The Experts

"It must have taken a forest of trees to produce all the paper that has been written on about the Thames Gateway. And yet, for so much effort, what have we actually got to show for it? 

In practical terms the depressing answer is almost nothing. The Thames Gateway is rapidly becoming a by word for everything that is wrong with government in this country.

Too much planning - Not enough action

Enormous numbers of initiatives are piloted, countless meetings are held, grand sounding public bodies are created and convened, and nothing happens. Yes, I mean it. Nothing happens. And let me make something quite clear. This government might be particularly prone to vacuous initiatives, but the last government of which I was a member was just as bad. 

The last Conservative government managed to spend £140 million on researching the line only to kill it when the Treasury objected to the cost. The incoming Labour administration scoffed at that cynical nonsense and pledged to restart the approval process. Nearly a decade later and another £200 million has been spent on consultants. There is a Bill in Parliament to give powers to build the line. But the Treasury is still adamantly silent on whether the money for the project is actually going to be forthcoming. Utterly shameful. The one art the British seem to have perfected is the art of postponing spending on infrastructure until everyone connected with the project has died.

The lack of a clear unequivocal commitment to build Crossrail has an impact across the Gateway as developers there are understandably reluctant to commit until they know the outcome. It is a vicious circle. In the meanwhile what building does happen tends to be of exactly the sort we should be avoiding. Small, isolated developments pushed up wherever they can be sold at a profit but without any real sense of coherence. We are in danger of turning the Gateway into the worst sort of commuters’ dormitory. 

Too Much Democracy

Which brings me to the second big elephant in the Thames Gateway sitting room that no-one wants to talk about. There is far too much democracy about. Well, look at the facts. There are 42 planning authorities in the Gateway both north and south of the Thames. Is it entirely surprising that as a consequence, nothing is ever agreed? 

I have personally seen excellent development projects on which really sensitive, intelligent planners have spent a great deal of money torpedoed by the local council on straightforward NIMBY grounds. In fact, in the Gateway we don’t talk about NIMBY any more. We talk about BANANA – Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anybody.

London Docklands

Compare this paralysis with the quite extraordinary success of the neighbouring London Docklands project. Docklands is not a perfect development by any means, but an area that 20 years ago was a derelict industrial wasteland, over which local councils squabbled endlessly to no effect whatsoever. It was then transformed into a city within a city that actually now employs more people in financial services than the whole of Frankfurt. And why? Because amid howls of protest, the then Conservative government introduced the London Docklands Development Corporation with full planning powers to consult, plan and then deliver a master scheme for the whole of the Isle of Dogs and the surrounding area. And for all its acknowledged imperfections it worked. 

And that is what is now needed in the Gateway. We should have a single Gateway Development Authority, created by Parliament and established entirely separately from the current local authorities, led by an able Chief Executive and a top flight professional team, with an obligation to consult all the relevant stakeholders but then to produce and deliver a plan that actually works. A plan that is carbon neutral, based on truly sustainable transport plans. A plan that delivers high quality buildings that generate a good proportion of their own energy. Homes that are built should be to the standards the Dutch have perfected to ensure that rising sea levels do not menace them. Communities that no doubt feed off the massive potential of London but also are built and planned to have lives and identities of their own. 

The Thames Gateway could be so very, very good for Britain. Right now, it is a miserable, third rate apology for a project going, sadly, nowhere."

Steve Norris is the Former Transport Minister and London Mayoral Candidate.