May I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas) on securing this timely and important debate? This issue is raised frequently in both Houses. Yesterday, during questions in the other place, two of
the points that my hon. Friend mentioned were raised. Lord Tope noted that the £639 million operational grant for this year will decline to nothing within three years, while Lord Dubs raised an important question that I will deal with: if Transport for London is going to become a property developer over the next decade, where and how will it build, and what will it will build? It is particularly important to note that there will be little social housing among the alleged 10,000 homes to be built.
The other place is also shortly to discuss the Transport for London Bill, a private Bill that has been limping through both Houses for five years. It would have been killed off in the main Chamber a couple of weeks ago, had not the Government whipped 140 of their Members to vote for the revival of that rather sad and sagging Bill. If London MPs had their way, the Bill would be put to rest quite quickly. If I have time, I will deal with that issue but, in any event, I have no doubt that we will consider the final stages of that Bill in the new year and discuss at length the problems with it.
Should TfL become a property developer to make up the £2.8 billion that the Government are taking away from it between now and 2021, it will of course need to manage its estate properly. It has not always done that well in the past, and I doubt the capability and competence of transport organisations—even though many very good people work for them—to deal with some of the most rapacious and greedy property developers in London. Somehow the public sector also seems to come off worse when it enters into such deals.
Even what TfL is planning at the moment does not fill me with enthusiasm. It is looking for 75 sites spanning 300 acres, with the aim of raising £1 billion. As I said in my intervention, two thirds of those sites will be in zones 1 and 2, presumably because although there is less land in those zones, it is more profitable. Only when TfL subsequently begins to look at zones 3 to 5 does it expect to include affordable housing in its considerations. It is going to work in joint ventures with private companies, and the model for that is the tragic site at Earls Court, which is one of the largest development sites in London, with two thirds of it owned by TfL. The joint venture with Capital and Counties Properties plc covers 77 acres and includes the Earls Court exhibition centres and the Lillie Bridge depot. The third part of the site—22 acres —consists of two local authority housing estates with 760 affordable and social homes.
The development of that site, which I believe is a template for what TfL will do in the future, will provide 8,000 homes with no additional social homes, even though according to planning targets, and even the targets of the Mayor of London, there should be 2,000 such homes. The 760 existing homes will be demolished, which will affect the entire community. The Earls Court exhibition centres are beautiful and their loss is tragic. Earls Court One, an art deco building that is currently being demolished, provided 30% of London’s exhibition space.
I laughed at what TfL told the Financial Times when it announced its plans about six weeks ago. It said it was
“working with its operations team to ensure that it learns from mistakes made by the national rail network in the past and only ‘develops sites where no transport capacity growth is expected so as not to constrain operations.’”
The other part of the Earls Court site that is going is the Lillie Bridge depot, which is one of the main manufacturing and servicing depots. It is an ideal place for servicing and provides 500 skilled jobs, which is why the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers has considerable concerns about the development.
If Earls Court is a blueprint, God help us when TfL begins to develop other sites around London. It has already identified three. One, which is in Hammersmith and Fulham but not in my constituency, is the Parsons Green depot site. The very good Labour council there is negotiating hard with TfL to include affordable housing on the site. There will be 120 new homes, but no homes for social rent are planned, although I hope that that will change following negotiation with the local authority.
As I know that area extremely well, I can give an example of what can happen. Almost opposite the proposed site is an almost identical depot site that was owned by the Co-operative Group. That has been developed with 100% affordable housing—50% intermediate and 50% for social renting. If such a target can be reached, TfL’s ambitions in an area with a crying need for affordable housing, especially in zones 1 and 2, should be at least a lot greater. I note from the property pages of today’s Metro that the average price of a property in Hammersmith, let alone Fulham, is more than £1 million, and that is exactly the type of luxury property that TfL is endeavouring to build on its land.
A measure in the Transport for London Bill—during its early stages some four years ago, my constituents petitioned against it—would have given TfL the power to sell land without reference to the Secretary of State or any outside body. I am pleased to say that, following scrutiny, the relevant clause was withdrawn, because otherwise TfL could have done exactly what it liked. Given the Government’s housing policy, which we will discuss in the House later today, I have no confidence that the Secretary of State’s intervention will represent a proper remedy. In any event, the Bill is deeply flawed because it encourages TfL to enter into limited partnership agreements and allows it to go further even that it went at Earls Court by having unsuitable, voracious partners in the property development market. That may or may not provide a profit for TfL, but it will do nothing for the neighbourhood and interests of ordinary Londoners.
My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West talked about the upgrading of the sub-surface network, which includes the Hammersmith and City, Circle and District lines. It would be a tragedy if that were postponed for another five years. Those incredibly busy lines have some of the worst signalling on the underground network. I believe the signalling at Earls Court dates from the 1960s, so perhaps the Minister will comment on that today. My constituents would not welcome him saying blithely that the upgrading will be delayed by another five years.
A specific problem is the removal of Olympia station from the timetabled network. I was pleased to have the first newly built station in a century on an existing tube line at Wood Lane as part of the Westfield development. TfL made a big song and dance about that, but less of a song and dance when it took a station off the timetabled network, despite Olympia serving one of the most densely populated communities in London and linking
to the very good overground service at that station. We were told at the time that the reason was congestion at Earls Court—that has been the case for about 40 years—and that TfL wanted to prioritise the Wimbledon branch of the line. That was not popular with my constituents.
When the signalling is upgraded—whether that is in 2019 or 2023—it will relieve the problem. There will be more capacity, longer and more effective trains and better signalling. With that full expectation, I wrote to the new managing director of London Underground to ask for at least a commitment that Olympia would be put on the timetabled network again, but I was told, “No. There is no intention of doing that.” What is the point of investment and of TfL becoming a property developer if the net result is that the investment in its own network does not do what its passengers and fare payers want?
In May 2016, we will have a new Mayor—hopefully a Labour Mayor. My right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) has promised to freeze fares, to provide one-hour hopper tickets and to run TfL in the interests of all Londoners, not in the interests of property developers, its own highly paid managers or bailing out the Chancellor. However, we currently face a double whammy of losing central Government investment, which no other civilised country would do to its capital city, while at the same time we do not see any other improvement in Londoners’ quality of life because TfL is simply rushing madly into property development.
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