AS GREENWICH Council today prepares to rubber-stamp the planning application to close parts of Greenwich Park for up to five years – for an Olympic equestrian event lasting two weeks – we can reveal that even the park’s owner, the Royal Parks Agency, has started to have reservations about this fantastically ill-defined plan.

In its submission to the council, the agency calls on Locog to “reconsider the extent of the stripping of soil and grass that needs to take place,” saying that “the method of reinstatement of acid grass as set out [by Locog] is not recognised by us as a tried and tested method.”

“We question the need to strip top-soil and grass as a general approach towards producing a cross-country course,” it says. “We request that further consideration is given to minimise this measure and the resultant impact on the Park fabric and ecology.”

Like almost everyone else – except, no doubt, the council – the Royal Parks also seems concerned with the conspicuous lack of detail in Locog’s planning application. It speaks of its “reservations” about tree works and calls on the council to require an “arboricultural impact assessment” and “full details of methods of protection of trees.” The lack of such an assessment – a really basic flaw in the application – must give the lie to Locog’s bland assurances that no permanent damage will be caused to any tree. How can it say that if no assessment has been done?

The agency also says that the restoration of the park “will be contingent on Locog providing the necessary funds. We are assured by Locog that this will be forthcoming.” Previous Locog assurances have, of course, included the assurance that the Games will only cost £2.4 billion (actual cost £9.3 billion). As the Royal Parks points out, Locog’s submission “does not fully explain how the remedial work will achieve the results set out as objectives.”

The agency also charges Locog with “not fully explaining the intermediate period between the test event in 2011 and the main events in 2012” and “not fully mitigating the impact on birds.”

These criticisms are all the more significant because the Royal Parks has been, and remains, a supine supporter of the Olympic juggernaut – regularly proclaiming its complete backing for the event. As I mentioned in my column last week for the Daily Telegraph, the Royal Parks have in this way and other ways demonstrated their unfitness to be in charge of Greenwich Park, or any other park. This appears to have been recognised with proposals by the Tories to abolish the agency and bring it under the control of the Mayor of London.

Another serious objection has been raised by Thames Water,  which says that the development “may lead to sewage flooding” and adds that “with the information provided, Thames Water has been unable to determine the waste water infrastructure needs of this application.” Thames Water further says: “The existing water supply infrastructure is currently unable to meet the additional demands for the proposed facilities.”

Each of these criticisms is further evidence of the fundamental lack of specific information given by Locog, something which surely undermines the planning application in its entirety. How can councillors decide on an application from which so many crucial details are omitted?

Surely the time for a tree impact assessment is before the plans are passed, not after? Surely the method of the the stripping of the very soil of the park should be settled before the plans are passed, not after? Surely the finance to restore the park to its current condition should be totally nailed down before the plans are passed, not after? Surely the not unimportant question of the project’s impact on SE10’s sewer system should be settled before the plans are passed, not after?

Much smaller imprecisions and vaguenesses in the planning application to redevelop Greenwich Market were a key reason why that was rejected by the council. Any planning authority which was doing its job properly would postpone consideration of the Olympic application until it had the actual details of what it was being asked to pass.

But of course with the Olympics, no boring planning considerations will intervene. Because for Greenwich Council, this is not a planning application. It is a crusade. The council made up its mind that it wanted the Olympics in the Park years ago. Its official slogan is “Carrying the Torch for 2012.” Its leaders have spoken at length about the immense benefits that the Olympics will bring the borough (even if they haven’t quite yet managed to articulate what any of those benefits are.)

The fury of the local community will make no difference. The rational arguments of the community will make no difference. The only people the council is listening to are Locog and its Hare Krishna-like cries that the Olympics will be “great” and “put Greenwich on the map.”

The plans will be passed tonight, in all their terrifying lack of precision – giving Locog effectively carte blanche to do whatever it chooses in certain areas, and giving the community no way of stopping it. Nobody, by the way, is saying that Locog intends to harm the park – but as deadlines approach, and money becomes tight, the temptation will be to do damage and cut corners, and in many areas there will be no effective way of preventing the park from being harmed, if that’s what London 2012 deems necessary to get its show ready on time.

