Examination of Witnesses (Questions 140
- 159)
THURSDAY 27 JANUARY 2000
MR BOB
STUBBS AND
MR ROD
SHEARD
140. One thing that is crucial, I will come
on to sightlines in a minute, the stadium in Australia has clearly
been built after a successful Olympic bid, it was built clearly
with the Olympics in mind?
(Mr Sheard) That is right. What most people do not
realise is that after the Olympics this year we will spend another
$75 million on converting it from Olympics or from athletics to
a more rectilinear based sports stadium and you will never be
able to hold athletics ever again in Sydney. There is no legacy
in the Sydney stadium for athletics.
141. Mr Stubbs, you have discussed already with
Claire Ward the issue of the BOA and their disappointment, which
they expressed to us last week, at not being more closely involved.
Can you tell us a little bit about the Monitoring Committee which
was set up to deal with the Wembley Stadium project? As I understand
it, it has met three times. You have kindly provided us with your
minutes of the meeting, I assume, on 20 May. They came as an appendix
to your evidence. I do not know whether they are your minutes
or departmental minutes?
(Mr Stubbs) I am not sure.
142. The Secretary of State has refused our
request to receive those.
(Mr Stubbs) Probably our minutes then.
143. Can you tell us a little bit about the
Monitoring Committee and what was discussed at it?
(Mr Stubbs) I think generally its use was as a vehicle
to communicate up and down the chain between us, Sport England
and Government, DCMS, in particular the Secretary of State and
the Sports Minister as to where we were in the project, what issues
were facing us, crucial issues such as planning, funding, issues
to do with the Task Force. So although clearly it got involved
in looking at the design, it looked very much at the strategic
level rather than the detailed level. It was effectively a forum
on which we updated Government as to what the issues were and,
if appropriate, what assistance Government could give us in helping
us take the project forward.
144. Some of the issues which subsequently became
important, such as sightlines, configuration of the stadium seating,
were they discussed at the Monitoring Committee?
(Mr Stubbs) To some extent. Because it was at a strategic
level effectively we only discussed the deck solution, of how
that would work, the time frame and the cost.
145. That was discussed at the Committee?
(Mr Stubbs) That had been discussed. Certainly it
was discussed with the Secretary of State in June or July.
146. Had anyone raised any concerns at any of
the Monitoring Committees about the viability of it?
(Mr Stubbs) I think it would be fair to say that the
Secretary of State was never completely comfortable with it as
a solution, not based on any technical issue but based more on
an intuitive gut feel. He did not feel it was comfortable. I think
that is largely understandable, the model he probably had in his
head was something like Stade de France with retractable seating
and it did take a good while to convince the Secretary of State
that this was an appropriate solution to the athletics issue.
147. But he was convinced because at the launch
on 29 July, as we all know, he described it as "a stunning
design" and he said also it would be "a magnificent
venue for athletics as well as football". Presumably at that
stage you were confident that the designs had been accepted? The
former Minister for Sport told us last week that he was happy
with the design and you thought that everything was all ready
to go.
(Mr Stubbs) It is absolutely clear that we would not
have launched the design on July 29, I think it was, unless we
had the full support of both Government and Sport England. That
was a precondition for us going forward. I am in no doubt that
we had the full support at that point.
148. When were you first made aware that the
new Minister for Sport intended to reopen it and appoint Ellerbe
Becket?
(Mr Stubbs) From what I recall the report was presented
on December 1. I was probably aware four weeks before that.
149. I want to go back to when the decision
was taken to appoint Ellerbe Becket. First of all, is it true
that you recommended Ellerbe Becket as a suitable company to carry
out an independent report?
(Mr Stubbs) Yes. As Tony said, when we interviewed
them for the job of stadium architect we had no problem with their
technical expertise. I cannot recall whether we recommended them
but we were completely comfortable with their technical competence.
150. While they were writing their Report presumably
you dealt with them and provided them with information, they saw
your designs?
(Mr Stubbs) Yes.
(Mr Sheard) If I can clarify that. Firstly, bringing
in a firm of architects to do a review of these buildings is very
difficult, in fact we welcome it because it allows all of us to
sleep at night once someone else has nitpicked all over it. The
only difference here was that they were given two weeks and in
Sydney they were given nine months. In Cardiff they were given
about five months, Cardiff is a considerably smaller stadium.
