Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80
- 96)
MONDAY 10 NOVEMBER 2003
MR RICHARD
SHARLAND, MR
GRAHAM PARRY,
MR DAVID
KNIGHT, MR
IAN SMITH
AND DR
IAN ROXBURGH
Q80 Mr Betts: Looking around at the
South Yorkshire coalfield area, a lot of improvement has gone
on to the physical environment and it looks a better place and
I think that is true of a lot of the evidence we have had in about
other parts of the country. All the evidence as well is that educationally,
health and other social measures, the areas are still lagging
well behind the average for the country. Should more be done to
integrate the environmental improvements with the economic and
social regeneration that we want to see as well?
Mr Smith: That is something that
we strongly argue for. We feel that attention has quite properly
been given to the economic regeneration but it tends to have been
done in isolation and regeneration does not tend to have taken
a very holistic view. In some cases, the benefits of having a
good-quality environment seem not to have been properly valued.
Their importance for education is a case in point.
Mr Sharland: It is interesting
that the perception is that the physical landscape is improving
but not seeing those benefits kicking through into other areas
of activity. We feel that increasingly there is a danger of the
physical landscape and the environment not being seen as an equal
priority with both social and economic regeneration and that is
interesting because, in our experience, the environment is proving
to be a very useful entry point. Where people live is a good starting
point for social regeneration and for economic regeneration and
the Joseph Rowntree report commissioned to look at the work of
Groundwork emphasised that the integration, tying these things
together, making sure that where environmental improvements are
being undertaken, the social and economic values are fully integrated
is really important.
Mr Parry: Just to reiterate that
point. It is definitely our experience that people who have found
a way of involving themselves within environmental change in their
own communities go on to involve themselves far more deeply in
wider social change and regeneration issues in their own neighbourhoods.
They also raise their own self-confidence, self-esteem and skill
levels through involvement in environmental change which helps
them move on through stepping stones into further education and
employment. Also, there is a very strong link between environmental
issues and social enterprise. Many of the more successful, very
locally-focused social enterprises have grown up out of local
people coming together to solve an environmental issue in their
own community and, especially in the coalfields, encouraging entrepreneurship
of that type and linking it to an environmental project with which
people can identify has shown some signs of success and should
be encouraged.
Dr Roxburgh: Could I pick up on
something the Chancellor has touched upon and that is getting
jobs out of the south east. My own organisation is based in Mansfield
and it was deliberately based there because Mansfield is one of
the coalfield communities and one of those areas that suffered
as a result of coal pit closures. We are now in a position where
we are technically one of the most advanced organisations in Europe.
That might sound strange. People think of coal as being old fashioned
and off the pace. I mentioned that we issue 2,000 mining reports
a day. That is done on probably the most complicated and sophisticated
computer platform of its type in Europe and, last year, that was
awarded the British Computer Society's major award beating British
Airways and the Royal Bank of Scotland, which puts it in context.
We are currently engaged in digitally scanning the 100,000 or
so abandoned mine plans we hold in what is, we are told, the biggest
project of its kind in Europe. We are developing all sorts of
cutting-edge technologies and they, in turn, spin over into our
local community. We have no difficulty recruiting quality people
and it is interesting that we cannot recruit from the south east
because people will not come because they cannot come back, so
we are recruiting largely from the north and from the Midlands.
We are spending £50 million a year, which is our turnover,
in coalfield communities. I think that the answer to many of your
problems is that, having done the good work and tidied up, somebody
has to force people to go there and people who can go there because
it does not really matter where they are.
Q81 Mr Betts: I suppose another side
to all of this is that we get all these sites which were once
derelict and there is a great deal of improvement taking place
on them. Do you think there is too much concentration in trying
to find economic uses for the sites in that particular community
rather than saying that can be done up as very nice environmental
projects making the area a nice place in which to live and then
people will live there and probably commute to get jobs in towns
like Barnsley and Mansfield where it will be easier to probably
attract new enterprise than scattering them through the village
of the coalfields?
