One Year To Go To Olympics – Some Unfinished Business (U.K.)

Wednesday, 27 July 2011

One Year To Go To Olympics – Some Unfinished Business

Exactly one year before the London 2012 opening ceremony, local people in east London have reminded Olympic organisers busy congratulating themselves today on preparations for the Games that there remains one piece of important unfinished business.

This morning, papers seeking a judicial review of the Home Office’s botched consultation on amending a 123-year old law protecting Wanstead Flats, the proposed site of a massive police operations base during the Olympics, were filed in the High Court. The Home Office, the Metropolitan Police and the City of London Corporation have also been visited and served with notice of the judicial review.

It will come as little surprise that the people serving papers to the Metropolitan Police today were refused entry to even the foyer at Scotland Yard and were made to stand outside and wait for a representative of the Met’s legal department to take a copy of the claim form and court bundle from them.

The case has been brought by a local resident living close to the Flats, with the Save Wanstead Flats campaign included as an ‘interested party’. The aim of the judicial review is for the High Court to quash the Legislative Reform Order that amends the Epping Forest Act and therefore removes the legal obstacle to the Metropolitan police’s plans next year, because of the unfairness and inadequacy of the Home Office’s alleged ‘consultation’ with local people.

Today is also an appropriate one to highlight the trailer [see below] for ‘Ahead of the Game’, a feature length documentary set in the heart of the neighbourhoods hosting the London 2012 Olympics. It is a personal exploration of the multi billion pound project as seen through the eyes of AJ, a 20 year old from Newnham who exposes the reality of development in one of the poorest places in the UK.