Tonight’s meeting will be no more than a formality to endorse a decision taken in about 2006 and clung to ever since, despite the increasingly overwhelming evidence – even now from its own supporters – of its destructiveness, pointlessness and stupidity. It will not, however, be the final word: I think you can be sure of that.

Lewisham Council has expressed serious concerns about the controversial plan to stage the Olympic equestrian events in Greenwich Park, we can reveal.

In an email obtained by greenwich.co.uk, Stuart Sharp, Lewisham’s highways development manager, raises a series of pertinent “areas of concern” about the ability of the local road and rail networks to cope with the spectator and competitor influx for the Games, particularly on the day of the cross-country event.

In the email to Greenwich Council, dated 18 February, Mr Sharp writes: “When does the major cross-country attraction occur – hopefully on a weekend? If it doesn’t, then given the predicted 75,000-plus crowd, plus two to three thousand workforce plus competitors all arriving 90 mins or earlier before the events start at 11am means that most will be attempting to travel… during the morning peak. Similarly, the reverse pattern could occur during the evening travel peak.”

The day of the cross-country event, 31 July 2012, is a Tuesday.

Mr Sharp says that even the Park’s “smaller” events – involving between 22,700 and 55,000 people – will place enormous demands on the local transport network. He protests that the Games organisers have done “no analysis of public transport capacity to absorb the predicted [number of] people requiring to travel to and from the site.”

He asks: “Is there sufficient timetable, line and platform capacity to cope with the predicted numbers, particularly on weekdays? How will bus operations be affected if the bus lanes in Romney Road are used for pedestrian movement? I can’t find any detail [in the plans] of park-and-ride strategy and direct coach arrival and departure arrangements.

“Where are the drop-off, pick-up and coach queuing points? Where will the 200-250 coaches park after drop-off and before pick-up? The [transport plan] suggests the site off Creek Road hitherto earmarked for the Greenwich Waterfront Transit depot – surely that won’t be big enough and will it still be available?”

A failure to set out important plans in sufficient detail is becoming a bit of a theme with the Greenwich Olympics. We still don’t know which trees will be affected by the promised “pruning” operations. We don’t know the full closure schedule. We don’t know where all the temporary buildings will go. We don’t even know exactly what the main arena will look like!

But the transport position is serious. Unlike north of the river, Greenwich is to see no transport capacity improvements (apart from a third car on the DLR.) The existing network will, in fact, be reduced in capacity by the likely creation of a competitors-only lane through the Blackwall Tunnel. As well as the visual, amenity and ecological damage to the park, and the damage to the tourist industry of seeing it closed for weeks, there now appears to be a risk of wider economic damage that the area’s roads and railways will seize up.

Locog’s coyness on transport detail is understandable: their fear must be that Mr Sharp’s questions are impossible to answer. But planning applications require detail. It was a lack of detail, as much as anything else, which doomed Greenwich Hospital’s application for the market redevelopment – and that application was rather fuller than the Olympic one.

As anyone who has used the area’s transport network during the rush hour will know, it is essentially at capacity, sometimes beyond. Although the Games will take place during the summer holiday season – and some of the travel will be against the peak flow – it is a further example of the way in which the Olympic organisers decided this venue on the basis of pretty pictures rather than serious examination.

Lewisham’s borough boundary comes within a few hundred yards of the park, and Mr Sharp’s email raises the fascinating possibility that the council could formally object to the application.

That possibility still seems remote – but it is a real indictment of Greenwich Council’s uncritical cheerleading for the Olympics that important objections are only raised by a neighbouring borough.

TODAY is the official deadline to object to the stupidest planning application since somebody tried to build a life-sized copy of Buckingham Palace out of processed cheese. The Olympics want to come to Greenwich Park, and aren’t we all thrilled? No, actually: of the 286 responses received by the council so far, 265 – or 92.7 per cent – are against.

That won’t be the final figure – there are some big wodges of objections still to be registered – and in practice you can carry on submitting objections until just before the planning meeting, which I strongly recommend. Over the next few weeks, as councillors look through the application, I’ll be unpicking some of its key weaknesses.

