Examination of Witnesses (Questions 53
- 59)
TUESDAY 15 JANUARY 2002
MS MAYA
EVEN, MR
PAUL MASON
AND MR
MIKE MCCART
Chairman
Lady and gentlemen, I would like to thank you
very much for coming to see us today. We are conducting, as you
know, an inquiry of arts development and we decided that the South
Bank was highly relevant to that. I will ask David Wyatt to start
the questioning.
Mr Wyatt
53. Good morning. It seems to me that the South
Bank has been under constant development for the last 40 years
but actually nothing has happened. Where are we exactly with your
current plans?
(Ms Even) Could I say good morning to all of you and
thank you very much for allowing us to appear this morning. I
just wanted to introduce ourselves first of all. I am Maya Even,
Vice-Chairman of the South Bank, this is Mike McCart who is leading
the development programme, and this is Paul Mason who is our Acting
Chief Executive. I would just like, before I answer your question
and in the process of answering your question, to tell you a little
bit in relation to what you have asked about where we are and
some of the challenges that we have confronting us. Our plans
are ambitious, they are eminently feasible and they will give
the UK, at the end of it, a world class arts centre that offers
poetry lovers, music lovers, film, art, dance, theatre and literature
lovers a single cultural campus. We already offer this of course
to the people who make six million visits a year to different
parts of the South Bank, and one-third of our ticket buyers of
course come from outside London too. We try to keep those prices
as low as possible and we present 1200 free events every year.
Our concert hall ticket sales are up for the autumn. Our resident
orchestras have seen their ticket sales sky rocket over this period
too. Our jazz festival, for example, has been the most successful
since its inception eight years ago. All this success—and
I am getting to your question now—despite the fact that
we have, as you rightly have noted, crumbling buildings, extremely
poor access for people with disabilities, horrible loos, artists'
facilities that are an absolute embarrassment and a site which
is confusing for visitors to navigate and positively threatening
at night. Everyone wants to change this. All the local people
we have consulted in their hundreds and all our 40-plus stakeholders
want to change this, and they have embraced the principle of our
masterplan, which is to create a welcoming site with beautiful
public squares surrounded by plenty of green spaces, and lots
of activity at ground level, not underneath buildings, and of
course wonderful places for artists to perform and the public
to enjoy. The key for the successful redevelopment is evolution.
We want to keep as much of the centre open as possible while we
improve it, for very good reasons: we want the artists to keep
coming; we want the public to keep coming; we want to maintain
the source of revenue; we want to give the artists a livelihood;
we keep together the skilled teams of people who work at the South
Bank; we take all the costs stage by stage, and, as we move forward
as well, we deliver to the public, who find there is visible evidence
of the progress that we have made on the site. This is all about
to commence with the Royal Festival Hall's renovation and I was
hoping—very much hoping—that I could come before you
today to tell you that in as little as three months' time we were
going to put out to tender contracts for the new Festival Square
café. Instead, this weekend Lambeth announced yet again
that it was delaying its consideration of our planning application.
This is a non-controversial, simple planning decision. All we
want to do is to restore a great building which everyone loves,
the Royal Festival Hall, to its former glory. We have the money
in place, we have the architect's plan in place, we have a schedule
in place, but Lambeth has sat on this simple, non-controversial
application proposal for two years. I cannot tell you how depressing
and frustrating it is, not only for me but for all the dozens
of people in the South Bank who have been working on this application
now, the resident orchestras with whom we have been readying our
proposals. It is just unbelievable. Westminster led the Royal
Opera House through a long and difficult refurbishment; Southwark
gave magnificent leadership and support to Nick Seroto with the
Tate Modern; Kensington and Chelsea have supported the Albert
Hall and the V&A development; Islington has supported the
Sadlers Wells development. All that Lambeth can do for the Royal
Festival Hall, a relatively straightforward proposal, is give
us delay after delay. We are like horses at the starting gate,
ready to go, but the barrier just won't go up. Mr Chairman, Mr
Wyatt, I know you all want action on this. So do we. But we need
help at this point.
