UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 837-xlii

HOUSE OF COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

taken before the

COMMITTEE

on the

CROSSRAIL BILL

DAY FORTY-TWO

Tuesday 20 June 2006

Before:

Ms Katy Clark

Kelvin Hopkins

Mrs Siān C James

Mr Ian Liddell-Grainger

Dr John Pugh

 

In the absence of the Chairman, Mr Liddell-Grainger took the Chair

 

Ordered: that Counsel and Parties be called in.

11132. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: We have an enormous amount of cases to hear today. The Committee wants to hear every Petitioner's case but as a lot of you will know the Committee will not listen to the case being raised more than once, and I will stop you. We understand that many of the people here today have similar concerns, but we would ask you to listen carefully to the other cases and the points that are made and please do not repeat them. If you agree with the case made by a Petitioner, please just say the points that you support; that is quite acceptable, and you do not need to repeat the argument. Obviously I do encourage our learned friends to do the same. I remind everybody that witnesses brought forward by the Promoter may be cross-examined by the Petitioners should they want to after they have made their case.

11133. Can I call Mr Mould to set the scene?

11134. MR MOULD: One matter that is outstanding from last week is passenger flow figures which Mr Hopkins asked for in the context of Mr Galloway's presentation. We have those figures and we can circulate those if that would be convenient? They will be P96. Rather than take time on those now may I suggest, if it is convenient to you, that we circulate these and if there any questions arise perhaps they can be dealt with?

11135. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: That would be quite acceptable. (Document distributed)

11136. MR MOULD: We are now going to hear the Petition of Spitalfields Historic Buildings Trust. They are a building preservation trust concerned with the preservation of the historic fabric of the parish of Spitalfields. They own the freehold of 19 Princelet Street and have propriety interest in 17 Princelet Street, and both properties are located above the proposed Crossrail east and westbound running tunnels. Also 42 Brushfield Street, located north of the building that support the tunnels and 11 Gun Street, which is also located to the north of the building next to the tunnels. All these properties are listed buildings located within the Spitalfields area. I cannot show that on a plan at the moment because I believe that there is a problem with the electronics. But if you have to had the large A3 plan that was put in last week, just for the record those properties are all shaded in green against the legend "Petition Number 154".

 

The Petition of the Spitalfields Trust

 

MR GARETH HARRIS appeared as Agent

 

11137. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: Thank you. Can I call Mr Harris? Sir, could I just say, before we start, thank you for your incredible patience last week. I am sorry but we overrun but we are extremely grateful to you; and also for being so understanding.

11138. MR HARRIS: That is quite all right.

11139. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: Mr Harris, would you like to proceed?

11140. MR HARRIS: Mr Chairman, as you have from Mr Mould, I am here to speak on behalf of the Spitalfields Historic Buildings Trust. We were founded in 1977 to preserve the historic buildings in Spitalfields, and I am going to leave with the Committee two publications - we produced this on our tenth anniversary, The Saving of Spitalfields. It comes with a warning: should you have time to read this book you will never meddle with Spitalfields. I am also leaving you something we produced ten years on, which is our latest publication, which concerns Spitalfields and other places.

11141. On their first visit to Spitalfields many people are surprised to discover that minutes from the City boundary exists the densest core of early 18^th century houses in London. The story of how those houses get there starts with the Great Fire of London in 1666. 13,000 households were lost to fire, thousands were made homeless and they camped on the Moorfields and Spitalfields that surrounded the northeast corner of the City through a bitterly cold winter. The King, Charles II, who gave money to the dispossessed, visited them there. The King had spent time in Holland where he had been interested in building - it is likely that the first sash building was brought to England by King Charles II. It was clear to him that the City had burnt down due to overcrowding and bad building design, and it is likely that on enquiring who owned the fields he was visiting he would discover that as his ancestor, Henry VIII, had seized the priory to whom the fields had belonged he - and it might interest you to know that Henry VIII re-roofed your Westminster Hall here with lead that he took from our priory roof, but I am not sure this is the Committee for that disagreement!

11142. King Charles had the City's surveyor, a certain Christopher Wren, value his holdings on those fields and gave consent for a market. So Spitalfields as one of the first planned London suburbs was born.

11143. The particular buildings that I am dealing with today are the 18^th century houses at risk from settlement, should the proposed tunnelling take place under them. I will start with Princelet Street. The first eight houses on Princelet Street, west of Brick Lane, were sent in 1705/05 by Joseph Truman. His father had moved his brewery from the City of London following the fire in 1666. He built in on Brick Lane where there was a plentiful supply of fresh water from an artesian well which still exists today. The houses on Princelet Street that were built are the earliest domestic housing in Spitalfields; they retain much of their original layout and interiors, which is a remarkable survival due to a dramatic economic downturn within 40 years of their being build. Some, such as number 25 Princelet Street has its pair on Hanbury Street. By building this way builders kept their costs low and it is likely that houses build this way were build faster in 1704 than we can build them today. I do not know of the survival of such a pair of houses like this anywhere else in London. Much is known about the early occupants of these houses. John Baker, the owner of 25 Princelet Street, in 1745 offered to raise 75 of his weavers to support the King in resisting the young pretender, Bonnie Prince Charlie. Two lawyers from Lincoln's Inn, Charles Wood and Simon Mitchell, between 1716 and 1719 developed the rest of Princelet Street.

11144. But these are no ordinary houses. It is the settlement of them by people from many different backgrounds, representing every important Diaspora to have affected this country that makes them exceptional. To briefly condense the past 400 years, in 1685 the revocation of the Edict of Nantes saw thousands of protestants, known to as Huguenots, flee religious persecution in France. Approximately 50,000 settled in London, half of those in Spitalfields. Principally silk weavers and goldsmiths, they revolutionised the decorative arts in London. They were joined in the 1820s by Irish weavers facing starvation at home, and they in turn were joined in the 1880s by eastern European Jews fleeing the pogroms of Tsar Alexander the Second. Their arrival coincided with the invention of the Singer sewing machine, thus enabling Jewish tailors to offer the poor the chance to afford new clothes for the first time. Still significant land owners in Spitalfields, they have been joined by a significant Bangladeshi community settling in numbers after the civil war in Pakistan that created the state of Bangladesh. If you add to this mix the Maltese, the Greeks, the Scots, the Welsh, the West Indians, the Somalians, the Zairian community who still worship in French in a local chapel. We have the most diverse community in London. We speak 75 different languages in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, 42 of them in the tiny Spitalfields ward.

11145. Historically we have always got along. We were criticised by Parliament in the early 18^th century because our French speaking parish servants spoke no English.

11146. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: Mr Harris ---

11147. MR HARRIS: Yes, I am nearly finished with the history.

11148. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: If you can because I cannot affect the 17^th century.

11149. MR HARRIS: I hope you will understand how this is important to these buildings. It is exactly the same in the 19^th century when we spoke Yiddish and it has been a criticism that has been levelled at us ever since. We have been attacked by racists in the 1970s and even bombed by them in the 1990s but we have remained an undivided community and it is this story represented in these houses that I believe makes them of national significance.

11150. Sitting outside this Committee room last Thursday I overheard my eminent friends saying what objectors to the Bill needed to consider is how London will have changed in ten years' time and how it will need Crossrail. I would ask the Committee to consider how race relations will have changed in this country in ten years' time and how important it will be to have a focus for that then.

11151. America has its Museum of Immigration on Ellis Island; England has its on Princelet Street.

11152. In 1947 England's coalfields were nationalised and in the late 1940s and the 1950s the National Coal Board mined under a house known as Erddig in North Wales, a late 17^th century stately home, at a time when post war sentiment did not value such buildings. Now one of the jewels of the National Trust and an important museum of social history, we look in amazement at the crude props and bracing that were inserted by the Coal Board to prevent its collapse. The house had fallen five feet on one side and three feet on the other, breaking its back and making the roof leads, instead of sloping to direct water away from the gutters, now funnel water towards the centre of the building, where it poured through the state rooms.

