Avalon win 2 categories Walking off with the awards for Innovation and Havering 2007 Business of the Year, Fred Davey congratulates Phil Boyce, Avalon director - member of the Thames Gateway Business Club.
'Business of the Year' is the principal award of the evening to recognise the business large or small located in Havering, which has performed the best during the year.
Part of our unique proposition is that in using our facilities, you become part of the biggest regeneration project in Europe today. Being at the heart of the regeneration area that is the Thames Gateway, we have an ethical policy: we are passionate about providing solutions for the needs of both the local community, industry and business.
Periodically we will place newsworthy items on this page for the benefit of those interested in the Thames Gateway project and the benefits gained by local business.
Our columnist on Britain’s biggest planning fiasco Camilla Cavendish
Some people think that we could build enough new homes without bulldozing green fields. They are not skyscraper fanatics or conservationist bores.
They are urbanists and architects eyeing the huge tracts of land that runs east from Canary Wharf to Margate. You could build a city the size of central London between Dartford and the River Lea, largely on former industrial land, and still have space to spare.
Camilla Cavendish Camilla Cavendish has been a McKinsey management consultant, an aid worker, and CEO of a not-for-profit company. She is now a leader writer and columnist on The Times
This area, the “Thames Gateway”, is not a blank sheet. To imply as much would outrage the 1.45 million good citizens of places such as Barking and Ebbsfleet. But it does contain some blankish spaces that might be improved, rather than marred, by development. Three thousand of its 100,000 hectares are brownfield, a fifth of all such land in the South East.
Policymakers know this. But they seem paralysed by the immensity of the task. The National Audit Office (NAO) last week issued a scathing report on what it billed as the biggest regeneration project in Western Europe. This “project”, which includes 160,000 houses, has been going for 12 years. But it has no clear overall plan, according to the NAO. There are six inward investment agencies, from “Locate in Kent” to “East of England International”, which compete with each other and confuse the hell out of would-be investors. There are 30 “coordinating bodies”, ranging from the Highways Agency to the Learning and Skills Council. Their very existence seems to have become a barrier to action.
Everyone I meet who has dealt with Thames Gateway comes away unable to speak English. You stub your tongue on an acronym in the first five minutes of any conversation. New agencies and partnerships sprout almost continuously, but there is little discernible progress bar a few bus routes. The Government’s vision for the area includes “a world-class environment” and “a well-connected network of regional cities”. Holy motherhood. In order to write its report, the NAO had to produce its own map.
“They have handed out the jigsaw pieces,” says the architect Sir Terry Farrell, “but there is no picture on the box.” Sir Terry has a powerful vision of a national park that would emphasise the beauty of parts of the Estuary, create a carbon sink of eight million trees and provide an amenity for Londoners that would raise the value of new housing. Sir Terry has long been interested in what the planners miss out. He can see that you need the upwardly mobile to regenerate places. And that you do not lure them with more cramped, soulless barracks.
Sir Terry also believes that all of the housing in the Government’s target should be built within the M25: at the left-hand side of the map, if you like, where there are better transport links and fewer flood risks. Homes further east, he thinks, could then develop naturally with the economy. He believes that Greater London could accommodate up to a million more homes if we built at the density of Kensington & Chelsea rather than Bromley. And all at the highest environmental standards.
It should not be difficult to convert such intelligent thoughts into a plan. But there is no plan. Instead, there is a complete institutional impasse. In situations like this, you either have to give up and go home, or take charge. It is in the nature of Whitehall to persist with hare-brained schemes in the face of overwhelming evidence. Unlike the Olympics, the Gateway project has no deadline. So our taxes are paying for a growing cadre of professionals to attend earnest discussions on whether to rename the Thames Gateway the “Thames Estuary Parklands”. I am not kidding.
I have dwelt in the twilight zone of regeneration partnerships myself. I spent five years in the 1990s as the chief executive of a group that was masterplanning, regenerating and helping to rebuild a small area. I know how tricky it is to assemble land. How initiative can be sapped by having to work with too many public bodies. How, as Tony Travers of the LSE puts it, so many well-meaning bodies end up like the old Russia: both too strong and too weak.
It may be that the Gateway area is simply too big for any meaningful action. But there is an opportunity to do something spectacular there, something that could become an environmental and design model for the rest of Europe and that would avoid the otherwise inevitable dribble of car-dependent ugly boxes.
