Examination of witness (Questions 40 -
63)
WEDNESDAY 24 NOVEMBER 1999
PROFESSOR STEPHEN
CROW, CB
40. You want to have your cake and eat it, as
far as I can see. You are having more people there but you think
there is going to be less traffic.
(Professor Crow) Planning is all about trying to do
that. What I am hoping is that, by good planning, we can for example
make sure that our new settlements are large ones, grouped appropriately
according to existing transport facilities and that, where we
have proposed areas for planned expansion, these areas can be
readily served with public transport, where they will be well
grouped in with other urban areas.
Mr Gray
41. Like Micheldever in Hampshire, a new town
with no roads?
(Professor Crow) Yes, negatively.
42. Tens of thousands of people who live in
Micheldever and work in Portsmouth, Southampton, Andover and Winchester
will have no means of getting there and no trains.
(Professor Crow) That is just the sort of thing we
need to avoid. The houses that need to be built need to be built
where they can have good public transport and where the journeys
that have to be made can be short journeys. People are going to
move to work wherever they are. What we hope to do is to have
the housing concentrated in the larger settlements, where journeys
can be shorter.
Mr Randall
43. Perhaps I can turn to green belts? What
do you think the purpose of a green belt is?
(Professor Crow) Funnily enough, working on the green
belt was the first job I ever did when I came into planning in
1957. I can almost quote the circular off by heart. It is to prevent
sprawl into the countryside.
44. Do you think the nature of it has changed
in that period, since you first started?
(Professor Crow) Things have changed. The original
green belts were based on the relatively short journeys to work
and we are faced with a situation that green belt could lead to
leapfrogging beyond the green belt. However, we considered that
point, I hope thoroughly. We came to the conclusion that the evidence
before us did not justify any changes of principle to the green
belts as they stand at present.
45. You do not really think there should be
any relaxation in green belt?
(Professor Crow) I do not.
46. Would you accept that most green belts in
the south-east are already under very strong pressure indeed?
(Professor Crow) I know that from my experience as
a planner.
47. As far as you are concerned, the green belt
once in place should remain there and is sacrosanct?
(Professor Crow) There would have to be some very
strong reasons to go into it, but we did not see such strong reasons.
48. Do you think the green belt should be extended
in the south-east?
(Professor Crow) We did not receive any evidence on
that point that would lead to saying it should be.
Chairman
49. Are you confident that the extra houses
that you are suggesting can all be fitted in without going into
the green belt at all?
(Professor Crow) Yes.
Mr Gray
50. What about rural buffer zones?
(Professor Crow) Rural buffer zones are locally put
forward as pseudo green belt on a local basis. One of our proposals
in particular, the area of planned expansion in the Crawley/Gatwick
area, does of course stand in one such area.
Miss McIntosh
51. Do you accept that there was fierce criticism
for your proposals, when they were first published, by the SERPLAN
planning authorities?
(Professor Crow) I know, and some of it has been quite
scurrilous.
52. Has it made you revise your projections?
(Professor Crow) No. In all of this, I have heard
no evidence that we did not hear before the panel. No, I have
not changed.
53. You said that you see enormous economic
opportunities for development at Stansted Airport. Do you accept
that anybody working at the airport can simply not afford the
cost of the housing which is projected? It is beyond their reach
and the incomes that they are on.
(Professor Crow) Part of the reason for that is because
there is insufficient housing locally and people are travelling
for miles. They are coming from the east coast of Essex, so the
evidence said, to get to Stansted in order to get cheaper housing.
This is what happens if we have undue restrictions. People cannot
get the housing in the right places. It forces them into unsustainable
journeys.
54. Can I bring you back to my starting point,
which was the discussion document on rural England which states
that there should be access to decent and affordable housing?
In the projection plans that I have heard of at Stansted Airport,
there is a very small proportion that would fall into that category.
(Professor Crow) I know we had a lot of evidence on
this, including evidence from a gentleman I see in the corner
there. What we have been doing so far has failed to produce sufficient
affordable housing. In the meanwhile, the situation is worsening
because if there is insufficient housing prices rise and so the
threshold of affordability falls. We simply said there need to
be more affordable houses and we challenged the authorities to
produce them.
Chairman
55. If we are going to have all this extra housing,
there are going to be problems of water supply, sewage, landfill
and those sorts of issues. Are you confident that the extra housing
is not going to generate demand for at least one extra reservoir
in the south-east?
(Professor Crow) No.
56. You think there is going to be an extra
reservoir. If so, where should it go?
(Professor Crow) That is not quite the opposite of
saying am I confident.
Mrs Dunwoody
57. If you are going to require precision in
the English language, you have come before the wrong Committee.
(Professor Crow) There was not a lot in SERPLAN about
this but nonetheless there were representations and we did feel
it our duty to explore these very issues. If I could run through
them briefly, solid waste: there are the same national problems—do
you go for landfill and incineration and the other things that
are bound to be in national waste management strategies. There
was not any particular problem posed by the number of proposed
new houses, partly because household waste is only a small proportion
of the total solid waste. Liquid waste—sewage to most of
us: there are some localised problems. We had evidence from the
water companies. There are localised problems particularly in
the head waters of rivers where, no matter how cleverly you purify
your sewage, you still have to have dilution and you cannot put
large flows into a small stream and get dilution. Water supply
was a rather ticklish one. There are two particular problems,
I can recall. One of them was the problem in Essex, which is the
problem that is there already.
58. You would be making it worse if you had
the extra houses.
(Professor Crow) Indeed, because they have to import
water from East Anglia. What was said very strongly was, "We
would rather export our water than import your people, thank you."
Mrs Dunwoody
59. That is a very unusual attitude. I do not
quite know why they think that way.
(Professor Crow) The real problem is about our proposal
for Ashford. The water supply in Kent is a difficult situation
anyway, largely because it is the driest part of the United Kingdom.
What the water companies said when we asked them specifically
about our proposal for planned expansion in Ashford was that they
were getting the revenue for it and they would just have to grin
and bear it. We were tackled on specific questions of reservoirs—one
in Oxfordshire—which I said were frankly not matters that
we really ought to be considering. We were not able to consider
it. We just did not have the evidence before us.
Mr Gray
60. In the Thames Valley too there is a need
for a new reservoir, in the Reading area, is there not?
(Professor Crow) I do not have evidence on that point.
That must be considered in another situation. We concluded that
there was a general need for more investment in water supply,
but we felt it not right to go beyond that because we would not
want to preempt decisions about reservoirs which must be taken
in another forum.
Chairman
61. They do depend on the housing numbers very
much, do they not?
(Professor Crow) Not very much. The main problem in
a lot of these places is supplying the people who are there now
and their increasing needs. Yes, we are making things worse but
we know that.
62. I do not want to take you through all the
difficult spots in the south-east; it would take a very long time,
but perhaps just one illustration: the south coast of Sussex.
Is it not going to be almost impossible to fit any extra houses
into that area without really impinging onto the Sussex Downs,
the Weald and the areas that are now going to be designated as
a new national park?
(Professor Crow) Yes. As far as expansion northwards
in most south coast towns, it is impossible, and rightly so. We
had evidence that there is some scope for urban regeneration,
urban recycling, in these towns so that one might fit more people
within the existing urban fabric, but basically the expansion
has to go elsewhere. This is one of the reasons why we proposed
an area of planned expansion in the Crawley/Gatwick area.
63. You think that is going to be satisfactory?
People are going to be able to get the houses and the employment
close together in an area like that?
(Professor Crow) Yes, because this is very much an
area of economic expansion which has a proven track record in
that respect.
Chairman: On that note, can I thank you very
much for your evidence?
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