11153. To my astonishment a fax dropped on to my desk on Wednesday 14 June 2006, proposing exactly the same treatment at 19 Princelet Street, and I quote: "The technical advise (from Alan Baxter Associates) to the Promoter is that he should increase the building sensitivity rank for this sensitive building from 2 to 3, and undertake further assessment to determine whether and if so what protected measures would be required to ensure the proper protection of the building during the Crossrail works. We envisage that this would be by means of structural strengthening in the way of insertion of further propping and possibly some bracing and/or ties, if necessary." As the representative of the freeholders of number 19 and Chairman of Tower Hamlets Conservation Area Advisory Group, I can assure you that such a strategy is not acceptable, either to the freeholders, to Tower Hamlets conservation officers or to English Heritage.

11154. What we are dealing with here are timber-framed buildings with brick elevations to front and rear. Were you to put in a planning application tomorrow to build any of the 18^th century houses in Spitalfields it would be turned down? Structural engineers do not believe that they are sufficiently rigid. Many, such as 9 and 11 Princelet Street, have shared chimney stacks which have moved at very different rates to the rest of their buildings, creating a serpentine effect, upright at the base and at the top but S-shaped through the middle four floors, which is not visible from the street. Similarly Christchurch, a building we will be hearing about in a moment, now recognised as one of the finest baroque churches in Europe, has a spire that settles at a different rate to the rest of the church. Initial discussions with Crossrail led us to believe that there would be even settlement under these buildings. English Heritage was told of a possible two-millimetre settlement for Christchurch and so did not object. We now learn that settlement is anticipated at 26 millimetres with two lots of settlement at two different times.

11155. In 2002 the London Borough of Tower Hamlets conservation officers refused permission for cable companies to use JCB diggers to dig trenches in Princelet Street, arguing that many buildings would be damaged by the vibration so caused. We cannot insert bracing into all these houses; such an idea is monstrous. They are listed buildings, many of which are likely to be upgraded in a review currently under way by English Heritage.

11156. So it seems that we urgently need to weigh the benefits of this route against the probable damage to these important buildings.

11157. Crossrail are not the first to attempt to traverse Spitalfields. The last ill-advised railway incursion into Spitalfields was in 1842 by the Great Eastern Railway Company. I would like to quote from the Eastern Counties Railway Board minutes of 6 September 1942: "Estimated expense was greatly exceeded because of the unexpected varying and extraordinary increase of the depth in foundations of nearly all piers and abutments, consequent upon passing through crowded building property, intersected with sewers, old ditches and numerous cesspools." Which leads me to the problem of underground water in Spitalfields, which I understand to be the most dangerous medium to tunnelling. There are two important local sources of water. On 8 August 1279 the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's confirmed a grant from the Bishop of London to the Hospital - that is the priory of St. Mary Spital - of a fountain, i.e. a spring, called Snekockeswelle, in his field called Lolesworth, with liberty to enclose it and bring the water underground almost to the south corner of the hospital. The site of Lolesworth, which was possibly an ancient standing stone, is in the kitchen of number 4 Princelet Street. A profusion of water courses appear to radiate away from this site. Some to the north feed into the second most important water system in Spitalfields, the wells supplying the Truman Brewery on Brick Lane, before continuing northwest where they meet up with the spring at St. John's Holywell, now marked by Holywell Row. It would have been this water system which caused Stevens Totton of 6 Spital Square to complain in 1805 that, "Every person in Spital Square is greatly inconvenienced by the springs in the liberty, in so much that in his late father's house there the water from these springs used to be three or four feet deep in the cellars, and the servants used to be obliged to punt themselves along in a washtub from the cellar stairs to the beer barrels to draw the beer daily.

11158. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: Mr Harrison, would you come to what you want, please?

11159. MR HARRIS: In June 2000, 800-odd years after the first records of springs in Spitalfields, I was called to the basement of a house in Princelet Street by an incredulous builder to witness water flowing profusely through a basement wall. I wrote to Alan Baxter & Associates about this problem on 19 July 2004 and received no reply. On 18 October 2004 I voiced the same concerns in Portcullils House and was told that Crossrail considered the watercourses were close to the surface and of no concern to the tunnelling operation. Like the superficial investigations into the sensitivity of the buildings I have no confidence in this assumption. Like the Coal Board of the 1950s, desperate for a solution to the energy shortages, it seems that Crossrail have found a soft target in Spitalfields. But now that the Pedley Street shaft has been abandoned there is no reason to tunnel in Spitalfields at all and risk so much.

11160. It is to be hoped that the Committee can go back and look at the southern route again and assess its viability. It would be a chance to avoid risking damage to irreplaceable buildings of national significance.

11161. The Spitalfields Historic Buildings Trust urges you to adopt the southern route, avoiding the historic core of Spitalfields. Crossrail promises so much for London, it will benefit us all if it built in the right place.

11162. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: Thank you very much. Mr Mould.

11163. MR MOULD: Sir, the Committee has heard a good deal of evidence during the course of the proceedings in relation to Spitalfields and Hanbury Street, and a good deal of that evidence has been concerned with the need to take great care in relation to potential settlement impacts as they affect all buildings, but for obvious reasons listed buildings in particular. I do not propose to repeat that evidence. All I would draw to the Committee's attention is that we referred last week to our understanding of the importance of Christchurch, Spitalfields, the location of Christchurch in relation to the scheme and, as you will recall, it lies somewhat to the south of the running tunnels proposed under the Crossrail scheme.

11164. We referred to the fact that Christ Church has been the subject of careful consideration as part of our detailed assessment process in relation to settlement impacts and I simply, for the record, draw attention to volume two of the technical report to the Crossrail environmental impact assessment statement headed "assessment of separate impacts on the built heritage", which on page 125 summarises the position in relation to Christ Church. Let me put it up on the screen. You can see there we are showing the proposed works, segmental line tunnels; the church lies outside the tender of the settlement lines. That is the position, as I understand it. No significant potential impact is predicted and, for that reason, no action by way of mitigation and you will see there the residual impact is described as "not significant". We have described to you the ongoing process of assessment in relation to listed buildings. The Committee need have no concerns as to the Promoters' desire to take whatever steps remain necessary in order to safeguard that iconic historic building. The only other point I would make is this: I think the Petitioner also mentioned 17 and 19 Princelet Street. The Committee knows we have made a considerable commitment specifically in relation to 19 Princelet Street and, as to the Petition of Ms Symes last week, the occupier of that building, 17 the neighbouring building also listed has also been subject to individual assessment. The report is available to the Petitioner and the process which we have outlined is under our Information Papers and documents available to the Petitioner also.

11165. As to the question of ground water, I just ask what our position is in relation to that, the position is in so far as ground water is concerned, the tunnels will be bored through the clay, as you have heard, and the water in the chalk will be below that, so it will not be affected by the tunneling works. Any deposits of shallow water will lie above the lie of the tunnels and, therefore, there is not expected to be any interface in relation to water of that level either. Sir, unless there are any other points that you would like my help on, that is all I propose to say.

11166. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: Thank, you, Mr Mould. Mr Harris, thank you very much. Is there anything else you want to add?

11167. MR HARRIS: May I respond to Mr Mould?

11168. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: Of course.

