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WHAT About the O2 Development Scheme?

AGM and Public Meeting 16 February 2022

WHAT’s first in-person meeting in over two years was on Wednesday 16th February at 7.30pm.  It was our Annual General Meeting, and was followed by a public meeting at 8pm on the Landsec O2 redevelopment scheme.  

Landsec plc, the owner of the O2 car park and O2 Centre, wishes to redevelop the site to provide as many as 1,800 new flats. Many of you will have already attended meetings and webinars at which Landsec has explained its scheme, and its planning application has been submitted to Camden Council. The aim of this meeting was to gain an understanding of the scheme from Camden’s point of view, and of the constraints to which the Council will be subject in its decision making.  We wanted to understand the impact of the O2 development on West Hampstead and on the West Hampstead community, and what is being done and/or should be done to mitigate this impact.    

This  is an outline of the meeting:

  • WHAT AGM, including a review of the year
  • Brief introduction to the O2 scheme from WHAT and from the West Hampstead Neighbourhood Development Forum, outlining our views on the proposed development
  • Presentation by Daniel Pope, Chief Planning Officer for Camden, on the legal and planning context –  what Camden can and cannot do in terms of local and national planning policy, and the consequences of any refusal of consent
  • Cllr Danny Beales, Executive Member of Camden Council, was also present. His responsibilities include Planning, on the Council’s overall aims for the scheme
  • Open forum and questions

Daniel Pope’s presentation is here

Our meeting took place on the very day that Landsec’s planning application for the O2 Development was published on Camden’s website. The very lengthy planning documents can be found here, along with comments from members of the public. The documents are numerous and large (in terms both of number of pages and download size in megabytes)  You’ll do best to first download and store them on your computer and then open them from the computer, as there is a lot of reading to do.  All planning applications are like this!

The most relevant documents are: Planning Statement; Design and Access Statement (DAS) Parts 1 and 2; Transport Assessment; Design Codes; Affordable Housing Statement.

At the meeting, we were told that the application would probably not be submitted to Camden’s Planning Committee for a decision until some time in the summer of 2022. This is a longer time period than is officially allowed, and it reflects the work involved in reviewing and negotiating the proposals. We were also told that comments from members of the public would be allowed until close to the Planning Committee date, which is also much longer than is normally allowed.