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The fuzzy picture around funding for the mooted Northern line extension to Battersea has sharpened a little as the Mayor, TfL and Wandsworth and Lambeth councils revealed their intentions. They're proposing to whip up £850 million by selling council bonds: the scheme, known as tax increment financing, is popular in the USA, and the investment is paid back via increased business rates post-completion. They'd require Downing Street's rubber stamp to proceed.
Yet the (white) elephant in the crowded tube carriage here is REO, one of the owners of Battersea Power Station, who have bleated repeatedly about the necessity of a Tube link to lend their ever-troubled redevelopment another tint of legitimacy. Their website features a map of the Northern line with two stations added, one at Nine Elms (convenient for workers at the new US embassy) and a new terminus at Battersea
What's not particularly abundant on either the website nor the recent public presentation is the issue of money. In the past REO have spoken of stumping up the reddies themselves, but such talk seems to have dried up as the likelihood of the Power Station project actually happening diminished. Hence these inchoate moves towards TIF.
Any new extension wouldn't be up and running before 2015, and there are a whole herd of loopholes to jump and potholes to leap before then. But it could be a viable way of extending the network's entrails into deepest Battersea, and if completed with the proposed Northern line split, may help park that old "Misery line" monicker on the sidings for good.
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Interesting to hear, I live right opposite the Power Station and went to the recent exhibition. I agree that the designs were pretty poor, how many more soulless canary wharf clones do we need?
The one thing that interests me about your piece is that the people at the exhibition made out that they would be funding the tube line and would therefore hardly include any affordable housing in the project. The last thing London needs is more luxury flats changing the demography of an area by making it unattainable for working people. I'll be watching for that planning application, if it ever comes.
Completely agree with your comments Rob. I also attended the recent exhibition and asked the question as to the number of 'affordable' / social units that would be included in the development. I was fobbed off with the answer of "well, that's a matter for negotiation between us and Wandsworth."
At the risk of sounding like a total sceptic or a conspiracy nut, I'm still not convinced that this tube extension is nothing more than an incentive to win popular support for the development, enabling the development to get planning permission and begin construction, only for the tube extension to mysteriously fail to materialise due to to lack of funding / TfL support.
We've been told in the past the splitting the Northern line isn't possible until there's an enlarged station at Camden, which still hasn't happened (mostly because the designs were monstrous) - I'm not sure why this is suddenly not mentioned as an issue any more.
TBH, I'm not massively opposed to the development - I think we're at the stage now where we just need *something* there, and although the plans have faults (i.e. lack of social housing), these can be addressed through the planning process. Every plan for the site over the past 25 years has been opposed by local residents, and at this rate, we'll end up still with an empty site in another 25 years.