11169. MR HARRIS: Mr Mould has mentioned to do with settlement impacts the fact that Christ Church is to the south of the scheme. It is precisely those outlying on the edge of settlement buildings which are of risk in that they will have differential settlement as the levels of settlement spread out from the core. I am afraid I am very much disagreed with his advice to you that you need not have any concerns. On visiting 19 Princelet Street for the first time recently, Alan Baxter Associates have upgraded its sensitivity from two to three. They only visited three buildings on that day. Prior to that, their assessments had been on desk-based archaeological research and visiting Spitalfields with me. It surely should be of concern if one of only three buildings visited should have had its sensitivity upgraded. All these buildings on Princelet Street, Wilkes Street, Brushfield Street and Gun Street are all complex early 18^th century buildings built 300 years ago to last possibly 60 or 80 years. It is a miracle that they still stand at all. They have been added to, I think you heard last Thursday from Ms Symes, how 19 Princelet Street is effectively two buildings, 18 and 19th century were built in totally different ways that will settle very differently. It has been my argument today and I hope you will understand that it is the importance of these buildings, the soul of these buildings not necessarily just the historic fabric that will be destroyed by filling them full of bracing.

11170. Similarly, I would urge the Committee to have the same concerns over ground water. There has, I do not believe, been any dig or research done to ascertain where this water is and from other advice I have, I understand that it is running into unknown sources of water, particularly when I took Crossrail's engineers around Spitalfields in 2004, their biggest area of concern was to know whether I knew of any water courses because they were what gave them the most cause of concern. I hope the piece I have given you of the National Coal Board who mined at random under historic buildings with assurances of everything would be fine and virtually destroyed buildings will give you a hint of concern today. Really what I am saying is that now we no longer need to dig here because of Pedley Street tunnel. Surely, given the importance of this district to future generations of people in this country, it is worth looking briefly at the southern route which I feel concern certain you will discover to make a lot of sense.

11171. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: Thank you Mr Harris, you may stand down. Could I call the Reverend Rider.

 

The Petition of Christ Church PCC

THE REVEREND ANDY RIDER appeared as Agent.

 

11172. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: Mr Mould?

11173. MR MOULD: Just a very brief introduction in the usual way. The Petitioner I think is the Rector of Chirst Church.

11174. REVEREND RIDER: Yes, indeed.

11175. MR MOULD: As you know, we described that building to you in the past in its value to the nation. Also I think the Petitioner has an interest through his office in number 22a Hanbury Street which is an unlisted building, but I think it is proposed to be listed and 35 Buxton Street which I think is the rectory. All of these are in the vicinity of the proposed Crossrail running tunnels and not lying beneath them and, indeed, in the vicinity of the Hanbury Street shaft site.

11176. REVEREND RIDER: Thank you, Chairman. Inevitably, I am going to touch on some arguments that have been heard before. I will try not to reiterate them, I will refer to them, I may even reinforce them but will try not to take too much of the Committee's time. There are four areas of concern I want to a raise.

11177. First, I understand the current building spend of this project has risen from £15 to 18 billion, whilst at the same time we hear promises of a quicker build time than was first envisaged. I wonder what provisions there are for overspending and the effect of these time delays which both seem endemic to large-scale building projects in Britain. I need not mention those we are all aware of.

11178. Secondly, I want to echo the concerns of Judith Serota who spoke to you last week on behalf of the Spitalfields Festival. The proximity of the tunnels at Christ Church does indeed indicate that the northwest corner of this fine Grade 1 Listed building sits between one millimetre and five millimetres of settlement contours. We, as the PCC, are concerned about construction noise and vibration, settlement problems and subsequent running noises. These obviously could have adverse effects on the place of worship which is also used by the community for a number of events. The PCC would want all assurance possible of reasonable sound levels and restitution expenses if there were to be a sinkage or cracking for the building as a result of this project.

11179. Thirdly, local concern from residents from the conservation area have also led to an agreement, I understand, to do proper internal assessments of our Grade 1 Listed church and the settlement effects upon it, the map shows the settlement contours on the screen before you, coming under our front portico which supports a huge spire, which if it were to move could have, of course, disastrous consequences. Our architect of some 30 years had already met with some of the Committee and shown them around.

11180. I would like Crossrail's assurance that only the fullest internal investigation will be carried out when looking at these issues. We have heard much evidence about the levels of the foundations in the area and the church is a key example of that. My concern is not just the public building, such as 19 Princelet Street, the church on 22a Hanbury Street which is our community church hall and sits above the central route of that project, but for many residents who have moved to the conservation area, and live in private houses with shallow and weak foundations. I understand you have been asked to investigate the Ten Bells and 19 Princelet Street and I will ask on behalf of my neighbours for a random internal testing of why six to eight of these very fragile, historic properties of 80 properties that constitute the conservation area. I do not think that is very much to ask given the size of the scheme that is being considered.

11181. Fourthly, and my initial reasons for petitioning were motivated by a pastoral concern for the neighbours of the Hanbury Street shaft site and Pedley Street tunnel which I now understand to have been taken out of the project plans as a result of local wisdom and concern. But I do also understand that these are yet to have additional provision amendment approval. I would like Select Committee assurance that these changes will be removed from the scheme or least the very best endeavours to be made to ensure they are. If tunnelling is not to be carried out from there, and I say "if" because, as I say, this approval as yet has to be given to government, the shaft, I understand, will be approximately half the original intended size and no Pedley Street tunnel will be constructed. However, this still requires some 30 lorry movements a day in the narrow residential streets of Spitalfields over a period of some four years. The site sits between a large housing estate and Brick Lane, the community's local shopping street, our own church stall, of which I am chair, sits on Brick Lane itself and has some 160 children many of whom walk, play and shop in the vicinity around the proposed shaft. The road dangers, the dust and the noise will have an adverse effect upon these families; in fact, many adverse effects upon these families and upon those who attend the other four primary schools in that part of our parish, namely Thomas Buxton School, St Anne's and Osmani. Furthermore, these narrow roads with their one-way system already get heavily congested on a daily basis. The addition of some 30 lorry movements a day often having to wait on nearby roads while others unload will only add to the congestion causing roads to become completely blocked and often at times dangerous. I understand the planned lorry route is to enter along Greatorex Street and leave via Buxton Street which Crossrail, I understand, declared last week in response to Pat Jones' evidence, to be a local distributor route. Even so, Buxton Street, I believe, as seen when you visited recently is currently blocked off half way down. It is not a thoroughfare. This, I believe, was blocked off for safety reasons. I have been informed in the last couple of days - I have not been able to research fully - but this was partly in response to a fatal road traffic accident involving two young children some years ago. There are still today two schools right on Buxton Street that twice a day fill the street with children. I was there last week. One of them is a two-form entry; one of them is a one-form entry, so there are a lot of children coming out of school twice a week and entering. Parts of Buxton Street is still cobbled and also runs alongside our chief area of local open space where children regularly play. I cannot believe this shaft site, even in its reduced form, is better located at this spot or the lorries delivering and removing materials will not significantly harm this community.

11182. My last comment is it seems to me quite clear that serious and thorough consideration must be given to other routes. I am aware a more northerly route is being offered that would not involve the tunnels going under the fragile and Georgian conservation area and a Grade 1 Listed national treasure in Christ Church. I believe this route has been suggested by Tower Hamlets both in the past and in recent discussions. My own view, however, is that southerly route should be considered, making a much more direct and possibly cheaper link between Liverpool Street and Whitechapel Street. I believe there have been four options with four initial studies done on southerly routes previously by Crossrail. Indeed, I am led to believe the main objection in the past, as Mr Harris suggested, was the distance between that southerly route and the Pedley Street removal site. Now that Pedley Street site is not going to be part of the proposal, that previous objection falls away very fast. I would like to hear a commitment from Crossrail that they will consider again a southerly option of avoiding the distress, trauma and perhaps serious effects of a site in the middle a residential and narrow streeted community.

