Examination of Witnesses (Questions 120 - 139)
WEDNESDAY 8 JULY 1998
MR ROBERT AYLINGand MS JENNIE PAGE.
Chairman
120. You talk about using your muscle power. Frankly, I think
you are going to have a great deal of muscle because I agree with
Mr Ayling that12 million may be a significant underestimation
of the number of people who are coming. I was very impressed when
we went to Glasgow. We were told that five million people attended
the Glasgow Garden Festival over a sixmonth period. Therefore,
I think the dimensions relating to your Dome may be large and
create a number of problems, including the potential travel ones.
On this are you using your muscle, as you put it, to try to get
packages which will include both people travelling from abroad
and from the regions in Britain, allin packages which people
can have in one wallet; in which they can have travel to London,
travel to the Dome, entry to the Dome, and the hotel accommodation
as well?
(Ms Page) We certainly are talking to all aspects of the
travel, tourism and leisure industry so there is that portfolio;
you could do the whole thing in one ticket. The negotiation is
there. A lot of people, however, will choose to provide different
bits of that themselves, reflecting their own circumstances. As
I am sure the Committee is aware, a very large number of overnight
stays in this country are the famous VFRs, the visiting friends
and relations. I foresee that everybody who has relations in the
London area is going to be using that facility to get to London
in the most economic way from their family's point of view. But
we have to make sure that those options are there for people who
want an all-in price. That includes dealing with the overseas
travel trade as well as with our own home-grown one.
Mr Fearn
121. Before I actually start my questions, I do remember after
I got on my hard hat and wellies when we came to see you, that
I asked a question on pricing. The figure that was bandied around
then was "could be in the region of £20". Mr Fabricant
is thinking of10, but I am sure that was the answer I got in the
general discussion when we were in your cabin. This is incidental
to the question I am going to ask you. Mine is on the Body Zone.
There has been great speculation about the body figure in the
sculpture which is going to form this zone. We have heard of one
figure. Now we hear of two figures. We hear of two figures which
are going to be joined. We now hear of Health and Safety Regulations
which are talking about how you get into the figure and how you
get out of figure; or how you get into both figures and come out
of another figure. It is quite speculative and has many avenues,
I think. Could you possibly tell us how it is going to be. This
is an important thing. When we looked at the Dome we were very
impressed, it is going to be a success, but now things are changing.
To change, someone must be, at this moment in time, thinking about
a new sculpture. Has the old one started? What is happening?
(Ms Page) If I may, I will comment on your comment before
we start. You will recollect that the circumstances in which we
were talking about ticket prices, we were talking about the competitive
market inside which the Dome sits. While the company is very convinced
of the unique attractiveness of the Millennium Experience and
its draw, we have to regard our market as being one which contains
a lot of other attractions. We were describing the circumstances
where you would look at the competitive pricing; and on a competitive
basis, prices in the region of15 or £20 are competitive with
a family day out at a place like Alton Towers or Chessington World
of Adventures. This is something which the company quite clearly
has to take into account. Turning to the question of the body,
if we had not got the body I think we would have had to invent
one from the point of view of the debating topic which it has
provided for a large number of people. The question of the actual
form of the body is still under very detailed negotiation with
the designers. It is something on which we would prefer not to
give any further details at this moment. Quite clearly, what is
crucially important at this stage, is to ensure that the visitor
flow arrangements, the visitors' safety arrangements and the interrelationship
of one experience with another - both from the point of view of
visitor attraction and also from the general Health and Safety
and timing and so on - is all absolutely right. So there is a
great deal of detailed work on all of that end of the business
which is crucial and is being closed down now. Beyond that the
exact form of the outward manifestation of the body is something
that will become clear only a little later.
122. We are talking about one body still?
(Ms Page) I am using body as a common noun, at the moment,
which can include the plural.
Mr Fearn: There has been a lot of conversation about the
fact that could it be male or could it be female and why should
it not be both? We have people from both genders saying we really
should represent both. So are there going to be two? That would
be a solution to that, to have two.
Mr Fabricant: Or it could be two males.
Mr Fearn: It could be.
Chairman
123. Before you answer Mr Fearn, may I seek to establish a point
which will be helpful for us tomorrow as well as today. Do I take
it that whatever answers you give today to Mr Fearn, or any other
Member of the Committee who wishes to question you on this matter,
that this will not be superseded tomorrow? Obviously it
will sort things out quite nicely if we can know that there is
no point in asking Mr Mandelson tomorrow, if he is not going to
have any more uptodate news than you can give us today.