Dr Roxburgh: I cannot so much
speak for the villages but, this year, we have received planning
consent for the old Markham Main Colliery at Doncaster for 300-or-so
houses. We restored the old tip and planted something like 600,000
trees and we have liaised very closely with the local authority
in constructing that development. We are similarly quite well
advanced at Littleton in Staffordshire where we are again liaising
closely with the parish and indeed the county and the district
and there we will be providing not only housing but a new school
site and again significant areas of reclaimed tip and landscaping.
So, I think that you are quite right, there does need to be a
balance but, in the same vein—and I know that it is not
England but forgive me for putting it in—when I joined the
Authority, we had a large number of old tips and because there
was no planning requirement that they be restored and funds were
limited, they were left as scars on the landscape, but I have
decided that is unacceptable, we cannot on the one hand have an
environmental policy which tells the world we are green, so we
are now spending in the order of £1.5 million a year trying
to tidy those up. The reason we are concentrating in South Wales
is that we have more or less finished the job in England. All
the tips we own in England, bar Warsop—Warsop stands aside
for the moment because it may be that the tip can be put into
an adjacent quarry and that would be the most ideal solution but
that is not yet clear but, if that is not possible, then we will
green that tip as well—the job is largely done.
Mr Knight: Can I just say that,
in terms of Dearne Valley in South Yorkshire, that is a very good
example of where environmental improvement, in a way for its own
sake, is actually making the area much more attractive for inward
investment, particularly along the Dearne Valley Parkway. I think
there is also a functional element that a lot of this land provides
as well. The contribution to flood storage and drainage is very,
very important and, to have that managed in a way which is both
successful for people, rich in wildlife and performs that function
for communities downstream is quite critical. It is also interesting
to see that Barnsley Council has looked at its housing capacity
study on an environmentally-led basis which focuses the environment
on its importance for people who want to move into the area.
Mr Sharland: I think there are
two issues here. One is that we feel that we need to trust the
fact that, if we invest in the quality of the environment for
its own sake, in time, that will be a platform for social and
economic regeneration and clearly there are cases where demand
in economic performance from environmental activity may actually
be holding that back. On the other hand, where we see social,
economic and environmental benefits integrated together and a
demand that resources and investment in the one will have benefits
in the other, we are likely to get more value for money in terms
of the scale of the investment that is being made.
Q82 Mr Betts: I just have one final
point for English Nature. You mentioned the importance of achieving
accessible natural green space standards; are these actually being
achieved in the coalfields or is the performance patchy?
Mr Knight: I think we are still
quite early in the process and that a number of authorities are
actually just engaging now in open space strategies. I think also
there are different hierarchies in our standards and some of those
are more challenging than others in different situations. Having
said that, the work that has been done in Doncaster and the work
that is under way in Wakefield makes us feel quite confident that
there is a level of pragmatism in those stance and they can be
fairly widely achieved if certain aspects of them remain aspirations.
I think what is really critical is that the principles underlying
them that people should have easy access as part of their daily
lives to a rich landscape that has a natural interest in it seems
to be widely accepted and welcomed by local authorities and also
seems to be equally welcomed by the communities they serve.
Q83 Andrew Bennett: Dr Roxburgh,
you managed to flog off about half of your non-operational land.
How easy is it to flog off the rest?
Dr Roxburgh: With the exception
of a number of tips in South Wales which require very sensitive
management, we will basically have disposed of all of our non-operation
land by the end of 2005.
Q84 Andrew Bennett: Is that mainly
to commercial uses or is it a mixture of uses?
Dr Roxburgh: It is a mixture of
uses. We are generally happy to let it go to the market wherever
provided we test it openly and we get value for money, but what
we do have is a very clear caveat that we will not dispose of
land to those who do not have the covenant and the technical expertise
to manage it given its particular circumstances.
Q85 Andrew Bennett: Is there Treasury
pressure to make sure that you get best value for it or can you
let it go for socially desirable activities?
Dr Roxburgh: The Treasury has
issued guidance that one public body may transfer land to another
public body at book value and that avoids that problem. We have
done that in the past. So, we are quite comfortable in meeting
the whole social agenda.
Q86 Andrew Bennett: As far as these
sites are concerned, it is only in South Wales that you have ones
that are still on fire and are going to have very complicated
management.
Dr Roxburgh: That is correct.