11183. REVEREND RIDER: Lastly, it has been reported not just here but wider that this Crossrail scheme has been perhaps one of the most troublesome by way of public concern. I urge you then to reconsider in the light of that concern and in the wellbeing of a large Bengali community, who may have been more silent than most by way of petitions but undoubtedly will be affected more than most, if this goes ahead, to reconsider the wisdom of this current proposal and that shaft site. Thank you.

11184. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: Thank you very much, Reverend.

11185. MR MOULD: Sir, I have said something already about Christ Church-Spitalfields and settlement. I simply repeat the point that we have considered the potential impact upon Christ Church of the proposed Crossrail works. I do stress that the settlement assessment process that we have is focused specifically upon the risk of differential assessment, a point that the Petitioners perhaps will wish to be aware of. We will certainly share with the Petitioner, as the proprietor of Christ Church, the work we have done in relation to that building. In so far as noise and vibration is concerned, that is a matter upon which I think Mr Elvin gave certain commitments last week when Ms Serota was presenting her Petition and we will involve this Petitioner in the process of further site visit and investigation that was mentioned by Mr Elvin last week.

11186. In so far as other buildings within the Petitioner's ownership and concern they have been subject of assessment, as part of our assessment process, and again we have indicated that we will share information with the proprietors of buildings that have been subject to that process and in relation to this Petitioner.

11187. In so far as lorry routes are concerned, we have indicated that the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, as local highways authority, have indicated they prefer the proposed lorry route that we have presented to the Committee through this area. As part of their regulatory role in relation to lorry routing under the Bill, we will be continuing to consult with them and to ensure that we negotiate with them for sensible arrangements in relation to school opening and leaving times. The safety of children at those important times is paramount.

11188. MR MOULD: In so far as the southerly route is concerned, it is a matter that you would have heard a good deal about, largely from Mr Berryman in evidence. I will say no more about that. We will summarise our submissions in relation to that when Mr Elvin comes to make his case later on.

11189. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: Have you anything else you would like to say?

11190. REVEREND RIDER: Thank you for the reassurances around the settlement of the church. Of course, that is not responding to my request for random testing on private properties which you have heard a lot about this afternoon. Also thank you for the consideration around school opening hours and a reminder that Tower Hamlets prefer this route. Of course, there are few routes possible if the Hanbury shaft is sunk at the place where it has been suggested. Again, I want to state for the record my concern about danger, health impact and risk with this shaft where it is and ask the Select Committee to impress upon Crossrail the need to look at this southerly route again.

11191. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: Thank you very much for coming. Could I now call Jemima Broadbridge, please.

 

The Petition of Jemima Broadbridge.

MS JEMIMA BROADBRIDGE appeared as Agent.

 

11192. MR ELVIN: The Petitioner is resident of 18 Deal Street in Spitalfields which is to the north-east of the proposed shaft at Hanbury Street and is outside the Bill limits. The property of the Petitioner is about 60 metres to the north of the east-bound running tunnel. I ought to mention that the Petitioner only received her Petition response document yesterday because the post office was unable to deliver it and only informed us at the end of last week that it had not delivered the PRD. Mr Mantey, who is the Petitioner negotiator, went around personally as soon as we found out on Friday and left a copy of the PRD. I understand Ms Broadbridge is still willing to proceed for which the Committee I am sure are very grateful.

 

11193. MS BROADBRIDGE: I would like to begin my presentation with a brief word about Tower Hamlets Council in relation to Crossrail's proposals. The council has never explained the value of creating another underground station at Whitechapel to me as a local resident. The local community has been told that the new Whitechapel station is intended to help regenerate an area which even to outsiders must seem pretty lively, vital and thriving community.

 

11194. Frankly, this word "regeneration" sounds patronising to people like myself who are already resident in the area and who are aware, possibly more than visiting property developers, of what a bustling and lively place it is to live. Meaningless term like "regeneration" effectively serve to depersonalise, dismiss, overlook or devalue the community in which you live. They are words used to sweeten the bitter pill of the impact of development on your surroundings and daily life.

 

11195. I am interested in the people of this village and not just buildings. I thought the last presentation was excellent and very interesting. I would like to stress that I do not think Spitalfields should be uses ad just another Brown fields site for development which I think a lot of city developers tend to think.

11196. In my case, it is the village of Spitalfields and it is a village because when I come out of my door every morning on the way to work I say hello to my neighbour opposite and my neighbours who live either side of me if I see them going to work. We all know one another to talk to. It is a safe, relax and friendly community that I am lucky enough to live in. My main reason for bringing this Petition is because I am interested in preserving the precious, unique character of my village.

11197. I am afraid that my personal experience of regeneration in East London is that it is usually a euphemism for just that, development. Having observed Tower Hamlets Council and the corporation of London's developer in action in Spitalfields and on the city fringe over the course of the last six years I have come to learn that regeneration very rarely benefits the local residents in the local area. More often than not, development is targeted to satisfy the perceived requirement of city workers on their lunch breaks who commute to the square mile but have little or no connection to their work surroundings.

11198. If Whitechapel is to be regenerated - and it could do with some help - then I would suggest that some of the planning gain generated from other projects in the borough could be spent on improving local services and facilities for local people. I understand that the London Borough of Tower Hamlets is sitting on around eight and a half million pounds of planning gain monies derived from other developments. I would like to ask whether some of this money could perhaps be used to offset the environmental impacts that the Crossrail project will have on Spitalfields and in particular on Deal Street residents?

11199. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: Ms Broadbridge, that is way outside our remit. We cannot look at that, that is for Crossrail. Can you please focus your remarks on Crossrail.

 

11200. MS BROADBRIDGE: We would be grateful if some of that money could be used to offset the impacts of this development. I also wish to make the point that while Crossrail's change of mind on the tunnelling strategy is welcome, I realise that it probably would not have been achieved but for the concerted efforts of a community campaign prior to the recent local elections. I would like to point out for the record that it was this campaign which eventually galvanised the council into action which led to Crossrail to changing direction. For these reasons I am not wholly convinced that Tower Hamlets Council has in any way represented my view or the views of other local people. I have been unsurprised but nonetheless quietly angry about this point until now.

11201. I am chiefly concerned with Buxton Street which is the road abutting my road. It is at the end of my road. It is currently closed due to through traffic that Crossrail intends to reopen in order to allow lorries access to the exit route along Vallance Road.

11202. I am told by neighbours who have lived in the Area linger than I have that since it has been closed this road has become a haven of safety where young children can play . It seems to be exactly that way. I frequently see mothers with very young children, some under five years of age, traversing the street with their toys and tricycles - and this is outside school hours - on the weekend or in the early evening, going for a walk.

11203. I also understand that Buxton Street was originally closed to traffic by the council because of an active community campaign which was mounted by local residents following the deaths of two small children caused by a traffic accident a few years ago. This makes me increasingly anxious about what might happen if this road is reopened again, even if the lorry access is controlled.

11204. Will the flow of traffic along Buxton Street be controlled by gates at the end of the road, where it meets the junction with Deal Street? Will there be fences erected on either side of Buxton Street to stop children straying into the path of lorries? If not, what measures will be taken by Crossrail to protect vulnerable young children who play in Allen Gardens? How safe will they be once lorries start travelling along Buxton Street?

11205. Only last weekend I was out picnicking in Allen Gardens with friends when I saw a group of very young boys aged about seven or eight years old running around in the park together , unaccompanied by an adult, presumably because they live on one of the neighbouring estates that borders the park. I would like some assurances from Crossrail and the council that children will still be able to play in the park and the playground adjacent to Buxton Street without any danger of a collision with the heavy vehicles passing by. Otherwise, not only will the quality of life in the area be blighted for people who live on Deal Street, but young lives will be endangered and access to the only reasonably sized piece of Green public space in Spitalfields will be ruined, at least temporarily.