I think you catch my drift.
(Mr Ayling) Mr Chairman, I very much hope that there is
a consistent set of evidence between today and tomorrow.
124. I am not for an instant, Mr Ayling, implying that there is
any scintilla of a possibility of an inconsistency. It is simply
a question of whether I allow the Committee to bother Mr Mandelson
about it tomorrow if he has nothing more to tell us on what you
are telling us today.
(Mr Ayling) It would be my expectation that he would not
be able to take the matter further than Ms Page has just taken
it, in answer to Mr Fearn's question.
Chairman: It is on the record now.
Mr Fearn
125. I will follow on. On transport I was interested also in the
Baby Dome. The Baby Dome is going to operate almost separately
in the evening and the night, and local transport is going to
bring and take away people from the Baby Dome at night. Has this
been well thought out? During the day we have seen the super-terminal
for the Dome. We know boats are coming along. But in the evening
for the Baby Dome, how are people going to get to and from the
Baby Dome?
(Ms Page) The company will be making an appropriate submission
to the London Borough of Greenwich in respect of the facility
which has been christened Baby Dome. When it does that, it will
need to make absolutely clear what the transport implications
for nonMillennium Experience operation of that space will
be. It is our belief that the principles which the company has
adopted, in respect of encouraging people not to think of using
their cars to get to the Greenwich Peninsula, will be the appropriate
policy in respect of the Baby Dome in the evening as well. Quite
clearly there is a radical difference between the number of people
who will be attracted to the Baby Dome and those expected in the
course of the day to the Millennium Experience. It is the difference
between 35,000 per day at the Millennium Experience and a maximum
capacity of 5,000 in the Baby Dome. The transport consequences
are consequently substantially less for only the Baby Dome opening
than they are for the entire Experience.
126. So what about parking cars, then? Is that a threemile
zone limit or has it been shortened now? The threemile zone
limit for parking, is that going to exist still in the evening?
(Ms Page) That will be subject to the planning permission
from the London Borough of Greenwich. I cannot comment until we
have, in actual fact, made a submission to Greenwich, and Greenwich
have opined on that.
127. Are you a bit late doing that or are you on time?
(Ms Page) No, we believe we are in plenty of time for doing
that.
128. The other question I want to ask is on the Spirit Zone. It
is not going to be very exciting, is it? Are people really going
to be attracted to that? There are going to be about three places
in the Dome where they will want to go. The Dream part is going
to be a bit of an attraction and the Body. Is the Spirit Zone
just going to be there because it has to be there, or is it going
to be an attraction as well?
(Ms Page) I have to disagree with you. I think the Spirit
Zone, as it is currently developing, will be extremely interesting
and a pull inside the Dome, not least because it will have one
of the most beautiful structures inside the Dome which of itself
will be interesting. We believe that the way the issues are being
challenged inside that area will also be open and inclusive and
encourage a lot of people to go through it.
129. Is there a serene atmosphere for it? We have not seen that
design. We have seen seven designs, I think, but we have not seen
that.
(Ms Page) You have seen the Spirit Zone design. It was
one of those which was published in February. It consists of a
space in which a variety of themes connected with the spirit can
be explored, on the basis of a brief which has been developed
in association with the Lambeth Group. In addition, this is a
space which is reflective and which is, in a sense, the end of
the experience you get in going through that zone.
130. So all religions and nonreligion will be interested
in that?
(Ms Page) We believe so, yes.
Ms Ward
131. When you published or produced the ideas and the models in
February for the contents of the Dome, many of us thought that
they were very good ideas. Now what we are seeing is actually
if the body or the human figure zone is anything to go
by those ideas were not well thought out. They have not
really been checked for their feasibility in terms of Health and
Safety. What assurances can you give us that the rest of the zones
are not going to start to crumble and be changed significantly
in the next few months, particularly as we have18 months to go
and you have just stated that you are still negotiating on the
details and, indeed, the figure or figures of the Body Zone. Are
they going to be radically different now from what you led us
to believe in February?
(Ms Page) I think it would be helpful if I make a couple
of general comments before turning to the specifics. The first
is that the creative process is of necessity an iterative one,
and one which needs a great deal of development. Sometimes there
are significant changes and sometimes there are not. What is crucial
is that there is a brief that the work is done in the most efficient
and imaginative way possible. That we move forward consistently
inside a creative timetable which makes sense. The work that was
done in time for the February launch was well considered but was
quite clearly still at a strategic level. As we move into greater
detail, the company of itself is beginning to think again about
the numbers of people going through. In particular, the response
to the body in February has convinced us that we absolutely have
to have a capacity in visitor flow terms, which will mean that
people can get through it. We do not want people to feel that
it is not accessible to them. That has led to a great deal of
detailed working by ourselves, the architects and the designers.