54. Chairman, maybe we could look at inviting
Lambeth to give evidence to us. There have been, I think, 4 different
plans over the last 30 years. This is the fifth. Why will this
one succeed? Secondly, how much will it cost and where are you
getting all the money from?
(Mr McCart) In terms of the previous schemes, there
were very exceptional circumstances why these did not proceed.
As you will remember from the evidence that we have given and
the Arts Council have given, the Cedric Price scheme was abolished
with the GLC in 1986. With the Terry Farrell scheme, the Conservative
Government at that time made it absolutely clear that not a penny
of public money would be put into the scheme and so it had to
be driven and developed entirely through commercial proposals.
Those commercial proposals were developed to a very fine state
in 1989 and then in 1991 the property market collapsed and undermined
entirely the financial basis for that. Then, with the lottery
arrival, we were encouraged to proceed with an application for
a revised scheme based purely on lottery funding. During that
particular process, partly because of the controversy surrounding
the lottery at that moment in time, the scheme that we had itself
was not flexible enough to deal with the reduced amount of funds;
ie we could not break it down over a number of periods. I think
the key thing is that when Elliott was appointed chairman, I was
involved in this particular project, we sat down and we thought
about the lessons why the previous schemes had not succeeded and
there were four principal lessons. The first thing is that we
should get the arts and urban needs right before we start thinking
about architecture. In previous schemes we had gone into purdah.
We had creative architectural competitions, selected a scheme,
and selected a scheme with very little involvement from outside
people. We were not going to do that this time; we were going
to look at phased development that would look at a very clear
framework within which individual sites could be developed over
a period of time. Indeed, that is the way many of our international
competitors have developed over the years. The second was what
we call "operational continuity". Both the Rogers' scheme
and the Farrell scheme would have involved a closure of the Festival
Hall and the associated facilities for several years. We thought
that was wrong. We think we should be looking at, as Maya said,
a phased approach, where we can keep the operational facilities
going. Certainly a phased approach would help on that. The third
key thing was that in both those previous schemes there had been
an overdue reliance on one source of funding. In the case of the
Farrell scheme, it was commercial development; in the case of
the Rogers' scheme, purely on lottery. Here we are looking at
a public/private partnership. We have done a lot of work with
the London Development Agency, with the Arts Council, neighbouring
landowners, the lottery funds and have had discussions in principle
with private donors in moving a mixed source of funding. The last
and probably most important thing is that we have established
a partnership with stakeholders. The consultation process that
we have run for this particular exercise has been very significant.
I think the thing we must not underestimate is the importance
of the South Bank site. It is part of the post-war heritage of
this country, it is a conservation area with listed buildings,
listed structures and with strategic corridors and views that
have to be protected. Not only that, it has been the people's
place since 1951. Six million visits a year. There are 50 different
groups which want to participate and are very keen to participate
in the future of the South Bank. We have involved these stakeholders
in a very extensive consultation process—four months on
the brief, six months on the plan—and this I can tell you
is unprecedented in the United Kingdom. It is very common in Europe
for the public to be involved in consultations on briefs and masterplans,
but not in this country. We did a lot of pioneering work and out
of that we had a broad consensus, which I have submitted in the
evidence as the People's Eight Priorities, which is a very
simple description of what the public would like out of this scheme.
We have a very clear framework of pedestrian movements, of servicing,
of public spaces and of parks for which there is a broad consensus
and has been adopted by all the authorities. We are now at the
starting gate, as Maya has said, of actually bringing forward
these individual sites for development. The frustration is that
when we are ready for the Festival Hall we are reliant on third
parties. As regards the other schemes, one of the issues arising
from our perspective—and it is a cautious one—is that
because it is a conservation area Lambeth can only consider detailed
planning applications. To bring forward those two applications
for the Hungerford car park/Jubilee Gardens and for the Waterloo
site is going to cost us £5 million to £7 million in
public funds. We think that is an unreasonable risk at this stage
until we have secured the right balance, as I have mentioned in
the evidence, between securing the arts brief, getting the right
mix of funding and securing the planning consent, and we want
some assurance that we are investing those funds with hopefulness
that we can proceed. I am much more optimistic than you might
suggest, Mr Wyatt. I think we have learned from the experience
of the previous schemes, I think we have a very solid framework
in place, and we are moving as planned on a series of individual
developments within those sites and within the framework.