11206. There is also the issue of the three primary schools which abut the route taken by at the lorries along Buxton Street, en route to Durward Street. Although we have been given assurances by Crossrail that the lorries will not be traversing this route during the hours that children arrive at school and leave school, there is still a risk that children may want to play after school hours around the perimeter fence of the school and that they risk being involved in an accident. Has this issue been settled with the three local primary schools to their satisfaction?

11207. However, I would also like to stress that Allen Gardens is used not just by young children but by adults like myself as a place of rest, respite and recreation, away from the busy hubbub of Brick Lane and the surrounding traffic-ridden streets of Spitalfields. It acts as a small "lung for the city". We go there to picnic, read a book, walk the dogs, enjoy the annual Spitalfields community festival, to visit the city farm with friends and sometimes just to sunbathe and play Frisbee.

11208. If lorries are going to be traversing Buxton Street for a period of four years during the shaft construction process, then I would like to seek assurances from Crossrail that the park will not be excessively disturbed by Sunday working or evening working during the summer months.

11209. I would also like to make the point that a considerable number of cyclists, including myself, use Buxton Street as a short cut to access Brick Lane. For cyclists this is an excellent way to cut out the busy traffic on Vallance Road, Spital Street and Hanbury Street. I would like to ask Crossrail how long it will be before Buxton Street is open to cyclists again?

11210. This next topic concerns planning matters. I am very concerned about Crossrail's proposals for oversite development - or OSD - which will occur at the end of construction, around at the Hanbury shaft site.

11211. I am aware that others have already raised a similar point about OSD in a previous representations, but I would like to ask one question which I think has not been raised yet. If Crossrail does intend to make "reasonable practical endeavours to negotiate the right to develop these sites after the shaft has been dug, then who will the money from time to time eh sale of these developments go to?

11212. practical endeavours to negotiate the right to develop these sites after the shaft has been dug, then who will the money from time to time eh sale of these developments go to?

11213. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: As I have said previously, this is out of our remit and we cannot deal with this matter here. Can you please stick to issues relating to Crossrail.

11214. MS BROADBRIDGE: Okay. The next issue is relating to noise and health impacts. I am aware that the acoustics in Deal Street are very sensitive and acute. At times the Dawn Chorus can sound as loud as a car alarm going off because the area is such a green and pleasant place to live.

11215. The green aspect (not the noise) is one of the main reasons why Deal Street has become such an attractive place to live. Some of my neighbours have been residents in Albert Cottages for over 20 years, which shows how much the place compels people to want to stay.

11216. However, what concerns me is the possibility of low level, ambient vibrations caused by lorries transporting rubble from the shaft on Hanbury Street down Buxton Street, particularly during initial intensive construction period. Much is frequently made of loud noise in residential areas caused by neighbours, planes, traffic et cetera, but I am also concerned about the lesser-known effect that apparent low level noise or vibrations will have on the physical and mental health of Deal Street residents during this initial construction period.

11217. This is the type of noise that could wake up a baby or an adult during the night if 24 hour working takes place. It is the type of noise likely to bring with it the effects of stress and anxiety such as sleep deprivation for Deal Street residents. I would like if Crossrail would produce, for my peace of mind, a clearer idea of how loud the noise of works taking place will be for people sitting at home on Deal Street and whether on a sunny summer's evening we might have to close our windows and doors and go indoors.

 

11218. Why has Crossrail not produced studies to give an indication of the noise levels likely to be caused by 16 heavy lorries per day travelling up and down Buxton Street? I am concerned that no community impact assessment has been produced to look at the welfare issues other than those directly related to health.

11219. No background information or evidence is provided to show existing levels of ambient noise for Deal Street residents who live on Deal Street, yes the HIA asserts with confidence that there will be no significant increase in noise levels, despite plans to work from 7 am to 10 pm sometimes and at other times to work 24 hours per day.

11220. Crossrail's health impact assessment offers no substantive support or offers any mitigating plans to reduce the cumulative effect of raised noise levels, apart from offering a very limited number of residents living close to the site the possibility of double or secondary glazing.

11221. This sounds to me very much like a blithe and irresponsible dismissal of the reality of what it means to live next to a building site for a concerted period of time. I would like response to these points.

11222. My conclusion and main argument s Crossrail have said that they no longer intend to start tunnelling in Spitalfields and they will not be building a large depot at Romford, so then why can they not now make another change and alter the tunnel route from time to time eh one they want, the one that goes from Liverpool Street to Whitechapel but along the Whitechapel Road , missing the church, 19 Princelet Street, all the Georgian buildings and no big hole in Spitalfields. With this route they will not need to tunnel under Spital Street to Pedley Street.

11223. I would urge the Committee to consider recommending major amendments to the Hybrid Bill at the Third Reading to mitigate against the extremely harmful impact this project will have upon the residents, families and school children in Deal Street. In particular, I would like to see an amendment which gives serious consideration to moving the tunnelling route further south than the present safeguard route, thereby avoiding major, serious and long-term disruption to the lives of the families and school children where I live in the heart of Spitalfields.

11224. Finally, I have a number of questions for Crossrail nd I will leave a copy with them and the Committee. I want assurance that these questions will be answered fully and appropriately in writing in a matter of days. I would like confirmation that a copy of Crossrail's response has been sent to this Committee.

11225. Firstly, Will the flow of traffic along Buxton Street be controlled by gates at the end of the road, where it meets the junction with Deal Street? Will there be fences erected on either side of Buxton Street to stop children straying into the path of lorries? If not, what measures will be taken by Crossrail to protect vulnerable young children who play in Allen Gardens?

11226. If lorries are going to be transversing Buxton Street for a period of four years during the shaft construction process, then I would like to ask, what assurances can Crossrail give that the park will not be excessively disturbed by Sunday working or evening working during the summer months?

11227. I would like to ask Crossrail how long it will be before Buxton Street is open to cyclists again?

11228. If Crossrail does intend to make "reasonable" practical endeavours to negotiate the right to develop OSD sites after the shaft has been dug, then who will the money from sale of these developments go to? Given the current high land values in the area, it is doubtful that local people could afford to buy this plot of land or any development on it. Presumably the site will be developed for sale a commercial, competitive rates?

11229. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: Mr Elvin?

 

11230. MR ELVIN: Sir, can I deal with the broader points which have been raised. So far as the issue of the value of the Whitechapel is concerned, the Committee made clear on day 41, which was last Thursday, paragraphs 10883 to 10894 of the transcript, that they accepted that the principle of the station in Whitechapel was established by a Second Reading, and therefore it is not a matter for the Committee to determine. I do not propose to say any more about that. We have, in any event, given the Committee an explanation of the reasons for the station and Mr Anderson on last Thursday, day 41, gave evidence on the issue. So far as working hours are concerned, as I mentioned a moment ago, agreement has been reached with the local authority on the working hours. A final document needs to be prepared for submission to this Committee so that you can see what has been agreed.

11231. Can I tell the Committee what that means. It has been agreed that the core working hours will be from 8am to 6pm on weekdays and 6am to 1am on a Saturday . Outside the core working hours only non-disturbing preparatory work, repairs and maintenance, will be carried out outside those hours, for example on Saturday afternoon or on Sundays and even then not later than five o'clock in the afternoon. That does not involve the delivery and removal of spoil. Construction related to traffic serving the work sites will abide by this, by the agreed hours of working for each specific location. That means that the core hours will cover timing of deliveries, off-loading and loading from the public highways, and deliveries, other than a normal load, will not take place outside the core working hours and start and closedown periods without prior agreement with the local authority.

