Hello. Liz, how are you doing?

 

Good afternoon. I'm very well, thank you. I hope you're well.

 

I'm very well.  I wanted to ask you about your time as chair of Old Oak and Park Royal Development Corporation. You did two terms, and following the completion of that, you decided to step down after seven years, could I ask you...

 

...by the way, that's right, the reason I got seven years was because the mayor decided one of my terms was extended because of the pandemic, and then another term. And now we've come to the end. 

 

I see!

 

At that point, from the governance perspective, it's really sensible for a chair to move on.

 

So they were really (two) three-year terms, with a year added on extra

 

That's right

 

I see. And so before I ask you why you've chosen now to step down, I wondered if we could look back over your time as chair with reference to the area and the changes that you've brought forth or that have been brought forth, and ask you really what the challenges were and what the key wins, the key successes, were in your eyes?

 

Gosh, where does one start? It really does feel like quite a momentous journey. I got involved after the mayor, Sadiq, had been elected. He was very, very concerned about what was happening at Old Oak and Park Royal and what was happening. He did a big review or instituted a review of the whole project, decided it should be continued, and then I was brought in to oversee how it was continued. And I think it'd be fair to say it was a sticky start.

 

Was it? Why?

 

Well, we had a plan that was all based around developing an area that we called Old Oak North. Some of your readers will remember a very key figure in this was the proprietor of a company called Car Giant. 

 

Yes, indeed. 

 

We thought he would be a potential partner. For lots of reasons that didn't quite go to plan, and he turned out not to be a potential partner, but actually an opponent of what we were trying to do - not his fault, by the way. You know, I have to say, I think this was a misunderstanding of what might have happened there. But that all got very sticky. That led to our proposed local plan, parts of it being found unsound by the Inspector. And I can remember a very difficult interview with Mayor Sadiq. He was, I would say to people, he was 'cross' (laughs)

 

(laughs)

 

He was entirely justified in being cross, and I was prepared for him to be cross with me. And by this time, it was David Lunts, and he more or less said, "Well, it's a mess. Go away and sort it out and come back to me with a solution". And I'm very grateful that he said that. Rather than saying, “I'm gonna pull the plug on the whole thing” which he might have done, you know, he actually said, get back and sort it out. And to his great credit, David and his team came up with some great ideas, which I thoroughly supported. We went back to the mayor. We said: "We think we've sorted it out". You know, we're not out of the woods yet, but this is how we're going to do it. And actually, that involved moving the whole focus of development from what we called Old Oak North to Old Oak West, which is effectively the space between where the new station is, Willesden Junction, but further west than where the Car Giant site had been. The advantage being: most of the available land in this area was actually public sector, in one way or another. Quite a lot of it HS2 work sites. And we worked out that just in terms of the timetable and the point at which HS2 would be pulling out of these work sites would actually fit with a sensibly saved regeneration, regenerative development. So we switched our plans to that. We effectively started again, although we were able to sell into most of the local plan, because there's only one element of it. And fortunately, when the Inspector reconsidered it, he didn't make us go completely back to the drawing board. He agreed that this was only one element of the plan. There was lots of clever fiddling around to switch residential and industrial planning indicators in the London Plan, which we managed, and we came out of it with a scheme which the inspector said was fine, and we've been working on that ever since. And I'll let you ask some more questions now, because I'm going on too long, but I can explain to you what we're doing!

 

Car Giant was obviously a sort of sticking point. Was it just that they just wouldn't sell up? You'd assume that they would sell up their land, and their land was necessary for the scheme.

 

Well, it was a bit more complicated than that because I don't actually think that the focus on the original master planning around Car Giant was quite appreciated; that it's not just about having to compensate Car Giant for moving, which we would have had to do, but we would have had to compensate the business, effectively, the way compensation rules work, and frankly, it just wouldn't have been financially viable. 

 

Really?

 

We couldn't afford to do it that way. You know, for as long as Car Giant is a viable business, making money, I don't know how much it makes but I'm sure he makes a lot. He's a clever guy. Then, we couldn't afford to challenge him or to take it to compulsory purchase. So we had to think of something different. That hadn't really dawned on anybody before; that if he wasn't a willing partner - with him being unwilling – it was just not feasible.

 

So you mentioned HS2, I imagine that was a sort of minor headache as well in terms of the relative changing goalposts of that whole saga?

 

Well, ironically, we've been okay with HS2. I have to tread a very careful line here, obviously, because the GLA are very, very keen that HS2 should carry on to Euston. But the changes inherent in what you have to do with Old Oak - is it poised for Old Oak, for a period, or indeed for longer – are relatively small. It will have a small impact in that they will vacate one of the work sites rather less quickly than we might have hoped, but that can be worked around - they don't need to retain all of it. Actually, in terms of our planning, it hasn't made a huge amount of difference. And obviously the mayor is very concerned that he has the right number of trains to whisk people off HS2 into either London and Heathrow, and that's been his negotiation with the Department for Transport, which I think has gone well in the end. But we're just carrying on with our Old Oak West, which is effectively 11,000 homes, a huge number of jobs, and starting to develop around that HS2 land, mostly, the sum at Network Rail. And the other big plus, we've been able to acquire a number of sites ourselves in OPDC. We were fortunate enough to get money from the mayor, money from DLUC, I'm trying to think quickly what it's called today - it has gone back to the MHCLG. Money from MHCLG, further loan funding from the mayor. So we've actually gone out and bought up some of the key sites that will help assemble the bigger sites. So we're actually in a great position now.