55. I just missed what the cost was that you
are looking for—over five or ten years?
(Mr McCart) To get the schemes to the local authority
for planning consent will cost £5 million to £7 million
in terms of detailed schemes for each of the three sites.
56. And then the cost of the three sites?
(Mr McCart) The Festival Hall is going to cost £54
million of which we have an "in principle" award from
the Arts Council of £20 million; we have an "in principle"
award of £12.5 million from the Heritage Lottery Fund; we
have the prospect hopefully of a further £7.5 million from
the Heritage Lottery Fund to match that of the Arts Council—which
means that we have 75 per cent of the funding in place. We have
£14 million to raise. We have already raised £2.2 million,
and what is very exciting from our point of view is that £1
million of that has been raised from our audiences. We have run
a telephone campaign with our audiences following the 50th Anniversary
Birthday Project celebrations in May of this year and over 6,000
people have been willing to contribute to the Festival Hall. That
is the Festival Hall project, with which, as Maya said, as soon
as we get the consent we are confident we can proceed. As far
as the elements of the framework of the masterplan are concerned,
they include the park, Jubilee Gardens, the Queen's Walk and also
key pedestrian movements—we have 7 million commuters moving
through our site for which we are responsible—and is going
to cost in the order of £11 million. We have been working
in partnership with all the businesses in the area and with the
London Development Agency in terms of single regeneration budget,
and Shell and BA/London Eye have already said that they are willing
to make significant contributions to the creation of the new park
and the Queen's walk and this will be matched with the single
regeneration budget. So this is another stage which could move
forward relatively quickly. As regards the other two sites, we
are looking at two concert halls, the Queen Elizabeth Hall and
the Purcell Room, either through replacement or refurbishment,
and the restoration of the Hayward Gallery. This is going to cost
in the order of £147 million and these will be spread across
the two sites and will happen at different times. The sources
of funding for that are going to be really through private donations,
through commercial development on the site, and finally, as a
call of last resort, public funds. As far as donations are concerned,
these are going to be very sensitive to issues of whether there
is refurbishment or replacement. As you can imagine, new architecture
on a high profile site will be far more attractive than refurbishment
towards the back end of the site, so that is going to be a sensitivity.
Commercial development is going to be much more an issue of planning
policy, because we are looking at placing, wanting to place, commercial
development in an area that is for cultural development, but we
think that trying to get that balance right is going to be the
critical factor and obviously, those funds are only going to come
forward with planning consent. As far as the lottery and other
public funds are concerned, we see this very much as filling the
gap, if you like, that is left.
(Ms Even) There is a Catch 22 to this process which
is difficult because funding is not always in place until planning
consent is given and planning consent is often given only on the
condition of funding, thus we have to raise the funds in order
to bring ourselves to detailed planning permission. So it is managing
the process over a lengthy period.
Mr Wyatt: Just call yourself the "New
Wembley" and you will get your money first! Lastly, could
I just ask—
Chairman
57. Before your last question, could I insert
a question? You have spoken about the planned Festival Hall. The
environment of the Festival Hall, although it can obviously be
improved, is not all that bad. There has been quite a good job
done (again not in an integrated way) in the approaches to the
National Theatre but between those you have an area which a Rio
de Janeiro "barrio" would be ashamed of.
(Ms Even) Absolutely. You could not have put it better.
58. I cannot understand the architectural motivation
for that empty space under the Hayward Gallery that is a haven
for crime.
(Ms Even) You are absolutely right.
59. I do not know how it ever came about. Although
the kids are absolutely well intentioned, the danger of being
knocked over by skateboarders who use that place is extraordinary.
What about that area?
(Ms Even) These are the areas where we want to build
public squares with access. At the moment all the service routes,
all the trucks and everything that get in the way of pedestrians,
separate those two, and we want to build new sites that are user
friendly. The site is desperately unfriendly, you have absolutely
said it: people do not feel happy there in the day, let alone
at night, where it becomes very intimidating. Those are the sites
that we are looking to redevelop now. Our problem is that we find
ourselves stymied by a council. That is it in a nutshell.
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