11232. Can I make it clear that the activities that are agreed to 24 hours a day primarily are the tunnelling works and matters which can be served through the portals and within the tunnels themselves and matters such as the operation and maintenance of equipment.

11233. The Committee will get a full document which sets this out in detail but I thought it would be helpful to make it clear now that there will not be delivery lorries taking spoil away at ten in the evening or matters such as the Petitioner raised concern about.

11234. Can I also say so far as cycles are concerned, this is dealt with in information paper D20 paragraph 3.1, local diversions will be signposted and where necessary alternative facilities provided.

11235. Finally, on the question of oversite development, that is a matter for the normal planning process by local planning authorities and where necessary we would appeal to the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government under the Town and Country Planning Act. It is not the decision of the House or the Secretary of State for Transport, but of the normal planning process.

11236. So far as the proceeds from oversite development, if the site is bought by public money then it will be the public coffers that will take the proceeds. However, as Mr Colin Smith, one of our property experts, explained to the Committee, I think it was during the first Westminster Petition back in February, it is a mistake to regard this as being profitable because of the fact that we have to pay for the property upfront when it is taken and then the property is held while the works are being carried out and before any development can take place.

11237. Of course, there is a holding cost and the financing of the capital costs of acquisition. However, it is the public purse that will pay and the public purse that will take such proceeds as arise from selling off any OSD whilst it is permitted. The OSD is entirely a matter for the normal process and in an area such as Hanbury Street no doubt that will be constrained by the presence of many listed buildings. I have nothing else to say.

11238. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: Thank you, Mr Elvin. Have you got anything else to say?

11239. MS BROADBRIDGE: Many thanks you for your response there. I wanted to query the phrase "non-disturbing noise" as I find it is a slightly odd term and I would welcome a stronger definition of what that is. I would also welcome a more detailed study from Crossrail into what the noise effects will be, such as the one carried out on the King's Cross development a few years ago, which I gather was very detailed.

11240. Also, I gather there is a start-up period between seven and eight in the morning before the working of eight until one on a Saturday, so that would mean more noise before 8 o'clock start time. Some people like a lie-in on a Saturday so that is not very nice for residents. That is all I wanted to say.

11241. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: Thank you very much indeed. Can I call Dr Susan Goodbody and Thomas Sparks.

 

11242. The Petitioners own 19 Wilkes Street in the area. Their property is located above the eastbound running tunnel about 200 metres to the west of the proposed Hanbury Street shaft. You can see the 310, which is the petition number, next to the 195. At the point of 19 Wilkes Street the tunnels will be more than 100 feet below the surface, some 36.5 metres below ground. Thank you, sir.

 

 

The Petition of Dr Susan Goodbody and Mr Thomas Sparks

 

The Petitioner appeared in person

11243. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: It is Dr Goodbody, is it?

11244. DR GOODBODY: It is. My name is Susan Goodbody - and I am sorry Tom Sparks cannot be here today. As you have heard, I live at 19 Wilkes Street, right on top of the tunnel. We have been offered a settlement of 26 mls. You have already heard arguments from many people as to why the tunnel should not be built under historic Spitalfields and I am not going to go into that again. As I understand it, Crossrail is intended to benefit all Londoners and I think that all Londoners should share in the cost. I have a very genuine fear that a very small minority of us are going to end up paying far, far more than our fair share of the cost, and I have come here today to ask you to prevent this and protect us.

11245. Obviously I do not have time to go over all the points in our Petition, so I will concentrate on just two, and those are with respect to noise and the potential damage to our home. Here is what keeps me awake at night. I worry, genuinely, that ten or 12 years from now I will be sitting in my basement listening and going mad over the sound of trains running underneath me, and I phone Crossrail or whoever is involved at that point - it might not be Crossrail any more - and they will be, at best, unwilling to help me or, at worst, unable to help me because the tunnel will be a fait accompli and there will be nothing that they can do about it. So I am asking you, please protect me from this possible outcome.

11246. Additionally, I also worry that if there is damage to my home then I will have to prove to Crossrail's satisfaction that this is as a result of the Crossrail link, and I do not see why I should be put in this position. I am not the one who is changing the status quo. I do not want to bear the cost or distress of litigation and I really do not believe that some independent person like me would have any hope of winning such litigation against a big outfit like Crossrail, with their access to legal teams that I have no possibility of matching. So I am worried about that.

11247. I have a couple of very specific questions that I was hoping to put to Crossrail; is that going to be possible? Can I ask questions?

11248. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: Yes, you can. If you would like to address them to the Committee and I will ask Mr Elvin.

11249. DR GOODBODY: So the threshold for noise that Crossrail are aiming to be under is 40 decibels. The 40 decibels is definitely audible across the majority of frequencies that the human ear can hear. When people talk about noise they often give an example of leaves rustling, and that is only ten decibels - that is thousands and thousands of times less than trains at 40 decibels. So I just want to ask Crossrail, presumably you have a mathematical model that you have produced to predict that the noise level will be less than 40 decibels, and if you do is it published and do we have access to it?

11250. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: Mr Elvin will be listening closely.

11251. MR ELVIN: He is indeed.

11252. DR GOODBODY: Also, in the response to our Petition Crossrail said that the threshold that they were aiming for was described as 40dBL_Amax,s where "s" is a time constant of one second. To me, when I see time constants it makes me think is that correct? I want to know basically is this decibel level going to be across all frequencies? How much higher is it going to be, say, at 1000, 10,000 hertz? Could it be ten times higher, 100 times higher? I do not know. I am asking them basically what is the gain of this device at all frequencies? How much are these very audible frequencies and what would be the threshold that would have to be reached if you reached the normal time constants? I am not sure if I should ---

11253. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: Please continue, Mr Elvin will be listening closely to what you say.

11254. DR GOODBODY: One other question which was regarding the response. We have been told several times that there is going to be a survey of our property before tunnelling starts and I would like to know when this is actually going to happen. Will it involve going into the house and pulling up floorboards? What is it actually going to entail? That is what I want to say and if you could answer these questions I would be grateful.

11255. In closing I would like to say, please uphold the request we made in our Petition. Please grant us an independent assessment of noise, vibration and settlement that we requested in our Petition and please require that Crossrail come to some agreement with us on an acceptable level of noise rather than impose one on us. Thank you very much.

11256. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: Mr Elvin, would you like to answer the questions?

11257. MR ELVIN: Indeed, if the Committee would find it helpful Mr Thornley-Taylor can explain the issue with groundborne noise again.

11258. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: If you want to start off yourself, we have gone over that fairly carefully and we have had demonstrations on the ground noise. So if necessary we will call a witness but I think we have explored the area.

11259. MR ELVIN: Can I first say that with regard to the assessment of the listed building, which is the Petitioner's property, that has been subject to a stage 3 settlement assessment, and as with the general undertaking that will be made available to the Petitioner and we will enter into any further discussions over that settlement report with the Petitioner to help understand it and to discuss it.

11260. Secondly, so far as surveys and how defects would be taken forward: (a) any damage would be remedied by Crossrail, but (b), contrary to the assumptions that some make, the methods of preventing settlement damage are focused on at source methods, as Professor Meyer indicated on day eight. It is set out in section 4.1 and 4.2 of Information Paper D12 and the defect survey process is set out in section 5 of Information Paper D12, and the defect survey is typically undertaken about a month before construction starts in the area to make sure that it is unaffected by construction.

11261. As with the unlisted buildings, the summary of the stage 3 report is already in the public domain in the technical report. It is the second down, 220, 17-25 Wilkes Street, potential settlement damage negligible, building sensitivity scored one, which means that they have some delicacies which have to be observed. Therefore, overall potential impact is not significant, but that is subject to a stage 3 report which, as I have said, will be made available.

