We meet via Zoom on the first Tuesday of each month, at 6.30pm. Please email to oonforum@gmail.com to join our mailing/membership list. Our next Zoom session will be on 5th December 2023. PDFs of the slides used at our meetings can be downloaded from this page on this website.
You are welcome to join the Forum if you live or work in (or near) the area of north-west London for which the Old Oak and Park Royal Development Corporation has been the local planning authority since 2015. Membership of the Forum is free and open to all.
The outcome of the Forum’s meeting on November 7th
The meeting agreed on two next steps in our continuing efforts to demonstrate to the Mayor of London and relevant parts of Government that OPDC plans and proposals for the future of Old Oak part are now fundamentally flawed, and need a reset.
- We agreed to send in an initial response to the current consultation on the OPDC’s Draft Supplementary Planning Document for Old Oak West. This response addresses the single issue of whether the content of the document prepared by OPDC can lawfully be adopted as a SPD. We believe that the Draft (in its present form) constitutes a Development Plan Document (DPD) and requires consideration by a Planning Inspector at an Examination in Public. Our reasoning is set out in this Draft OONF response to Old Oak West SPD.V3
- the Forum also agreed to follow up on our two submissions made this time last year to committees of the London Assembly. These suggested that the Assembly should request the Mayor of London to commission a formal review of the OPDC, assessing the track record of the Development Corporation to date. Such a review would also test the realism and merits of future plans for regenerating the area around the Old Oak Common rail interchange (now 35% constructed and due to open some time between 2029 and 2033).
The Mayor has statutory duty to review both the existing MDC’s (OPDC and the London Legacy Development Corporation) ‘from time to time’. The one previous review of the OPDC was in 2016 and much has changed since then in the planning context of the area (not least the cancellation of the HS2 project north of Birmingham).
The draft of this further submission to the London Assembly’s Budget and Performance Committee can be downloaded here Western Lands submission for Assembly. Nov 2023 draft
Both these documents will be sent to the relevant recipients early in the week beginning 13th November. In the meantime all OONF members and affiliate members have been invited to send in comments and suggestions via the Forum’s email at oonforum@gmail.com