The second thing is that inevitably it will be some considerable
time before we get all the final approvals from people like the
Fire Service, the Health and Safety Service. All the work has
to take that into account. This is simply the way that getting
one's statutory approvals works. Crumbling is not a concept which
is, to my mind, appropriate for what is happening to the zones.
What we are attempting to ensure is that what we deliver is the
best that everybody possibly can want out of it. There will, of
course, be some changes but I think that is all to the good. What
we certainly do not want to do is to have an exhibition which
has been atrophied in early1998 and is not able to reflect the
most uptodate views of ourselves and the other people
who are involved in developing the Experience.
Chairman
132. Ossified rather than atrophied.
(Ms Page) Thank you for that correction, Chairman.
(Mr Ayling) If I may add one thought to the question.
There is quite proper and understandable interest, not least from
yourselves, to what is going to be there. We have been very anxious
to respond to that. The danger, of course, is that we will then
face exactly the question you have just asked us. By being fairly
open about some of the concepts Jennie Page talks about
them being at a strategic level the way these things work
is that quite detailed concepts are created, which go through
quite a rigorous process of trying to find out whether they are
going to work imaginatively; whether they are going to attract
people; whether they are going to be able to be done within a
budget; but it is all at a conceptual level. Then this will inevitably
change as you convert that into something which is very concrete.
We have described to people some quite conceptual ideas, which
I think have attracted a lot of interest and comment and, of course,
have allowed us to change them. We are then exposed to the criticism,
"You are changing your minds all the time." You cannot
have it both ways. We could wait until the whole thing is fixed
and then we announce it, as you might do for a show on the first
night. However, even a show goes through changes, public appearances
and public performances which change the eventual opening. It
is a very creative process. We want to have the very best result.
We want it to be as open as possible. We are confident that we
are on track and we can get there. Crumbling is not a word we
use.
Ms Ward
133. You have obviously had to sell these concepts, whatever the
content is going to be, to your sponsors. Has that had an effect
upon the level of sponsorship in terms of those particular zones
which are seen to be the most exciting? Have those attracted significant
amounts of interest from sponsors but those that are considered
to be less so, or which you have not described to us yet or are
not published, they are not seeing sponsors coming forward?
(Mr Ayling) No. It is not working quite like that. The
great thing about the content and the nature of the Dome Experience
is that it is going to reflect and appeal to a number of different
aspects of life. Just as there are many different commercial organisations
which operate in different fields, although it may be true that
we have been successful in tying down sponsorship for particular
aspects of the Dome, that is because the activities of those commercial
organisations are relevant to those particular parts of the Dome
and not because they are more exciting or more attractive to the
public than other parts. We feel that all of the proposed ideas
ought to be sufficiently attractive to people in different aspects
of commercial life for that not to be a problem.
134. And one of the things that the Select Committee have been
doing is to visit recently some of the Millennium Commission projects
out in the rest of the country. When the National Programme was
set up for the Millennium Commission, many of these ideas were
supposed to be linked in with the Dome. You talked a bit about
Our Town. How important that would be for many people in
the country who would want to come to the Dome on the day there
is a presentation or an exhibition on their particular area. Many
of the projects we have seen are very worthy in their own right
but from what I have seen so far only tenuously linked to the
Dome. What ideas have you got to create a better link between
the Dome and these other projects which, as I say, in many cases
are very, very good.
(Ms Page) We obviously need to distinguish between the
national activities which are associated with the Dome, which
are part of the company's remit and part of its budget, and the
capital projects which the Millennium Commission has funded separately
through the Capital Projects Grant Programme, many of which I
think you have seen in tours. The National Programme associated
with the Dome sponsorship will find a reflection in the zone with
which they are associated. So if one takes, for example, the UK
Skills Project, which is part of the Manpower sponsorship package,
that will quite clearly find a home in the zone of the Dome which
is about the future of work. Similarly, the programme which is
Schools Net 2000, which is sponsored by Tesco, will find a reflection
of its achievements in the zone of the Dome which is about learning.