11262. So far as noise is concerned the 40dB level, which is taken over at a one second interval is a sensitive approach because it measures out that noise not over an hour or over minutes but over a second. So it is more sensitive than if the time index were extended. Secondly, the weighting of the decibel scale that is used for these measurements takes account of the frequency response of the human ear, as I think Mr Thornley-Taylor explained to you, also on day eight, when he gave his general noise presentation; but I am sure he would be willing to talk to the Petitioner and explain it outside the hearing.

11263. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: I think that would be very helpful, Mr Elvin. I do think the Petitioner does need that. Would that be all right?

11264. DR GOODBODY: Yes, that would be lovely.

11265. MR ELVIN: Can I reassure her that detailed modelling has been carried out. There are eight volumes of a noise impact technical report, which have been publicly available in the various deposit locations and on the Internet for the last 18 months, and certainly the modelling details, if a Petitioner wishes to get into the nitty-gritty, is there in the eight volumes of technical reports. Sir, as I have said, I have offered Mr Thornley-Taylor to discuss the noise issues further with the Petitioner. I understand from Mr Thornley-Taylor that with this property it is predicted that noise levels will be well below 40dB and probably below 30. So you can put that in the context of other properties.

11266. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: Dr Goodbody, are you happy that you can have a conversation with the noise expert. Would that be helpful?

11267. DR GOODBODY: Yes, I am really happy with that. Do you understand about this?

11268. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: The role of the Committee is to try and facilitate your concerns, and if we can orchestrate as we go along then we will try and do it.

11269. DR GOODBODY: After having this conversation if I am still unclear, what happens then?

11270. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: You can certainly write to us and we will take notice of that.

11271. DR GOODBODY: The first point was to reply to us about the stage 3 assessment, so are you telling me that that has already been done? So this has been done without entering our house?

11272. MR ELVIN: It is the first iteration of the report. We have already given the Committee the terms of the agreement with Tower Hamlets and they will be provided to the property owners and we are then prepared to discuss the individual terms of the individual properties with individual property owners.

11273. DR GOODBODY: So I am asking quite a simple question for a straightforward answer: is anyone ever going to come into my house and have a look at it from the inside?

11274. MR ELVIN: I suspect the easy answer to that is that once the report is received if that is what the Petitioner wishes then the answer will be yes.

11275. DR GOODBODY: Okay, thank you very much. You made a blanket statement that if there is damage Crossrail will remedy it. I understood that there is still some argument over that; that I would have to show that the damage was as a result of Crossrail, it would not automatically be assumed that the damage was Crossrail's fault.

11276. MR ELVIN: That is why the defect survey is done just before the works are carried out.

11277. DR GOODBODY: But these are 300-year old houses, they are full of defects.

11278. MR ELVIN: Yes, and we have listed building specialists.

11279. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: We have gone through this very carefully because of course it is a concern to the Committee given the importance of this area.

11280. DR GOODBODY: All I am saying is that I do not want to be in this position and I would like to get as much protection from you as I can.

11281. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: Dr Goodbody, thank you very much for coming forward.

11282. Can I call the Spitalfields Small Business Association, Mrs Kay Jordan.

 

 

The Petition of Spitalfields Small Business Association

 

MRS KAY JORDAN appeared as Agent

 

11283. MS JORDAN: Can I just say that I am very deaf and on my left side I am totally deaf.

 

11284. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: Yes, we know that. We have been told that.

11285. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: Mr Mould.

11286. MR MOULD: Sir, I shall simply say that the Petitioner is the Spitalfields Small Business Association Limited, which owns and manages approximately 90,000 square feet of workspace in the Spitalfields area in London, and a number of properties are owned or leased by the Association. I will not take trouble to read them all out, I am sure that the Petitioner mentions those in turn if she wishes to draw them to the Committee's specific attention.

11287. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: Ms Jordan.

11288. MS JORDAN: I will start by introducing myself and telling you a little about the organisation I work for and I am representing today. I will then explain which properties of the organisation are affected, as this gentleman said, by the Promoter's proposals, and how the Promoter's proposals will now affect the lives and livelihoods of our tenants and those in the wider Brick Lane community.

11289. I will go on to explain how our organisation and the wider Brick Lane community were excluded from the Promoter's round 1 consultation process and as such were denied the opportunity to participate in discussions concerning the route taken by the Promoters in the Brick Lane area who were not told of the environmental impact of such works on our physical and social conditions.

11290. I will explain that the Secretary of State, whose recommendations to the House during the second reading of the Bill, recognised our right to make these matters the subject of your Committee's deliberations and recommendations. I will go on to explain how we consider the proposed route and the ventilation shaft in Hanbury Street to be not only ill-conceived but also totally inappropriate for our tightly knit urban area and community.

11291. Finally, I will explain why the southern alignment, briefly talked about by the Promoters but never considered or explained in detail, is a more appropriate alignment which should be developed and adopted even at this late stage of the proceedings.

11292. For the record I will state that my name is Kay Jordan and I am the Executive Director of Spitalfields Small Business Association, known locally as the SSBA, and that is how I will refer to it in my presentation.

11293. I trained as an architect at the Architectural Association in the late 1960s and practised community architecture working with, first, Calvin Coftee (?) and then with the SSBA since the late 70s. I come from a family of engineers: my grandfather, father, brother and indeed my nephew are all qualified engineers, and I too have worked, before becoming a community architect, with major engineering companies, including work on gas pipelines through Iran.

11294. When it did exist I was the Vice Chairman of the IRP's (?) community architecture group and I exhibited and won architecture awards. In 1996 I was awarded an MBE for my community work ---

11295. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: Ms Jordan ---

11296. MS JORDAN: I know, you want me to rush and I am trying to go as fast as I can but I hope that you will be kind enough to listen to what I have to say.

11297. I will go on now to talk about the SSBA. The SSBA is an extremely well known social enterprise with a national as well as international reputation, and it has been in existence for 25 years, and we are what is now known as a self-sustaining social enterprise, and we actually get that self-sustainability from our workshops. It was created in the late 1970s to help, then, a mainly Bangladeshi community improve living and working conditions in an area that then contained the worse slums in the country. Through joint venture arrangements, working with the housing cooperative, now known as the Spitalfields Housing Association, it was to attempt to acquire and improve some of the worst buildings in the area.

11298. Since incorporation in 1981 the SSBA has created and improved and now manages some 90,000 square feet of commercial space in the Brick Lane area, which it lets to approximately 120 tenant businesses and community organisations. They carry out a variety of trades and activities, and like the housing cooperative we are a membership to our tenants, so we are like the housing cooperative but our tenants are members and therefore we are not in the normal landlord/tenant relationship of a normal commercial limited company.

11299. We pride ourselves on our multi-racial, multi-cultural base, and as well as reviving small business premises and economic advice we have a charity called the SSBA Community Trust, which supports two training and enterprise projects, one known as the Poetry and (?) Project for people with learning difficulties, and another called HEPA (?), a women's project which is based in Brick Lane.

11300. One of the aims of the SSBA is to represent the views of its members and the wider community and all the economic and other related issues as they affect Spitalfields, and it is on this basis that I wish to present the following case in relation to the Promoters' proposals for their cross London rail link to the heart of our community.

11301. Before going into detail I wish it to be recorded that these views relate only to the detail of the works as they relate to the Brick Lane area, because we are told that it is not possible for this Committee to discuss or take evidence about the need of economic justification for the overall proposals, and we consider the overall proposals to be neither economically sound nor socially justified.

11302. As an Association of Small Businesses we also wish to have put on record our opposition to the notion that businesses in London should pay a percentage increase in business rates ---

11303. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: Mrs Jordon, this is nothing to do with us; you said it yourself. We cannot take it into consideration.

