of their Committee is associated with either Lord Coe, the BEF, Rockpool, Coca Cola, etc etc. And one cannot easily find out what their constitution is and hold them to it.
It will be a once in a lifetime opportunity for some top end anti olympic guerrilla advertising from Fat Cat Towers which directly overlooks the park.
“I disagree with you. It is so good for Greenwich that the Olympics are coming to Greenwich, it will be great fun, a once in a lifetime opputunity”
We see again and again that the Pro Olympic lobby actually have no arguments to set aginst the facts. They just keep chanting “It will be good for Greenwich” like Hari Khrishna zombies, in the belief that if the mantra is repeated often enough it will come to be believed………
Does anyone know if foxes were being culled on any night in August 2009? By being shot? Thanks.