The independent capital projects may be linked into the Dome in
different ways. For example, the major flagship projects. Several
of those have associations in terms of what they are attempting
to achieve. In particular, the science based projects in Newcastle,
in Doncaster, in Bristol, are talking about the future of different
aspects of science in ways which allow us to pool information
and indeed to encourage people, once they have been to the Dome,
perhaps to go on and find out more about a subject on a future
holiday by going to one of those centres. There is that sort of
link that can operate. Indeed, we would hope that we will, as
part of our encouragement of people to use the facilities in Britain,
encourage people who might otherwise not think of going to those
places, to regard it as part of a Millennium holiday or a Millennium
trail around the country. There are other projects which have
been funded by the Millennium Commission such as the Millennium
Forest of Scotland, the village halls, the village greens, and
so on. In themselves they do not have a link to what is going
on in the Dome, but somewhere in the Dome - quite probably in
the zone which we are talking about, local environment and local
communities - I do hope we will be able to provide a snapshot
of this massive range of things that is going on around the country.
This will be interesting and encouraging to people because, as
the Chairman has indicated, the Millennium is not just about the
Dome and the Experience. It is about this fantastic increase in
the amount of public involvement in making things happen, which
has been possible with the Millennium Commission grants.
Mrs Golding
135. Could I ask how many public meetings you have organised for
the people of Greenwich to come and talk to you about their concerns
and opportunities? I was a bit sceptical about this three-mile
parking zone. There are a lot of people with families who live
in the area who will want their families to visit. If there is
a limit on the number of cars able to park outside their houses,
people must obviously be thinking of this. They must already be
saying, "Do come down and see us but where are we going to
park the car?" It could be goodness knows where. You must
have a lot of concerns. The other question is work provision for
local people. One of the big opportunities for this was employment
for local people. Though there has been employment in the erecting
of the site, I am very concerned to see that the local people
have the maximum opportunity to be able to work on the site rather
than importing student from distant countries. It seems to me
that the local people have an opportunity here that they could
grasp, but there must be many questions they want to ask you.
Could you deal with that.
(Ms Page) The way in which we are involving local people
in Greenwich reflects advice which we received from the London
Borough of Greenwich and indeed from an organisation called the
Greenwich Millennium Trust. This organises a forum which brings
together all interested organisations within the entire area of
the borough, and allows for a regular meeting of representatives
of those organisations at which all aspects of the Experience
and how it is developing are discussed. We make regular reports
to those. Those take place once every two months. We are always
represented by at least two people. So using the normal channels
of communication, which are the local civic societies, the local
branches of national organisations, there is an established channel
of communication. The local borough also conveys information about
what is going on via their newsletter. We have published local
newsletters and we now have a programme for publishing more of
those. We quite clearly need to be sure that what we are doing
is tying in to the local processes of information which are handled
by the borough and not, as it were, tripping over their feet.
That is a crucial part of our strategy. Clearly, in any of these
developments, parking and local transport is always a major matter
for debate and discussion with local people through those mechanisms.
Turning to the question of employment, it has always been our
intention to make the maximum possible opportunities available.
We have two local employment agencies that are run by the Council,
which are designed to increase local employment opportunities.
These are actually located on-site at the moment. Quite interestingly,
for a building as big as the Dome, the size of the workforce to
date is not substantial because of the method of construction.
Notwithstanding that, we have worked hard to ensure that even
within a relatively limited work force there have been opportunities
for local people. Here we mean not just people from Greenwich
but people from the whole of the Thames Gateway area, which is
the south east of London on both sides of the River. When we get
to the actual operation, of course, the numbers of employees goes
up dramatically. This is because what we are talking about is
that there are likely to be 2,000 direct employees of the company
and another 3,000 employed by the catering companies who will
be working onsite. We are expecting to make sure that those
opportunities do maximise the chances for local employment and
that we provide the appropriate training. This will ensure that
not only do people get a job for the year, but that they come
out with the sort of experience that will be saleable at a later
stage in the broader London economy and, in particular, in the
tourism and leisure economy. This is very high up on our list
of priorities. That is something we talk regularly to local people
about and to the local borough.
136. Could I ask you again, will the Board be having public meetings
for the general public to come in?
(Ms Page) It has not been the Board's policy to do that
because we believe that in the situation of Greenwich the appropriate
forum is the Greenwich Millennium Trust forum. We propose to go
on using that mechanism.
137. I have some concerns about that, in that very often the niggles
of some of the members of those fora do not get transmitted.