Let us start this week with London 2012 (Locog)’s legal obligation (under the Environmental Impact Assessment Regulations) to assess alternative sites and explain why Greenwich Park is better. A potentially tricky task, you might think, given that (a) the alternatives are spacious existing equestrian courses, used to hosting tens of thousands of spectators and (b) Greenwich Park is a cramped, totally virgin site, needing to be transformed from scratch, that has never handled such an event in its life.

The assessment is given in chapter 4 of Locog’s environmental statement, the key planning document (downloadable from the council website). The criteria include the ability to use “existing facilities where possible;” the ability to “provide facilities which meet International Federation and IOC standards;” the ready availability of public transport, the need to ensure “no potentially significant impact on amenity for local residents” and the need to avoid “potentially significant environmental constraints.”

That’s clear enough, then – Windsor Great Park it is! As the document admits, Windsor “has existing facilities which could be used… there are public transport services… approximately 0.3 miles from the venue… there would be no temporary loss of public amenity.”

The stunning fact is that even in Locog’s own assessment, Windsor scores higher than Greenwich Park on facilities and the ability to host the contest, and the same on all the other criteria I’ve mentioned.

And the reality, of course, is that Windsor outscores Greenwich on most of those other criteria too. Completely dishonestly, the Locog assessment scores Windsor and Greenwich the same for “impact on amenity for local residents.” But while large parts of Greenwich Park will be closed for eight months, and smaller parts for five years, no local resident in Windsor would lose a single inch of park for so much as a single day if the Olympics were held there. As the document itself admits, the Windsor site which would be used for the Games “is not currently open to the public.”

Furthermore, the number of local residents around the Windsor site, though not nil, is vastly lower than the number of people living around Greenwich Park, and the traffic problems the event would cause in Windsor are far lower than in Greenwich.

Equally dishonestly, Windsor and Greenwich are given the same score for “environmental constraints.” But they would not have to chop bits off any trees to put in a cross-country course at Windsor, or level any ground to build a showjumping arena.

There is, admittedly, one criterion I haven’t mentioned on which Greenwich scores higher than Windsor – that of “close proximity to the Olympic Park.” The sole, slender thread justifying the despoilation of Greenwich is the mantra of a “compact Games” with riders able to live in the Olympic village and be “competitors, not commuters.” But this is simply not a good enough reason to ignore the advantages of Windsor.

Most riders will, in any case, not live in the Olympic village – they will stay with their horses; and since Greenwich Park is too small to stable them all, many are likely to be widely dispersed across south London. Even the Olympic village is a 25-minute commute away from Greenwich Park. The planning application predicts there will be 35,000 competitor vehicle movements to the Park during Games time – also suggesting that there will be a certain amount of commuting going on.

If the “compact Games” slogan were taken to its logical extreme, we would have the rowers on the Thames at Woolwich – never mind if they drowned in the tides or got run over by the ferry. The rowers are, in fact, going to – well, quite near Windsor, as it happens. They won’t be wedged into the Olympic village – they’ll be in spacious and almost-new student accommodation blocks at Royal Holloway College, in Egham. If the equestrianism was at Windsor, the riders could be there, too

The fact is that the riders could stay much closer to their competition venue in Windsor than in Greenwich. Royal Holloway College is five minutes’ drive from Windsor Great Park – and, contrary to another dishonest claim in the planning application, there’s plenty of room.

The only other argument produced for choosing the massively inferior site at Greenwich is the need to host the showjumping element of the modern pentathlon in London. This is true, but a red herring. The riding part of the modern pentathlon does need to be in London to be near the other four sports which make up the event. But a pentathlon riding arena is far simpler and cheaper than an equestrian one, reflecting the fact that the entire horse part of the pentathlon takes just three hours over the whole Games (90 minutes each for men and women.)

This year’s modern pentathlon World Championships – a “class A” event equivalent to the Olympics – are being held in the athletics stadium at Crystal Palace at a total cost to the taxpayer (for all five events, not just the riding) of £660,000. They could put the horse bits of the pentathlon there, or in The Valley – or indeed in a big enough back garden.

In short, Locog is asking for planning permission for a venue which is not just destructive, but which even they concede is inferior to the alternatives.