I am delighted to have the opportunity to talk this morning about the creation of the Dome at Greenwich and to highlight the way in which the Dome is acting as a catalyst for the regeneration of the Greenwich peninsula and the Thames Gateway.

I would like to take this opportunity to pass on my congratulations to John Walker, on his recent appointment as BURA’s new Chief Executive.

The Dome project grew from the wasteland of the Greenwich peninsula in East London in1997 - the result of years of lobbying and planning by Greenwich Council and agonising by the Millennium Commission. A £399 m grant of Lottery money made possible a scheme to build and operate the Millennium Experience; the balance of the budget being raised through the private sector and commercial receipts.

From the moment the decision to build the Dome was taken, its impact on the surrounding area became apparent. Within months the site was cleared of contamination; Norman Foster’s transport interchange grew out of the mud; the designs for the Millennium Village were laid out.

The Dome structure was topped out in June 1998, just a year after building on site had started. Tony Blair, declared it "Too good to pull down" - thus setting the stage for a long term legacy for the project.

Throughout the whole process, people said it could not be done. They said we would not get business to back it. And yet, we raised over £160 million in sponsorship: more than double the previous record in this country.

They said we would not complete the super-structure on time. We did. They said there would be no content. That we would never have 14 zones, with an awe-inspiring central show, a two cinema auditorium showing the new Blackadder film every day, a sculpture park or a spiral of innovation. But we have.

It has not – as I hardly need remind myself - been plain sailing. Could an enterprise on this scale ever have been pain or trouble-free?

As a visitor attraction, the Dome has attracted its fair share of critics. Yes, it encountered plenty of teething problems at the beginning of the year. Yes, visitor numbers – despite being the largest of any visitor attraction in the country by some way – have not hit target levels.

But with the first quarter of the year gone, the rough edges have been ironed out and significant improvements have been made to the visitor experience. Independent opinion polls of visitors continue to show that the great majority enjoy their time at the Dome and would recommend it to their friends.

The wish to mark and celebrate the new Millennium was of course the central to the case for building the Dome. And many people will, no doubt, judge the Dome by its performance as a visitor attraction in the year 2000. The quality of the Millennium Experience is of great importance. But the year long exhibition is not the sole test of the Dome. A key reason why Greenwich was picked as the site was because of the potential the Dome would provide for regenerating Europe’s largest tract of derelict wasteland.

Even if the Dome enjoyed a trouble-free 2000, it would hardly be regarded as a success in the longer term if it lay unused and unwanted in the years that followed. In addition, we should look more widely, beyond the structure itself, to its impact not just on the rest of the Peninsula, but also on Greenwich, East London and indeed the UK as a whole.

The well publicised problems of the first few months should not obscure the scale and extent of the heroic achievement of the people working on the Dome who have delivered a fully working visitor experience on a scale never before seen in the this country.

£300m worth of construction contracts have been awarded as a result of the Dome. The vast majority of these to UK companies.

13,000 employees have gained work in construction and operation of projects on the Greenwich Peninsula.

An estimated 25,000 jobs will be created in Greenwich over the next 7 years.

An estimated £1bn boost to the UK economy from foreign visitors in 2000, which will benefit the whole country.

And millions of pounds raised to tackle child poverty and neglect through the national programme of events backed by the Dome’s sponsors.

The Dome is a great construction achievement. It must be the most famous and distinctive millennium building in the world.

A triumph of British engineering, it is the largest suspended net structure anywhere, with a floor equivalent of 12½ football pitches. Constructed in less than a year, using the skill and ingenuity of British businesses. One of the first contracts we let was to Keller’s of Coventry, for the provision of piling. Scores of other UK firms have played their part in getting the Dome ready.

The Dome is unique in terms of design and construction and I was delighted that Buro Happold won ‘The Royal Academy of Engineering MacRobert Award 1999', Britain’s premier prize for engineering, especially as it is only the second time that a construction project has won this award.

The Dome site at Greenwich has offered a unique opportunity to demonstrate to an international audience that an undertaking of this scale can be developed within the framework of a positive environmental policy. From the remediation of a 70 hectare city centre site, to the creation of a new infrastructure based on the use of public transport, the principles of sustainability have been adopted from the outset of the project.

Locating the Dome on the Greenwich peninsula has helped regenerate a derelict and heavily contaminated site that had lain idle for more than 20 years. The Dome has worked closely with English Partnerships, the Government’s urban regeneration agency for England, to create a long term plan for mixed-use development.

The Dome has worked with Thames Water on a grey-water recycling scheme at the Dome, which mean all toilets in the Dome and the Plaza are flushed with reclaimed water.

The Dome is working with the Environment Agency to create a new and sustainable ecology for the Greenwich Peninsula riverbank. The company has adopted a "reduce, re-use and recycle" policy for waste management and services; and has used only Forestry Stewardship Council certified or equivalent timber.

Substantial efforts are being made to present a positive message on the importance of the environment to every visitor.

Three years on from the Dome’s conception, it is clear that the impact of the Dome is being felt far beyond its immediate neighbourhood. It is already a national asset for UK Plc and a major source of wealth creation.

The Dome presents an opportunity for the UK to demonstrate that it continues to lead the world in both traditional and cutting edge fields - it showcases the work of our manufacturing industries alongside the creative industries. It provides the opportunity for the tourism industry to highlight both our rich cultural heritage and more contemporary attractions.

