- Feb 29, 2004
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Thanks David and interesting to hear the various views on my question.They weren't.
It's a moot point, because there isn't a development in London where things "went smoothly" in the sense you mean. It never happens; it isn't possible.The English planning system makes it impossible. I was posting 7+ years ago that it would take us 7+ years to get this built and everyone told me I was being pessimistic. It's always like this. Even building 5 flats turns into a multi-year saga.
They weren't.
The result of the riot was that it made funding available for a neighbourhood-wide regeneration programme. The obvious centrepiece for that was the stadium development and that unquestionably ratcheted up Haringey's enthusiasm for the project several notches.
But it is false to state that the council were being obstructive prior to the riot. They were doing their job, which was to vet a major development proposal - specifically, their job was to require the developer to provide the planning benefits (such as affordable housing) that were mandated by the policies of the time - before Mayor Johnson and the coalition government removed and diluted many of those requirements, especially those related to affordable housing.
Prior to the riot, the council were guardedly supportive in private and neutral in public. After the riot, when the regeneration funding appeared, they became cheerleaders for the NDP.
I was a big part of the campaign to keep Spurs in Tottenham; it wasn't something is planned to get in to but I started the petition and ended up doing a fair bit of the media. I can reassure that the council was 100% in favour of keeping the club in Tottenham and therefore developing in Tottenham. The issue is the council can't break planning rules and laws and allow the club to do what it wants simply so they will stay. So they did all they could within the rules laid out. The slightly biased can view is obviously that rules and red tape are being put up just to hamper us, when in fact they are designed to protect every locale against unscrupulous developers and we have to pay the game as much as anyone else.
We may have been a little ahead of where we are in Stratford, or maybe not as we'd have had to go through planning with Newham anyway. All I think is we are sending up with an incredible stadium where we belong; and for all Levy's rhetoric and the propaganda the club was putting out about the benefits of Stratford, and that this build wouldn't be viable, we are here doing it and it's going to be phenomenal!