Examination of witnesses (Questions 120
- 131)
WEDNESDAY 27 OCTOBER 1999
MR ROBERT
AYLING and MS
JENNIE PAGE
120. May I turn to the Skyscape which looked
sensational yesterday. You have 100 events planned for that. That
sounds like Saturdays and Sundays for the whole year. What is
the plan because it is hard on the local community if that is
the case.
(Ms Page) Let me explain. In addition to being used
throughout the day, whenever we open both cinemas and Skyscape
for the playing of the Blackadder film, we have identified
100 nights during the year when it would be possible to have separately
ticketed events in the Skyscape when the Dome is shut. So, in
actual fact, it is not Saturdays and Sundays throughout the year.
It is in the low season period when you are only opening the Dome
until 6, 6.30 in the evening, and then you have an evening—or
indeed a through-the-night session if you so wish—when you
can open it. It would only be the case that it would be used,
I suspect, either for film or for concerts. In film mode each
cinema holds 2,500, so the maximum number of people you would
have if you were having, say, a film season is 5,000, if you were
running both cinemas to capacity. If you are running it in concert
mode, one of the two cinemas has a flying screen which lifts up
and reveals a 20-metre cube performance stage on which you can
put on a concert, be it classical or pop. It is more likely to
be pop because it has not been designed long-term for classical.
This allows you to have an audience of 3,300. Those numbers are
very small in terms of the impact they make on local people and
the acoustics of Skyscape are such that we are very satisfied
that noise will not carry from it.
121. Is this Skyscape a temporary permanent
building? Does it come down or is it a permanent temporary building?
(Ms Page) It is a kit of parts. What it is is that
it is demountable and re-erectable in different configurations,
which are most likely to be smaller elsewhere, and its components
will have a continuing life as smaller concert venues, much as
the concert venues as created in front of the Power Station last
year for the Prom concerts.
(Mr Ayling) It is a temporary building which has potentially
a long life.
122. Indeed, but as part of the Festival of
Britain celebrations, sadly we took down Skyline. We took down
some of the great things which we did not then put up anywhere
else. You are saying it will come down? It is up to the owners
to say, "It could go anywhere. We hope we can find a site."?
(Ms Page) Indeed. We are quite clear that it will
be reused or its component parts reused. I do not think it would
reconfigure anywhere else on the scale that we have at the Dome,
but we cannot envisage a circumstance where anybody else will
want a temporary theatre seating two and a half thousand people
apiece.
Mr Keen
123. Could I come back to ticketing again. I
imagine that the tickets would be printed, as required, as airline
tickets are printed at the travel agent, at the Lottery terminals.
You seem to be saying that you may have a problem where one outlet
is sold out and another one still has tickets remaining. It would
be an awful shame not to fill the Dome on those occasions. Am
I correct in that assumption? That they are all preprinted and
distributed already?
(Ms Page) The tickets are printed on a specific stock
which is designed to avoid fraud and, quite clearly, at the Lottery
outlets are printed on the spot when you buy your ticket. The
other methods of distribution have access to machines which print
in this format. What Mr Ayling was saying was we have, quite properly,
with people like our transport partners told them, "We will
hold X thousand tickets for you and you can plan on being able
to sell those." The question which has to be asked, and I
think it is one we do need to address with our travel partners,
is if you go for example to a railway station and try and buy
a combined package, which is a ticket to the Dome plus your travel
ticket, and that allocation has run out, what does the train operator
do? What they can do is be transferred to our call centre and
our call centre is a sort of nerve centre of the entire system
and I would hope they would be able to, if sufficiently far in
advance, pull tickets off from a reserve list from somebody else.
What we do not want to do is limit the ability of our transport
partners, who have worked hard to make and are continuing to work
hard to make advantageous ticket packages available to the public
by making it more difficult for them to know where they are with
their own allocation. We would not be wanting to withdraw from
them.
124. I understand. I am also concerned about
the 2 o'clock deadline. What concerns me is the amount of people
along the river who are going to head inevitably for Covent Garden
and Soho. Do you agree that it needs some encouragement to pubs
to put on entertainment to very late to try and take some of those
numbers otherwise the West End is going to be absolutely chaotic?
(Ms Page) Quite clearly while we are organising the
events on the river with a lot of partners we are not and nor
indeed can we aim to govern what happens in the whole of London
on our own. It is not for the company to do that. It is quite
clear that the Government Office for London, the Department for
Culture Media and Sport and the Department of Transport as departments
of state are involved. The Pan-London Group, which looks at all
of these issues, is in fact chaired by Keith Hill and he, I know,
is concerned to make sure that all of these things work and pull
together. It is perhaps a question that would be better addressed
to him than to us. All we can do is be responsible for the entertainment
and for making sure that we get the right publicity for it.
