London 2012 blog

Although an employee of the London Borough of Newham, I have been working at the ODA Planning Decisions Team (PDT) for about six months on the Stratford City development.

In almost all cases, the either the PDT or ODA Planning Committee make the decision on planning applications within the Olympic Park and Stratford City site. Any planning applications that are not key to the delivery of the Games (for example, the shopping centre development) are passed back to Newham Council to make a decision.

The Stratford City site is broken into seven zones and I am most closely involved with the Zone 1 part of the site, being developed by Westfield. This contains the 140,000m² retail centre as well as the development of offices, residential, leisure, community and hotel uses.

The project is really stepping up a gear now, alongside the Olympic Park development, as Westfield aims to have the retail centre open in early 2011. Planning permission has already been granted for a John Lewis Store as well as a Marks and Spencer store.

Two key bridges, designed to significantly enhance future access in that area, were granted approval at a recent ODA Planning Committee meeting and soon we are expecting to be bombarded with multiple applications for various retail and office blocks. In the zones north of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link (CTRL), the Olympic Village is being developed with large residential blocks now coming forward alongside an array of parklands.

It has been fascinating watching the details of the scheme steadily come together from the rectangular and triangular shapes I initially viewed on the layout plans. During the design stages for the buildings, the plans are scrutinised by three independent design, environmental and access panels with the aim of getting the best possible design for each part of the development, while maintaining a holistic overview.

Although the Stratford City scheme was originally envisaged before the award of the Games, the future residents and users of the development will now benefit from being alongside world-class sports facilities and open space provided by the London 2012 legacy. Special care is being taken to ensure that the development will integrate with existing communities around the edges as much as possible. This can be challenging as the site is historically inaccessible, with road and rail creating physical barriers to the wider community. The substantial number of bridges into the site, and the provision of new public transport, should enable the development to fit in extremely well with the existing urban surroundings.