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The mayor of the Olympic borough of Newham has attacked the lack of progress on government promises to delivery a legacy for the 2012 Games.
Sir Robin Wales said the borough, which will host two thirds of Olympic events, was not seeing an improvement in jobs, housing and healthcare.
His intervention today was timed to cause maximum embarrassment to ministers and Games chiefs as they host an inspection team from the International Olympic Committee.
Sir Robin, a member of the London 2012 organising committee, said he was increasingly concerned that the Olympics would repeat the mistakes of Canary Wharf, which created 110,000 jobs but with only a few hundred going to local people. One in five of the 7,000-plus Olympic workers is local to Newham but Sir Robin believes many are transient and that his borough is missing out on a "skills legacy".
He said: "London's bid book said the most enduring legacy of the Games must be the regeneration of an entire community. Just putting buildings into the ground does not reverse more than a century of deprivation."
Sir Robin is also concerned the Olympic village, which will be converted into 2,800 homes after the Games, could become a sink estate with mainly short-term residents.
Reader views (4)
Many thousands of local people are employed at Canary Wharf. Of the 90,000+ working population, 7,600 are from the Borough of Tower Hamlets and 20,850 are from the five docklands boroughs in East London, including 2,190 of Sir Robin Wales' own constituents in Newham.
Hamish McDougall, Canary Wharf Group plc
- Hamish Mcdougall, London
Olympics ending poverty?. Does n't Robin Wales realise there were 5,000 industrial jobs at Stratford before they were forced to move out to make way for the Olympics?
Robin Wales often speaks of Newham being a deprived area, but when professionals move into Newham, the Borough has a way of screwing it up. Just look at Beckton (Docklands) and Royal Docks (Excel centre). Housebuilders did a good job in attracting professionals to the area. They are vital to the local economy, as they have a lot of dispostable income, which helps to regenerate the local area. But Robin Wales decides to vandalise the area by supporting expansion of London City Airport. Not a single one of his Labour Councillors objected to airport expansion. The airport is a blight on the area, residents have to suffer every day with the misery of aircraft noise. When they build the airport in 1987, they told people it remain a tiny airfield running limited to business flights using small quieter planes, but in recent years the noise has just shot up and it is impacting a wider area. Residents can expect 1 flight every 90. New luxury appartments remain unsold.
Robin Wales claims the the airport is good for the area. Just look at failed regenerations projects like the £500m of the Royal Docks Business Park - Building 1000 remained empty for 5 years failing to attract tenants to the area and the £1.5bn Silvertown Quays project which got canned.
- Anonymous, London
'Games are not ending my borough's poverty'. Well nobody outside la la land ever imagined they would. The smart thing would have been to let Paris host them and then the cross channel services would have made a fortune.
- Fred, Horsham
As an ex resident I can assure you Labour have been in charge in Newham since God wore short trousers. If there is still such gut wrenching poverty in Newham (and it is pretty awful) then shame on Labour for allowing it. My theory is that Labour need people to be poor and dependent on benefits to ensure that they will always keep voting Labour. This is now backed up by the recent news that of the top 200 most deprived areas no less than 189 are represented by a Labour MP. Thats why Labour have NO REAL interest in eradicating poverty or reining in the huge cost of benefits. Since it would be like cutting their own throats. So enjoy the huge deficit enjoy the squandering of our money and enjoy the corruption, huge bailouts to Labours mates, huge contracts to Labours chums, Peerages for Labour party funing, the huge taxes for the gainfully employed - it's done purposely to keep Labour in power. Vote Labour get criminals.
- Ethan, UK - drizzly miserable place off the EUSSR coast