125. As we get near to the opening date are
you nearer to knowing whether it is likely that the Millennium
Experience will be extended past 31 December 2000?
(Mr Ayling) I think that we will continue to work
on the assumption that this is for 366 days. If there is overwhelming
demand obviously the question of extension will be something which
we will have to consider but it is far too early to think about
that now. I think that we need to sell tickets for 366 days. We
have at least 12 million tickets to sell.
126. Some have been sold already so it is less
than 12 million.
(Mr Ayling) When we have we shall have reached another
milestone and we can think again.
Mrs Golding
127. Choosing the site of the Dome has given
regeneration to an area of London that has badly needed it. Going
down there yesterday it is obviously going to have an enormous
effect on local people. It was a very bad unemployment black spot.
Have you any idea of figures of local people being employed there?
(Ms Page) Yes. We have joined with the Government
Office for London and with the London Borough of Greenwich to
sponsor some long range and serious research into the economic
regenerative effects and in particular the employment effects
of regeneration. On advice we are looking at it taking not only
the Dome into account but also the other developments which have
been accelerated on the peninsular by reason of the speeding up
of the decontamination in order to allow the Dome to happen. Of
course, one has to make reference to the new Sainsbury's at the
bottom of the peninsular, the new hotel that is going up, the
planned multiplex cinema and of course the Millennium Village,
all of which is already planned or is operational and a lot of
the jobs will be created there. In proportionate terms, however,
the Dome itself is by far the biggest creator of jobs and the
initial flash result from the economic research which was announced
on Monday shows that some 13,000 jobs have been created by those
developments, primarily the Dome, through the construction period
and through the planned operation period of the Dome plus the
operation of the sites. As far as the Dome itself is concerned,
we reckon that in the construction period something like 25 per
cent of the jobs have gone in the Thames Gateway area. So that
covers not only Greenwich, quite clearly, but north of the river
as well. There are fewer in terms of the percentage of local businesses
that have benefited during that period but that is almost inevitable
because in the construction phase we were dealing with very large
multi-national steel construction and erection companies and so
on of which there is not an industry in south east London. I think
smaller companies are now benefiting. We expect to be able to
say more by the end of this year about the next stage down because
so far the questionnaires have gone only to the main principal
contractors of NMEC and we are now investigating subcontractors
of those contractors through which many, many more jobs are being
created to get a full total. We are very very pleased that we
work closely with an organisation called GLLAB which is Greenwich
Local Labour and Business which was created by Greenwich Council
and a large number of people have got jobs through that one-stop
shop for jobs in the Dome site. We worked also with a pre-experience
training scheme which meant that many local people were able to
train in interview techniques before getting to the stage of interviewing
to be a host at the Dome and indeed we have already had 100 people
through that scheme who have been offered jobs at the Dome in
the year 2000 and there will be many more because of course we
have only got 120 hosts on the books at the moment and we will
have between 1,000 and 2,000 by the time we open. We think that
there will be lots of people who will get jobs and get training
which will stand them in good stead generally in the tourism and
leisure industry because London always needs them.
Chairman: I wish North West Water in
its futile and stupid planning application to build a waterside
business park could approach anywhere near the precision you have
just provided for the Committee. Claire Ward, final question.
Ms Ward
128. Who is it that needs to be persuaded as
far as the commercial companies are concerned that the fair in
the Mall should stay open longer than 2 o'clock?
(Ms Page) What we need to do is get the agreement
of the emergency services and Royal Parks that this is a good
idea.
Chairman
129. Thank you. Derek Wyatt has already offered
you congratulations and I would like to add to that. In 29 years
in Parliament and 18 years in Opposition and on the front bench
I have rarely, if ever, seen such a level of absolute competence
as we have been able to observe on our visits to your site during
the last two years and although we shall continue these inquiries
and ask searching questions and where necessary be critical in
our reports I would like to say to you, Jennie Page, that you
have bestowed credibility and credit on public service of a kind
which I wish others would emulate. Thank you very much.
(Ms Page) Chairman, I am speechless!
Mrs Golding: At last!
Mr Maxton: It is not Lady Page yet!
Mr Fraser
130. But it might be.
(Ms Page) Chairman, you have found the only way to
shut me up!
Mr Maxton: I do not believe that.
Ms Ward
131. He is not normally that nice to witnesses!
(Ms Page) Thank you very much indeed.
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