We are now looking to the future.

In March of last year, we launched a competition to find a commercially viable, sustainable long-term use for the Millennium Dome site after the Millennium Experience closes at the end of 2000. After over seventy initial approaches, there is now a shortlist of 5.

The proposals are:

All the bids we considered were of a very high quality, reflecting the weight which the market attaches to this opportunity. The competition has clearly fired the imagination of major developers and operators, both in the United Kingdom and internationally. All of the successful shortlisted bids met the criteria that were set for this stage of the competition. The response to the competition and the make-up of the shortlist shows that the Dome is permanent and has a commercially sustainable future. We, the Government, hope to announce the winning proposal in the Summer.

Until 1997 the Peninsula was regarded by many as an unsuitable environment for sustainable, mixed-use development. After English Partnerships became involved as the landowner of the former British Gas site on the Peninsula, it took on the responsibility for land decontamination and site preparation for the Greenwich Peninsula developments as a whole.

English Partnerships has transformed the formerly derelict site into an area that is already beginning to flourish, with a variety of new developments – not least the Dome of course – community facilities and fresh ideas creating an exciting new urban quarter for London.

As part of this vision, it is the aim of all partners in the project – with the full backing of the Government - to ensure that the regeneration of the Peninsula delivers a high quality environment that is suited to people’s needs and which is innovative and sustainable – both environmentally and commercially.

The current Greenwich Peninsula masterplan envisages a wide-ranging mix of developments, some of which have already been completed, some of which are under construction and others that are yet to begin. Included amongst these are the Greenwich Millennium Village – which is well under way; the associated school and health centre – the former being the home for pupils from January 2001; the nearby Sainsbury’s store – which has recently won a national award for environmental sustainability; a new hotel; a multiplex cinema; a new ecology park; and a range of other recreational and community facilities.

All of these – which will continue to be added to – form a whole that demonstrates powerfully how ingenuity, determination, and constructive partnerships between the Government and the private sector can turn land that had been considered lost into a powerhouse of regeneration that will benefit the local community and businesses and much further afield.

I should add that fundamental to these benefits has been the impressive improvements that have been made to the public transport infrastructure serving the Peninsula:

• The new North Greenwich Underground station adjacent to the Dome, one of 9 new stations on the new Jubilee Line Extension, which not only encourages the use of public transport to the Dome but also provides a major boost for East London as a whole.

• The Millennium transit link, constructed to take state of the art guided buses from Charlton and Greenwich main line railway stations to the Dome.

• The new £2m pier to the east of the Dome, helping to bring the Thames back to life and become one of London’s main transport arteries again.

• The construction of a river walk and cycle way right the way around the peninsula which links into the existing river walkway and the expanding national network for cyclists.

Of course, these facilitate easy access to the Millennium Dome this year. But they have much longer term significance, especially the Jubilee Line extension and improvements to bus services. We hope that the new river services will also see a renaissance for the Thames as a primary mode of travel.

Of course, it is easy for me – as someone who has seen things taking shape but who doesn’t actually live in Greenwich - to get excited about what is happening there. But we all know that there is a down-side to any area of major development, with the inconvenience associated with building sites and increased construction traffic. And sometimes it is difficult to see how we – as individuals – will benefit from the finished product.

Independent research completed for the DETR last year showed that Greenwich residents were generally positive about the improved profile given to Greenwich by the Peninsula regeneration and their potential employment effects over the longer term. Businesses were also of the view that the extended profile of Greenwich was improving and that publicity about the Peninsula developments was changing the impression of outsiders.

More than £150 million of public money will have been spent on long term regeneration activity linked to the (non-Dome) Peninsula developments carried out to date. The outcome of this expenditure will include:

80 hectares of fully remediated and serviced land and 30 hectares of partially remediated land; nearly 1400 mixed tenure homes in the Millennium Village and a further 1,600 elsewhere on the Peninsula; development of over 50,000 square metres of floor-space for retail, community, leisure, or industrial uses; a wide range of environmental improvements, and; substantially increased employment opportunities, as I described earlier.

We also know from DETR research that many regeneration players in Greenwich and the Thames Gateway are developing and co-ordinating their plans and activities with other agencies, and in partnerships, to respond to the opportunities presented by the Peninsula developments. This will help secure the Government’s aim of lasting sustainable regeneration throughout the Thames Gateway.

There are three key aspects to this catalytic effect:

First, the Peninsula developments prompted consideration of the structure and operation of sub-regional partnerships – especially with respect to north-south relationships in the context of the three Regional Development Agencies with an interest in the Thames Gateway.

Second, the Peninsula developments induced a review of local partnerships; as a result, for example, some of the value of SRB programmes awarded in the late 1990s could be attributed to the Peninsula developments. This is equivalent to up to £50 million of additional investment from the total invested in the programmes over their lifetime.

Third, regeneration players are assessing the potential links between the developments on the Peninsula and the regeneration opportunities in adjacent areas.

The result is that Peninsula regeneration now appears to be acting as a genuine catalyst for comprehensive, sustainable regeneration in Greenwich and throughout London and the Thames Gateway.

We will continue to build on these solid foundations. For example you will be aware of the Government’s renewed commitment to the Thames Gateway, including the proposed new strategic partnership. I look forward to seeing the fruition of the Greenwich project and the spreading of its benefits in the years to come.

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