There is also a necessity. If this country continues with a policy of immigration and population expansion, we will have to build more housing, hospitals and schools in the South East. This will inevitably create tensions as people fight their corner. Despite the rhetoric about localism, the political trend is the other way. Last week’s planning White Paper sought to override local opposition to big developments such as power stations and airports that were deemed to be in the national interest. Ken Livingstone is about to get more powers at the expense of the London boroughs. The reasoning is the same: big, unpopular developments require a single, central authority.
I am not much of an authoritarian. But short-term authoritarianism can sometimes work. The London Docklands Development Corporation was intensely unpopular. It took compulsory purchase powers and rode roughshod over local people. But it did create the Docklands Light Railway, and Canary Wharf, which in turn put pressure on Government to invest in the extension of the Jubilee Line. In stark contrast to the Blairite model, the Thatcherite LDDC was focused and decisive.
Sir Terry Farrell prefers a third way: the kind of commission that created the 1950s new towns. But someone needs to get a grip. Or wrap it up. The Thames Gateway doesn’t exist, so it wouldn’t be much missed. Except by those who know how brilliant it could have been.
A key element of the Government's Sustainable Communities Plan which was announced in February 2003 is to provide 120,000 new homes in the Thames Gateway area by 2016. In order to inform this process English Heritage has undertaken a strategic characterisation study of the Thames Gateway's historic environment in partnership with Kent and Essex County Councils, and Chris Blandford Associates.
Thames Gateway's success depends not only on flood barriers and architecture, but on leadership
WHAT does Thames Gateway mean to you? Is it a region somewhere east of London, characterised by defunct docks and the "dark, flat wilderness" marshes of Charles Dickens's Great Expectations; or is it the 40-mile long tract of land stretching from the capital out to Shoeburyness, in Essex, which is due to benefit from a £6 billion action plan and the coming of the Olympics in 2012 - in short, the next place to make money from property?
If your scanty knowledge of this area makes you think of marshes, you may be taken aback by the suggestion that Thames Gateway could solve the South East's housing crisis. But that is the imaginative recommendation of Sir Terry Farrell, architect of the M16 building in Vauxhall and adviser to the Thames Gateway Development Corporation. As we report on pages 6-7, he believes that a million homes, rather than the 120,000 proposed, could be built in such post-industrial Thames Gateway wastelands as the Lea Valley, close to London's transport and other facilities.
That would be an alternative to development along the Harlow, Stansted, Cambridge M11 corridor on sites without the hospitals and schools essential to sustainable communities. That would be an alternative to development along the Harlow, Stansted, Cambridge M11 corridor on sites without the hospitals and schools essential to sustainable communities. The Government is still interested in creating those, but not in the same places that John Prescott had in mind when he was in charge of such things.
Post-Prescott, ministers are questioning the need to concrete over green fields. In light of that apparent change of heart, exploiting Thames Gateway seems even more logical: the Farrell regeneration vision even includes a national park to preserve wildlife and to act as a carbon sink soaking up some metropolitan CO2 emissions.
The Government is still interested in creating those, but not in the same places that John Prescott had in mind when he was in charge of such things.
Post-Prescott, ministers are questioning the need to concrete over green fields. In light of that apparent change of heart, exploiting Thames Gateway seems even more logical: the Farrell regeneration vision even includes a national park to preserve wildlife and to act as a carbon sink soaking up some metropolitan CO2 emissions.
This would be a sensible measure, as rising sea levels, the consequence of CO2-induced global warming, mean that much of Thames Gateway is at risk of flooding. Anyone planning to put money into property in this area, either as an owner-occupier or as an investor, must hope that the steps now being taken to cope with that threat are effective. But the success of this project, and indeed the whole future of Thames Gateway, depends not only on architecture, flood barriers and other feats of engineering (some of it of the social kind), but on leadership. The dozens of different bodies involved in the enterprise are causing what one commentator has called a "muddle of overlapping mechanisms". A supremo could make them work like a well-oiled machine. In 2008, the hugely competent Lord Browne of Madingley - a diplomat, an engineer, and a manager - will step down as CEO of BP. His next job should be as boss of Thames Gateway.
The most crowded motorways will be widened as part of a multibillion-pound push to reduce congestion.
