Examination of Witnesses (Questions 620
- 639)
WEDNESDAY 27 OCTOBER 2004
SIR JOHN
EGAN
Q620 Joan Walley: Into what?
Sir John Egan: The urban design
coding that you specify to your developers about what you will
or will not give planning permission to; that is one of the real
keys that you should have and absolutely insist that they achieve
the BRE standards in order that at least we have a standard system
in place.
Q621 Joan Walley: How would that
be enforced? Would it be enforced through self-certification?
Sir John Egan: You would not get
planning permission until you did and that answer is "yes".
Q622 Joan Walley: It certainly seemed
to be a problem in Aberdeen.
Sir John Egan: The answer is that
you would have to have some way of policing it and I am sure that
there is a way but that is a service you would have to buy from
BRE.
Q623 Joan Walley: So, you think that
the companies you would bring in to do it would be better at doing
that than the existing housing companies?
Sir John Egan: I have to say that
I am very disappointed that these very sensible BRE standards
have not been adopted by all the housing industry. I am very disappointed
and I am disappointed that, when I suggested that that be put
into my report, everybody moaned and whined at me that it was
not possible. So, I was disappointed.
Q624 Joan Walley: What has the ODPM's
response to that been?
Sir John Egan: We passed our report
on to the taskforce dealing with this and hoped that they would
set the standards. On the other hand, there is no point setting
the standards unless somebody is there making sure that they have
them and the key is not to give planning permission until those
standards are at least detected.
Q625 Joan Walley: The fear is on
the ground when you have local authorities really wanting to see
a brownfield site developed, often they are just glad to have
anybody rather than to stick out for the better design standards.
Sir John Egan: I know, it is a
shame and I think we should be sticking out for those higher standards.
By the way, they are not difficult. These are not in the slightest
bit difficult.
Q626 Chairman: I think I am right
in saying that if local authorities wanted to make these sorts
of standards of requirements, they are quite at liberty to do
so. Woking, for example, has.
Sir John Egan: Yes, they can.
It is perfectly within the local authorities' remit to do it.
I have to make it clearand I have made it clear in the
reportthat the key to doing this is leadership of the local
authority. If they really want to do these things, they can. They
can bend the rules, they can bend the guidelines, they can do
all things to achieve these standards and I think those great
cities up in the north have demonstrated how to do it and we really
have to make sure that this great growth that we have to get going
in the south east happens and we get leaders like those in the
north to actually get up and do it and get on with it.
Q627 Mr Challen: You have chosen
50 indicators of sustainable communities; how did you choose those
50 out of the 400-or-so that were available?
Sir John Egan: We looked at the
magnificent seven and then we looked at what we would have to
add in key performance indicators to achieve each one. We obviously
were a limited time taskforce. We felt as though we had done the
best we could within a limited period of time and our hope is
that the national centre that we have asked to be created will
take our work and make it more operational, but these key performance
indicators are not necessarily the whole story. What we also have
to do is to get the local authority audited on the key performance
indicators as a group, so that, when they are audited, you do
not have one department of Central Government auditing one lot
and another department another lot. The whole lot have to be audited
as a sweep in order that we can see progress over time collectively
and not paying off Peter to pay Paul.
Q628 Mr Challen: But the whole 50
would have to be audited?
Sir John Egan: Yes.
Q629 Mr Challen: For every local
authority?
Sir John Egan: Yes. It is 400
or 500 right now, so at least it is cutting down to 50, so it
would be less work.
Q630 Mr Challen: You have said that
you would have a well-balanced menu. Would all authorities have
to go by the 50 or would they actually be able to pick and choose
year on year?
Sir John Egan: No. This is where
I am not sure that I saw eye to eye with the Government. I think
that you cannot pick and choose them, they have to be core ones
and they have to be the ones that everybody uses. I think there
was a general view that, okay, we can pick and choose for a little
while, but, after we settle down, you would have to have the whole
lot.
Q631 Mr Challen: Do you think it
makes sense to have subjective indicators and objective indicators
also mixed into this listing?
Sir John Egan: Sometimes you cannot
get at it very easily with absolutely objective measures.
Sometimes you can only have the subjective measures that you have
asked people.
Q632 Mr Challen: You can look at
the environmental indicators that you put in the list and, out
of the 50, there are nine environmental ones, seven out of which
are objective. If you compare that to the social and cultural
ones, seven indicators of which six are subjective. I just put
an example to you perhaps that sometimes these things are going
to be clearly in conflict. If you look at connectivity in a broad
sense, about 75% of us have mobile phones but, as we MPs sitting
around this table all know, mobile phone masts are not very popular
in local residential areas. So, you have two things pitted against
each other: a desire for something, what you describe as finding
out what people want, and then local authorities, through the
planning system, having to deliver it and these things are pitted
against each other. So, the indicators do not always lead to a
very clear conclusion, do they?
Sir John Egan: I did not say life
was easy, did I? You have to make compromises.
Q633 Mr Challen: To have meaningful
indicators, you want them to be understood.
Sir John Egan: Yes. We are always
going to have compromises and we have to have people who are big
enough to understand the compromises they are going to make in
order to make their community work.
Q634 Mr Challen: If we want to convey
that complex equation to people in order that they can cope with
stress and strains
Sir John Egan: Fifty key performance
indicators is not all that complex. To run a car company, you
need far more than that. It is not all that complicated.
Q635 Mr Challen: I am not sure that
that is true, speaking as an elected representative. I think it
is enormously complicated because people want the kind of things
that you have described. You have said that one of the basic components
of your thinking is to achieveand maybe I have written
this down slightly wronglythat people can live anywhere
and to work anywhere.
Sir John Egan: No, I said in London.
Q636 Mr Challen: Just in London?
Sir John Egan: Yes. For London
to be a world-class city, I said that had to be achieved. I did
not mean that, for Britain to be a world-class place, you should
be able to live anywhere and work anywhere, no. For London to
be a world-class city, I think that we have to have huge ability
to get people from A to B.
Q637 Mr Challen: So, the massive
increases in mobility which, as Mr Francois has suggested, will
lead to massive dissatisfaction with commuter services and the
inevitable lateness of delivery of transport and congestion.
Sir John Egan: I suggest you are
being overcomplicated. I think we have to make many improvements
and I think that people are pragmatic enough to understand when,
in the round, improvements are being made. It is absolutely for
the points you are raising that I say you have to audit the whole
50 of them in order that we understand how a local authority is
moving the whole shift of what it is doing and is not just picking
and choosing the easiest ones for it to do.
Q638 Chairman: Sir John, one of the
difficulties here is that running the Government is not the same
as running a car company, to state the obvious. The moment the
public sector touches anything, it automatically becomes much
more complicated than you can possibly imagine.
Sir John Egan: I think not to
listen to the people at all and to shove planning down their throats
in the way we have been doing over the last 30 or 40 years is
a preposterous way to behave and what we have been doing is mostly
uncomplicated. We have been doing the most awful things. I suggest
that we listen to the people and I think it is not so complicated.
People are much less complicated than you think. When we looked
at the evidence that we had as to what the people wanted, they
were absolutely as clear as crystal as to what they were looking
for and that is absolutely what we were not providing them with
and absolutely what we were not doing.
Q639 Mr Chaytor: If I could come
back on to a point you were discussing a moment ago in respect
of this total mobility within the heart of the capital city, what
are the models elsewhere in the world? Which are the best cities
in the world that already have this total mobility and what should
London be aspiring to?
Sir John Egan: I think this is
a tough one. I think that London is probably the most successful
city in the world anyway. It has all kinds of imperfections but,
all in all, in the round, it probably is the best city in the
world.
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