Q87 Andrew Bennett: As far as almost
all the English sites are concerned, really there is no problem
transferring them except for the one to which you have just referred
at Warsop.
Dr Roxburgh: In principle, no,
but we do have problems with three sites which were on the original
list because we only hold them leasehold and the freehold owners
are proving rather difficult in allowing us to transfer the leases
to English Partnerships. With each of those three sites, there
is a particular programme and we are in very detailed conversation
with English Partnerships and indeed the RDAs as appropriate.
Q88 Andrew Bennett: I am not quite
sure whether my last question is to you or to English Nature,
but there are some sites which are very polluted either because
of the water or other reasons and they then have some quite interesting
collections of lichen and mosses and other small beings, I suppose,
on those sites. Is there a case for trying to preserve some of
those in order that you get a pattern of the historical ecology
for now?
Mr Smith: This is quite a general
issue for brownfield sites. There is obviously a priority being
given to housing development on brownfield sites at the moment
and we have tried to inject a note of caution there because quite
a number of them have developed an intrinsic environmental interest
over the period since they ceased to be used and that includes
some of the coalfield sites. So, there is a need for certain sensitivity.
Q89 Andrew Bennett: You are telling
me what the problem is but I asked you about the problem, so what
is the solution? Are you going to keep some of the most polluted
bits of water?
Mr Smith: There is a case for
their interests to be assessed and to be evaluated and put in
context and some of the better sites, yes, would probably merit
being protected as they stand.
Q90 Andrew Bennett: Would you be
happy with that, Dr Roxburgh?
Dr Roxburgh: When we develop minewater
treatment facilities, we have to apply for planning consent in
the usual way. Bodies like English Nature are consulted in the
normal course of events and we will be guided by their comment
and indeed by the judgment of the local authority.
Q91 Mr Cummings: In Groundwork's
evidence, they highlight the need for sustained funding for environmental
projects. How do you believe this should be provided? It appears
that many programmes are reliant upon short-term funding such
as funding from the European Union and SRB. How do you believe
this funding could be put on a more long-term basis?
Mr Sharland: There are two parts
of the question, one of which is about the existing funding programmes
and, like you, we are concerned about what is going to happen
with the loss of structural funds in two or three years' time
from the EU and the changes that are likely to come with the end
of SRB funding. We also feel that, in terms of the kind of support
that is available to the work that we do and many other organisations
like us, we need to also look at the state of the economy and
the degree to which the private sector is investing and supporting
these kind of programmes by supporting communities and the reduced
sales of Lottery tickets because the Lottery funding has been
a very important source of income. We also need to take into account
changes in landfill tax funding. So, there are a number of I think
it is unkind to call them short-term but perhaps middle-term funding
programmes that have contributed enormously to environmental programmes
over the last five or ten years whose future is less secure and
we are very concerned about that. It is clearly something that
we think the Government should look very closely at. There is
an issue about how we balance capital and revenue funding and
there has perhaps been in the past more evidence on capital funding
and on revenue funding and the point that I made earlier about
how environmental regeneration goes hand in hand with social and
economic regeneration, the benefits from revenue funding will
be much greater. One of the areas that we are looking at very
closely is the issue of endowments that could enable communities
involved with the environment in their own neighbourhood to actually
have a modest capital asset that they can assess which can derive
revenue year on year and the principle of endowments is one that
we are in discussion with the Department and with the Treasury
over as a background to the Land Restoration Trust.
Q92 Mr Cummings: Could you tell the
Committee how you believe local authorities and regional development
agencies can be encouraged or indeed required to take a more active
role in improving the environment.
Mr Sharland: I think there is
an issue about the environmental changes having been subsumed
under economic measures and there is certainly some evidence that,
with the tier 3 target set by the DTI, some RDAs are finding that
they are not giving priority to environmental programmes, but
there are other RDAs, for example NWDA with their Newlands Programme,
where they are giving priority to recognising the importance of
investing in the environment and we would like to see the Government
giving strong guidance to RDAs and local authorities to ensure
that there is adequate investment in the environment and to look
at this issue over the single pot to see whether that really is
enabling those organisations to respond appropriately to the need
for funding in the environment.
