10

Risks to a sustainable community

Sufficient housing. A sustainable community needs a certain critical mass of settlement for other developments on site to thrive. This is a challenging risk to manage because a critical mass cannot be achieved until residential housing is progressed and this will mean insufficient demand for other services. These services, however, equally need to be developed alongside residential housing for the development of a mixed-use and sustainable community.

Economic base. A key part of a sustainable community is an economic base supporting the financial viability of the community and providing local employment and opportunities for skills development. MDL intends to provide this through planned office and retail space, which will provide the majority of a forecast 25,000 end-user jobs in the development. There are, however, a number of risks to the achievement of these plans. Part of the land earmarked for commercial development has had to be reserved pending a decision on the Silvertown Link (see paragraph 1.17). Skills targets for future job provision in the development have not yet been set. And there are no contingency plans for the event that insufficient jobs are generated.

Transport. Actual and planned transport provision for the development is good. It is, however, subject to a number of risks. There is divided strategic control between Transport for London and Greenwich Council. The development is heavily dependent on one transport mode, the Jubilee tube line, although there are existing bus links, cycleways and footpaths and the Thames Clipper Service has recently opened. There are long term plans such as the Greenwich Waterfront Transit (planned for 2011) and Crossrail which will help alleviate problems. There is also a risk the Jubilee Line may be overloaded in the future by through traffic from and to Stratford. And there is a risk that the development might be at a relative competitive disadvantage in attracting residents and commercial tenants from areas such as Stratford with better transport links.

School provision. While the existing Millennium primary school has a good reputation, the current state secondary schools in Greenwich generally have poor results. The secondary school designated to serve the development, the John Roan School, is one of the Borough's poorer performing schools. The relocation of the school to the Peninsula is being delivered earlier than school place demand. There is a risk that if low levels of attainment continue once the school is open on the Peninsula, families with children will be deterred from staying on the Peninsula once their children reach secondary school age. While EP cannot directly influence school performance the project principals are taking action to address this risk - e.g. additional funding to the John Roan though the Government's Building Schools for the Future programme. EP also considers that parents in London are more likely to send their children to schools outside their immediate catchment area than in other parts of the UK.

Community self-governance and estate management. These are key factors in the formation of a sustainable community. MDL and EP, however, are still in discussion about how the community will be governed. While agreements have been reached with the Council to adopt all principal highways and with Southern Water to adopt sewers and site pumping stations, there is no complete resolution for how the estate should be managed and individual responsibilities.

Community identity. Our Expert Panel and a number of others stressed that a clear sense of common identity in the new community and a distinctive identifying brand for the new development were important factors for forming a sustainable community. EP has experience of creating community identity for the Greenwich Millennium Village and MDL has made a number of commitments and plans to do this, but whether they will be effective is still in doubt at this stage. An important part of a community identity is arrangements for the community to be self-governing and as we have seen these are yet to be formulated.

Source: National Audit Office analysis