The Chancellor highlighted the M1 and M6 for improvement in his speech, while the text of the Comprehensive Spending Review announcement said the M1 and M25.
The full review report noted only that the capacity of congested roads would be increased and gave no details for which motorways might be affected. The Department for Transport (DfT) later clarified that all three motorways would benefit.
The M1 proposal will cost £2.5 billion and widen the motorway to up to ten lanes between Leicester and Chesterfield. The M25 scheme is a public finance initiative (PFI) that will cost more than £5 billion and widen the entire motorway to at least eight lanes. The M6 proposal is still on the drawing board but would cost about £2.9 billion and widen a total of 50 miles in two stretches, one south of Manchester and the other north of Birmingham.
Yesterday’s announcement commits the Government to funding the work in future budgets. The DfT may be able to find ways to lower the cost of widening, such as allowing drivers to use hard shoulders rather than building entirely new lanes.
The Chancellor also confirmed that money will be made available to local authorities that want to test the use of road pricing.
Overall, the total transport budget will increase by 2.25 per cent a year in real terms, rising from £20 billion in 2007-08 to £23.7 billion in 2010-11.
In addition to the road budget, £1.3 billion is being made available to improve local and regional transport and £200 million is being spent to give over-60s free off-peak bus travel.
Comments TGBC
Whilst the above plans are to be applauded as an attempt to ease congestion (in particular for the Gateway Region, the 8 lanes proposed for the M25), it is surprising that a project as important as the new proposed Thames Gateway Bridge in the Thames Gateway is currently on hold because of 'environmental' issues.
Finance was approved in 2006 and bridge project was 'rubber stamped' by government as vital to the Thames Gateway Regeneration. Tfl states "We strongly believe this transport link remains a vital and integral part of the regeneration of the east London corridor". The bridge is expected to create employment(create 25,000 jobs), stimulate long term growth and help sustainability. Surely the 'CO2 environmental implications' of the Thames Gateway Bridge are insignificant compared to the growing emissions guaranteed by the increase in M25 traffic.
Canary Wharf was today named as one of the biggest power wasters in the capital.
A BBC investigation of City buildings showed that companies in the tower are wasting £17m a year by leaving their lights switched on.
And other companies are also guilty of wasting power included US investment bank 25 Bank Street and HSBC's head office.
The study of the City skyline at midnight on a Sunday night was carried out on behalf of the BBC's Inside Out programme and found a quarter of all lights in the area were left on between 9pm and midnight on that Sunday night.
The worst offender was Canary Wharf Tower where the majority of the 30 companies left their lights on their lights on, wasting the equivalent 4.7 million kilowatt hours each year.
That is enough to power more than 1,000 households for 12 months and means the tower is emitting the same amount of Co2 as 4,094 transatlantic flights.
In second place came 25 Bank Street, home to a major US investment bank and two other large companies. The lights on there are wasting 3.3 million kilowatt hours which is enough to power 700 homes for a year.
And in third position was the HSBC headquarters, a company that is proud of its green credentials. But the survey showed the building is wasting 2.8 million kilowatt hours of electricity a year.
Experts today estimated the total cost of the wasted electricity bill over the buildings surveyed was £17m, and accused the major banks at faulty of hypocrisy.
Trewin Restorick of Global Action Plan, which carried out the study for the BBC, said: "We were extremely dissapointed by these results.
"A lot of these banks, such as HSBC, make a real point in their advertising of being green. Yet they cannot even turn off their own office lights at the weekend.
"If there's no one in the offices, it's a huge problem, because all these lights need energy to power them, the energy comes from gas power stations and coal. Creating the energy puts carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and that's causing global warming. We worked out in the square mile that they were wasting £17 million a year on their energy, that's 200,000 tonnes of c02."
The study used binoculars to manually cound the number of lights on around Canary Wharf, and 28,000 windows were counted. The worst offender was the Canary Wharf Tower, which houses over 30 companies.
However, the Canary Wharf Group, who manage the building, said it simply rented out the premises.
"Like any other landlord Canary Wharf Group cannot dictate its tenants' electricity usage," the company said.
"At Canary Wharf, where 100 per cent of the energy comes from renewable resources, some tenants have staff working round the clock, seven days a week which requires higher than usual energy consumption".
However, campaigners hit back, claiming that as part of the study they looked for workers in the buildings with lights left on and found very few people in the office.
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