So the system was starting to creek, I think, when Ellerbe Becket
accepted that commission and accepted taking on board a review
in two weeks of the world's most complicated stadium when the
previous world's most complicated stadium, which was Sydney, took
nine months. At that stage, I should think, I cannot remember
the exact number, we had hundreds of drawings as you can imagine.
It was just patently impossible for any review architect to be
able to analyse that number of drawings of such a complicated
building in that period of time. We tried to give them as much
help as we could. We gave them some number of drawings. We even
sent one of our chaps up to their office to sit down with them
to try and explain it. It was pretty clear that they were getting
log jammed really fairly early on and they were saying "Look
these meetings are really not going to be that useful to us, let
us examine everything we can and then we will perhaps prepare
our draft report and sit down with you and go through it"
which we thought was a perfectly reasonable way of doing it. Unfortunately
that never happened, for us to have a chance of reviewing it with
them or reviewing their first observations never really came about.
We gave them all the help we could but, to be honest, it was not
a great deal of help because they just could not really cope in
the time.
151. As Mr Stubbs said, the report was subsequently
shown to you on 1 December, as I understand it. You were called
to a meeting with the Secretary of State before he made the statement
to the House?
(Mr Stubbs) Yes, we saw it half an hour before the
Secretary of State arrived and I think the meeting lasted approximately
an hour.
152. Do you know what other advice the Secretary
of State had before he made his statement to the House?
(Mr Stubbs) No knowledge of that, no.
153. Would it have helped if you had earlier
sight of the Ellerbe Becket report?
(Mr Stubbs) I think it would have helped enormously.
My view, from the professional protocol, we are shown that kind
of report and are allowed to respond to it. We responded at the
meeting and said that in our view the report was fundamentally
flawed. The Secretary of State gave us 14 days to present our
views.
154. I will come on to that in a second. Do
you know when the Ellerbe Becket report was made available to
Ministers?
(Mr Stubbs) I had the impression, I cannot remember
where I got this from, a week or ten days.
155. It was a week before. Perhaps I can just
quote a letter from the Chief Executive of UK Sport to the Committee.
He was given the report on 23 November, which was a week before.
He contacted the Minister for Sport, and I quote: "... who
instructed me not to take it to any of the parties concerned until
Ministers were in a position to consider its findings and deliver
their judgment". Why do you think the Minister for Sport
took the decision that it was better that you should not see the
Report?
(Mr Stubbs) I have no idea.
156. Right. On 1 December the Secretary of State
made his statement to the House effectively blowing open the whole
idea that athletics could take place. He gave four or five reasons
as to why the stadium was not suitable for athletics based on
the Ellerbe Becket findings. If I might, I would like to take
you through them one by one. The first one was the sightlines.
There has been a great deal of talk about sightlines, and how
sightlines work. In your presentation to us last week you described
the minimum requirement of the C60 sightline and you said you
had worked throughout your design of the stadium on that sightline
on the inner track on the bend, is that correct?
(Mr Stubbs) That is correct, yes.
157. Did you see a reply from the Minister for
Sport yesterday to the Member who represents Wembley, and I will
quote it to you, she says "Based on the ideal focal point
at ground level on the outside edge of the running track, the
independent report submitted by DLA Ellerbe Becket confirms that
the proposal put forward by Wembley Stadium to provide 80,000
in athletics mode would reduce the C value ...". The Minister
believes that the ideal focal point is on the outside of the bend
rather than the inside of the bend. Were you informed of that
at any stage during the design of the stadium?
(Mr Sheard) No, not in that sense. The key word there
is "ideal" because it is hard to say that is not an
ideal. The reality was that we were trying to find a stadium which
was a practical solution. C60 is accepted around the world for
a large stadium as a practical solution. The focal point being
on the inside or second lane is also a practical solution. The
most recently purpose built stadium in the world, Johannesburg,
which does not have any compromise with football it is a purely
athletics stadium, is built with a focus point on the inside track,
so is Stade de France.
158. Are you aware of any stadium in the world
that has its focal point, the C60, on the outside track?
(Mr Sheard) The only condition where you would get
a focal point on the outside track is where you have a huge event
like the Olympics which can pay for it, where you demolish the
end stands after the event. Stadium Australia is that, as I say
we are going to spend $73 million to do that.
159. Ellerbe Becket in their report suggested
that this was a BOA requirement?
(Mr Sheard) That may or may not be a BOA requirement
but certainly it is not an IOC or an IAAF specific requirement.
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