Mr Parry: I think that some of
the geographically-focused initiatives like neighbourhood renewal
area funding and NDC funding has taken on board some of the best
aspects of the SRB rounds in the past, but it is very wide-encompassing
and it is prepared to listen to local opinion and to take on projects
across a very broad area in contrast, possibly, to the increased
targeting of the single pot money on very hard-edged economic
targets such as jobs created in the square footage of business
space provided.
Q93 Mr Betts: You mentioned the Land
Restoration Trust; when do you expect to have that up and running
and what difference do you think it is going to make?
Mr Sharland: The current plan
is that there will be a trust established by the end of this financial
year followed by a pilot phase of two, possibly three years. The
purpose of the pilot phase is to test the model and, within the
pilot phase, we are looking at approximately 1,800 hectares of
land coming into the programme. Most of that land in the pilot
phase will be coming from English Partnerships Coalfield programme,
but the wider vision, provided the model proves itself, is to
roll this out to a much larger number of sites and the current
scoping study demonstrates that, in year 10, the Trust could have
the ownership of 10,000 hectares of land. There is a lot of work
to do ensuring that we have the approval of the Treasury and the
principles to run the model over the next two or three years and
that is the timescale.
Q94 Mr Betts: How are you going to
maintain the sites in the long term?
Mr Sharland: The whole principle
of the Trust is based on the idea that the ownership of sites
will only be taken on where there is an endowment, a capital asset,
that goes with it. The capital asset will be used to generate
interest alongside other grants to enable local deliveries, whether
they be Groundwork trust or wildlife trusts of the kind of Village
Companies that we have been hearing about earlier to be the local
delivers, taking advantage of voluntary labour as well as having
a capital asset for the land.
Q95 Mr Cummings: Having lived virtually
under the shadow of the pit pulleys all my life, I am more than
aware of the hazards that have been created through disused minewater.
Could you give the Committee some idea of the extent of the problem.
Dr Roxburgh: I am responsible
for any damage arising from the failure of old coal workings.
What that means in practice is that we respond to between 500
and 600 incidents a year where the surface collapses or where
gas escapes. Our standard is that we will be at that failure within
two hours of notification and we run that 24 hours a day every
day of the year and that we will have it safe within six hours.
Approximately 60% of those call-outs are actually finally traced
back to a coal origin, but of course we have to go in the first
instance because we do not know until we get there whether it
is a collapsed drain or some other form of failure. Having arrived,
we are fairly magnanimous. We will take a view and, if it is a
local authority matter or a drainage matter, we will let them
know. We will still fence it, we will still get it secure and
we do not recharge because we see no purpose in spending more
money on recovery than we would get. Year on year, there has been
no particular trend. It is going to be with us for time immemorial.
There is one argument that says that, because these voids have
been there for so long now, the chances are that, if they were
going to fail, they would fail. There is another line of argument
that says that the longer they are there, the more likely they
are to fail. I could not honestly tell you which is which. I can
tell you that, from time to time, life is tragically lost. It
is an issue but, as a matter of public policy, it has always been
argued that, to deal with the extent of the problem would involve
so much public money that, if the object was the saving of life,
then, pound for pound, you would get much more feedback and much
more benefit in giving that money to your local highway authority
or indeed the National Health Service. That might sound a terrible
thing to say but that is the origin of the policy.
Q96 Mr Cummings: Could you tell the
Committee when are you going to have sufficient resources to take
on the statutory responsibilities for mine waters once the new
Water Bill is passed?
Dr Roxburgh: I think the answer
to that is "yes". As I mentioned earlier, we have very
good relationships with our funders in the Department of Trade
and Industry. We have seen our programme accelerate from four
to eight schemes a year. The reason for that is to try and achieve
the requirements of the European Waterframe Directive which requires
that, by 2015, all waters are unpolluted. We liaise very closely
with the Environment Agency and they have categorised all of the
sites which either are causing a problem or which may cause a
problem in the future in terms of their order of priority and
we will do our very best to meet that. So, I am quite confident
that, as things stand, we will meet the requirements of the Directive
and we do find that the DTI are responsive in meeting our needs
from time to time.
Chairman: Gentlemen, thank you once again
for coming. Our apologies for keeping you so late, but we do appreciate
you evidence.
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