About the Forum. We are a neighbourhood forum designated by OPDC in 2017 and redesignated in 2022. We hold meetings via Zoom each month, open to all our members. Our regular slot is at 6.30pm on the first Thursday of each month, for an hour or so. The Zoom link is circulated a few days in advance.
Our next Zoom meeting will by at 6.30pm Thursday 10th July (not the first Thursday of the month). Slides from our June meeting are now posted on this site.
Timelines for the completion of Old Oak Common station, and the start of HS2 services from Birmingham to Old Oak, remain uncertain. The HS2 projct is undergoing a ‘comprehensive reset’ the outcome of which may not be known until 2026.
Media reports have been giving an opening date of 2039 for the opening of the Birmingham to Old Oak HS2 line. This means that Old Oak Common station and its Elizabeth Line platforms my not be operational until that date, 13 years after the original planned date of 2026.
The June 2025 Spending Review allocated a further £25.3bn to the budget for HS2 in order to keep up with escalating costs. Continuation of the line from Old Oak to Euston was also confirmed. Work on the tunnels from Old Oak Common station to Euston have been deferred to 2026. Plans for a Euston HS2 terminus have yet to be finalised and the costs of a terminus remain dependent on private funding.
Meanwhile OPDC has been acquiring sites in the area around the planned station, and is seeking develop partners interested in investing on these sites and those held by the Department for Transport as HS2 construction compounds.
The period of years during which Old Oak Common station will need to act as a London terminus for HS2 has extended into the late 2030s and probably the 2040s. This has major implications for the surrounding area. OOC station was designed primarily as a rail interchange and not as a terminus. We await a revised version of the OPDC Strategic Transport Study, not updated since 2015.
There are many questions about access to the station by all forms of transport. In this ever-changing scenario, our Zoom sessions are aimed at keeping local residents as informed and up to date as possible. Although HS2 hold ‘community meetings’ the answers given to questions from our members are often limited and do not address the bigger issues.
Given the many uncertainties surrounding plans for the Old Oak area, OPDC and HS2 started in April 2025 to hold hold six weekly sessions small group of members of OONF and the Grand Union Alliance. These meetings proved productive. The OPDC Board at its July 10th meeting will consider proposals for a permanent OPDC Residents Panel. Details of these new arrangements will be posted shortly on this website.
Please email to oonforum@gmail.com to join our mailing/membership list. 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.