In a sudden and unexpected turn of events, a press release from the OPDC On December 13th announced that the Corporation was halting its plans to assemble land at Old Oak North.

This brings to an end the legal tussle between the OPDC and Cargiant Ltd.  In early 2019 Cargiant dropped its own plans for housing development (badged as ‘Old Oak Park’ and decided to remain as a business on its    existing 45 acre site. 

Despite this decisions, the OPDC chose to progress its own ‘masterplan’ for Old Oak North, making use of its powers of compulsory purchase to acquire tracts of Cargiant land.

10 months later, OPDC has recognised that its land assembly proposals were unworkable. 

The OPDC Board has not met since September 26th 2019 and is not meeting again until January 30th 2020 (a four month gap).  So there has been no report or Board discussion that explains the consequences of this major change of direction by the Corporation. 

OONF and the StQW Forum has sent the OPDC a list of questions.

We will be ensuring that members of the London Assembly Budget and Performance Committee see a copy of our questions before they meet in early January to scrutinise the OPDC Budget submission for 2020/21.    While the OPDC is scaling back its budget for next year, the fact remains that much public money has already been spent on preparing a Local Plan which now has to be substantially revised, along with consultancy costs on site assembly which is now wasted.

We will post more news as it becomes available.