 

When you cast your mind back over the seven years you've been there, what was your favorite moment would you say? Was there a big sort of champagne moment that comes to mind?

 

Was there a champagne moment? Well, funnily enough, we had one champagne moment, which sort of turned out not to be. I can remember it was when I was at MIPIM and it must have been what was pre-pandemic, when we heard that we'd been given housing infrastructure fund money by MHCLG, HIF money. And we thought that was going to be absolutely key to unlocking our original scheme. Everybody at MIPIM was slapping everybody on back and saying great, it's all going to happen. Then I have to say it didn't. So that was one champagne moment where we had to sort of pour the champagne back in the bottle!

 

It was a kind of a Provence Rosé moment that one perhaps? (laughs) 

 

(laughs) I'm not sure it was even Provence Rose! There's been a couple of next-best ones. We have a fantastic director of planning, and she worked really, really hard to get our revised local plan through. And when we heard that that had gone through, that's a pretty good moment, because that actually showed that we could deliver our revised scheme and that we could do what we felt we needed to do. But I suppose the second big moment, and it's not exactly a champagne moment, because it involves central government departments, and that doesn't work. You don't get a sort of big bang when you open the bottles. But what actually happened is that we needed to get agreement from MHCLG, Department of Transport, HS2 - HS2, of course, come under the aegis of the Department for Transport, but they have a degree of standing authority themselves. We needed to get them all to agree, at very senior official level, that we would have some sort of land pooling arrangement that allowed us to oversee the delivery of the regeneration of this area between the station and Willesden Junction. And to his credit, I mean, David Lunts has worked incredibly well on this, with the officials in all those departments, and indeed, with the infrastructure project support authority, which comes under the Treasury. And we did actually get formal agreements from the various boards in the various departments that they were content to sign off on this business case that involved a land pooling arrangement.  I mean, unless you have been involved in central government, you might think that doesn't sound very exciting, but believe me, that was very, very significant to get that. If we hadn't done that, then we might have been faced with HS2 selling off these work sites to the highest bidder as soon as they'd finished with them, rather than doing the development of the regeneration of them in a coordinated way overseen by ourselves, the corporation. 

 

So, looking forward, what do you what do you see as the prospects for the area? What do you think will happen over the next two to three years, say, and perhaps, with reference to NLA's Demonstrator District, which we're trying to do as part of the New London Agenda.

 

I really think Old Oak and Park Royal will be fine or I wouldn't stick with it for seven years. I think it's a hugely exciting prospect. I think it's an incredibly well-connected area of London. I think it has some amazingly helpful and useful characteristics. We are not about just developing a housing estate. This is an area that will provide jobs. And I also very much see Old Oak and Park Royal as the sort of bridge between the high-end intellectual stuff that's coming out of Imperial West, and all the work on the Hammersmith and Fulham side on the east, and then, of course, on the west, we've got Park Royal, which is a place where people actually make things, and you can't have all the intellectual stuff on the east side without somebody who's able to make the demonstrators, you know, we have the laboratories where things can be tested. So actually, I see Old Oak as brilliantly positioned in between Park Royal and the Imperial West initiative and development. It is a place in which we will be able to create really good, really interesting jobs. So: it's great housing, it’s works potential and then, of course, it's also the opportunity to build a district, according to the GLA's environmental standards and wishes, and actually get somewhere that is both affordable, that is car-free, that is a great place to live, that's actually being well put together, and meets all these wonderful environmental credentials. Just to mention on that one by the way, that we have also won a hefty grant from DEVNEV to actually put in a heat network which will be drawing surplus heat from the data centres, which of course inevitably are cropping up in Park Royal. So, another great green tick in the box there.

 

Which inevitably leads me to my last question about your own future and what you plan to do next - aside from buying a house in that area, presumably...(laughs)

 

I've been very tempted on a few occasions, but what I really wanted was one of the little old railway cottages. They are so extraordinary. But anyway, that's a different subject. No, I shall remain a passionate supporter of Old Oak and Park Royal, but I've done my seven years. You know, the GLA do not like people to stay in post too long, and I can see why. You know, governance rules should be followed. I've got quite a lot of other non-exec things I do already, but I have actually been offered a very exciting opportunity to chair a subsidiary company of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority.   Which looks after nuclear waste. And as this nuclear stuff is something that has always absolutely fascinated me, and I did quite a lot of work on nuclear when I worked in my Ministry of Defence days, I'm rather looking forward to taking on the challenge of that.  I say it's a completely different set of challenges, but there's a lot of it that is actually about community engagement and actually persuading communities that what you are going to do is not bad for them and can actually be good for them. 

 

Oh, wow. Okay, Fantastic. Well, best of luck with that, and congratulations on your time at Old Oak, Liz. Thanks very much for talking to me.

 

I'd like to think we're on the right we're on the right path. Talk it up all you can please, at NLA!

 

Will do! All right. Thank you. Liz, cheers, 

 

Brilliant. Good to talk

 

Bye.

The role to replace Peace is now being advertised here: Old Oak and Park Royal Development Corporation - Chair of the Board - Diversifying Leadership