(Ms Page) I think it is worth saying that in addition
to all of that mechanism we do, of course, have a Visitor Centre
right in the centre of Greenwich, which is the Pepys Building
associated with the Royal Naval Hospital, next to the Cutty
Sark. It opens on to the street. Anybody can come in and talk
and register their views and say what their concerns are. We have
had over100,000 visitors between its opening in November and the
end of March. If local people have local concerns they can actually
go and register them with the staff there. There is a dialogue,
which does not have to go through a meeting structure, which allows
local people to get their views across. I believe - and I have
not heard to the contrary on a single instance - that local people
have found the staff at the Visitor Centre very open and very
informative, and very happy to take views and to carry them back
into the main part of the company.
138. Perhaps. Could I just ask one more question, Chairman. That
is the name of the terminus. We thought it was going to be Greenwich.
We really think it ought to be called Dome or at least
have it incorporated. Are you having discussions about that?
(Mr Ayling) Yes. I think there is a very high degree of
sympathy to the point you have just made, within the company.
To call it anything other than Dome seems to me, and all of us,
a missed opportunity. But life is never quite as simple as you
would want it to be and we are trying very hard that there is
a proper name for this station. The difficulty is that the decisions
have been taken, (or might have been taken), which involve further
expenditure if you change it, but we have not given up.
Mrs Golding: Thank you very much.
Mr Faber
139. Could I ask about a particular issue, which we discussed
when we visited the Dome, which worried me; and which worries
me more having visited the Dome and having listened today. That
is, the whole concept of the Dome and the experience as it affects
children, and as children will visit. Clearly you are hoping that
families will come and kids will come in push chairs right up
to teenagers. It does seem to me that there is a distinct lack
of anything in the Dome for children to do. Young children are
not going to want to dwell very long in the Work or Finance Zones,
to be absolutely blunt. They will have the pleasure of watching
the entertainment in the centre, the Cirque du Soleil or
whatever it happens to be. You have mentioned in the past that
there will be soft play areas, but children grow out of soft play
areas at a certain age, and if parents are spending 10, 15 or
20 quid they will be quite annoyed to come to the Dome and have
their kids running round in a soft play area all day. I am worried
about the price points of the various catering outlets which there
are. Are they going to be bunched up? Families are going to want
to sit in a certain food outlet rather than in another one. It
does seem, given your own concerns about visitor flows, that you
are going to have a problem because kids are naturally going to
grab a place from one part of the Dome. It is an enormous area.
It is going to be absolutely exhausting for them, as it is, getting
around it; and if they are going to be there for five hours or
so there is a lot of walking involved, as we all know only too
well. What is going to be the draw for families bringing young
children?
(Ms Page) The objective is to provide an experience
which has attractions in it which do cover all age ranges. It
is obviously necessary that they cover all age ranges. We need
to present all the subjects in a manner, which allows for an appreciation
at a fairly quick level appropriate for a child, perhaps with
a particular child story associated with it. I cannot remember
whether it was the Exhibition of 1951 which had the story of the
sixpence in it. You can, in actual fact, make that Finance Zone
have a strand in it, which does appeal to children and has handson
experience which is appropriate for children and not for adults,
as well as being able to tell a more complicated story at a deeper
level for people who are much more interested in their specific
area. That is absolutely part of the remit for all of our designers.
They know they have to have a story which can be picked up quickly,
a headline story as it were, as well as a story in depth. That
headline story has to be accessible to children. Quite clearly
it is going to be a site which has a lot of different sorts of
experiences, so it is not a sense that the soft play area is presented
as being part of the zone. It is really that it is a supplementary,
which is as much necessary for visitor comfort as the catering
facilities, the merchandising, and all the other facilities which
one needs to have in a modern society and a modern tourist attraction.
So we hope that the story will be there and we believe it will
be there and there will be versions of the Dome which are instantly
accessible to children at certain ages. Of course, you are quite
right that you need different forms of entertainment for different
age ranges. I have a concept of something I have unfortunately
nicknamed the "teen creche" which is where there
will be some online games which will actually have an underlying
serious message but which are perhaps only accessible to people
who have already been able to play them online off the site.
So there will be attractions for that sort of age range as well.
Turning to the catering, quite clearly just as we are with entertainment
levels in the zones, we have to provide facilities which cater
for families, for people who want to graze on the hoof and for
people who want a proper sit-down meal and the catering strategy
does allow for that and the catering spaces both inside the Dome
and outside the Dome are distributed in a fashion which is designed
to minimise the number of queues and the delays that might be
experienced in certain types of catering.
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