11304. MS JORDAN: We do object to having to be considered that we will put a percentage on our rates to support a rail link tunnel connecting simply the City of London to Canary Wharf in the east and Heathrow in the west, and no amount of argument claiming economic regeneration, which has been claimed, additionality or connectivity will change our minds about this. We are convinced that the proposals are anything but what they say they are and represent the advancement of the City into the East End. They will do, as far as we are concerned, the opposite to what they say they will do and in our opinion they will devastate and completely destroy our vibrant and multi-cultural community. I will note that I put in my notes here, "I expect the Chairman by now to be saying what he is not wanting to hear from Miss Jordan," and for his sake I will now turn to the detail of the Bill.

 

11305. My papers are numbers 1 to 4. If you could start with one, please. This is the slide you saw much earlier when these proceedings started. In fact, my office has kindly altered it to try and highlight what the Promoters were saying where our properties are affected by it. You can see a very large yellow block in the middle. Down on the right‑hand side is a block where the arrow route of the traffic is, which is a converted synagogue and business centre where my office is. In fact, just behind the very large block in the middle which was going to be the hole, you will just be able see two little strips of yellow.

11306. Could you turn to the next document, please. This document shows our property holding as it is affected by the railway. These are the properties that are affected. You can see large chunks of property to the left of where the main hole would be, which are workshops and flats which were the ones the housing co‑operative started off with. The plots to the south, I have mentioned. The block in the north is another collection of properties that we have off Brick Lane which are subject to being probably interfered with with the first Crossrail proposal. Come along and you will see to the east of where the hole is there is a whole series of blocks which are also properties, some of which are owned by the SSPA and the very large property on the left‑hand side is a community centre which is owned by the local authority but managed by ourselves.

11307. Could you turn to the next picture, please. I have put this in as a graphic representation. It is an extract from a manual report of - and if I could read Bengali, then I could tell you - it is 1989. It was representing our tenants and members. You can see from Hanbury Street and Princelet Street we sit exactly in and around where this hole is, so you will see how we are affected.

11308. Could I see the next picture, please. These pictures are of the properties in Hanbury and Princelet Streets. You will see the Dutch gable properties which are on Hanbury Street which were improved in the late 1980s and the single row of terrace with the big building in the background. The big building is in fact Britannia House which is, or was in fact, to be knocked down and the single row of properties are back workshops behind a terrace of property owned by the housing co-operative. These were properties we separated out in terms of residential and industrial use. You can see the tenants outside. This, in fact, was a building site that Prince Charles came to when he said something should be done with the East End. I should say that now we are certainly having something done to us.

11309. Now the next one, please. Unfortunately, despite our property holding, it was not until the beginning of January 2004 that I knew anything about the proposals for a large hole in Hanbury Street. It was simply by bumping into a neighbour of ours who said, "I thought you would have been jumping up and down about the fans in Hanbury Street." I said, "What fans in Hanbury Street?" I was then told there had been some exhibition in late October that he had called in and seen but was not been seen by anybody else. That neighbour directed me to a Crossrail website. On the Crossrail website I found these two boards, and I understand these were boards that were in their public consultation exhibition. You can see on the left‑hand side our Dutch gable properties looking very smart, not quite right but very smart, adjacent to it and above it is an indication of a major development which was to take place with the fans and a strange sort of tunnel arrangement underneath. This horrified me, but it was when I read the sheet on the left‑hand side that alarm bells really started ringing. Whilst it was explained that this would be a ventilation shaft and it would indeed have fans that would be running day and night, the second to last paragraph, when I read it, absolutely caused alarm bells. I will read it to the Committee for the sake of the report: "The shaft worksite is also proposed to be used as a launch and retrieval point for tunnel-boring machines that will be used during tunnel construction". Now being an architect, I understood what this meant. I was absolutely horrified that the indication of these words was the fact that the tunnels will be dug from our area. One sentence, nothing else, nothing else on the website, no indication of the Pedley Street worksite other than a little green line running up the side. I was absolutely horrified.

11310. I was so horrified that in fact I penned a letter to Crossrail. In fact, I have an exhibit of that here. If you could just put that up. I will paraphrase all of this. I wrote to Mr Simon Bennett saying that he appeared to have carried out consultations that were about this. We understood that round one consultation would be completed on 19 January and they will be asking for approval under that to fix the line of this railway, which nobody knew about. We had learned nothing about this. We registered our strongest complaints about it and we wished it to be known that not only was a consultation exercise a sham but we were also lead to believe that the office had been told not to consult in our area. We also demanded that round one consultation process remain open until the proposals about the Hanbury Street shaft and spoil tunnels were openly presented to the people of the Brick Lane area so we could all see what was going on. I copied my letter to a great number of local organisations, all of which are listed on this letter. I got no reply to that and, therefore, consulted a friend of mine who was a retired QC who also thought it was rather odd that nothing happened and we had not been consulted. Therefore, I wrote again to Mr Bennett on 6 February explaining that we ask again that they give consideration to further examination and to give us the opportunity to be consulted. We also pointed out that there is not to be anything about the environmental effects this would have within our community within their presentation. I did get later replies. What then pursued was two or three months of hectic information gathering, not information that was presented at a public meeting but information across a great number of community organisations who met both individually and collectively with Crossrail to try and find out what was happening.

11311. Could you put up the next slide, please. This slide was the one presented not publicly but to a meeting with the Spitalfields Society. Fortunately, we were able to share information. It was on that basis of this that we were able to discover that the Pedley Street worksite which is at the end of that blue line which disappeared off the top of the original presentation drawings was not only as it had been in the first round - can you show me the next one, please, it is the extent of the worksite in Pedley Street on the first proposals for Crossrail - not only was it similar to the original site, but, in fact, it was considerably larger. Not only was it taking spoil from the hole, but it was taking spoil from the railway station that will be dug at Whitechapel. This is a composite diagram of Crossrail's old drawings which my clever staff were able to put together. You will see the lettering and the writing are all at strange angles because they were never connected before, they were all in little bits. You find the great block of Pedley Street was something that I put together having gleaned from the various bits of information that we got at the individual discussions and meetings that we had. Could you put the next one up.

11312. MR MOULD: I am sorry to interrupt the Petitioner but, as the Committee will have noted, lest there be any confusion, those last two drawings were composites of the private bill scheme from the early 1990s on which certain earlier aspects of the current scheme - because Pedley Street is, of course, no longer part of our proposals - were superimposed.

11313. MS JORDAN: Could you go back now please. This one is a composite of your current scheme, and I may in my bag have drawings. These are three separate drawings; in fact the only addition is the very large block at the top which is in my composite added to your drawings. Could I go to slide 11 now, please. Having put this picture together locally, everybody was so horrified that we tried to get a public meeting called by Crossrail. Crossrail refused to do this, so in fact my committee invited them to a meeting of a few members. To that meeting we invited - because it was a private meeting, and you are refused to come to a private meeting - representatives of other organisations. This was a letter that was sent to Alistair Darling at the end of that meeting. It said, and I will read some it: "At the meeting of Wednesday 26 May" - this was in 2004 - "60 people from 19 local organisations met two Crossrail representatives ---- "

11314. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: Ms Jordan, we can read it.

11315. I will paraphrase then. We expressed our concerns about the worksites and the proposals in Brick Lane here. We had heard they would not hold a public meeting. Despite repeated requests, this did not happen. At the end of that meeting the people living and working in the area passed a resolution. For the record, I would like to read that resolution. It is as follows: "The people of the Brick Lane area, the Spitalfields around the town ward in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, are not prepared to accept the environmental, social and economic impact of the current proposals by Crossrail to locate a tunnel access shaft, ventilation shaft and underground tunnels in and passing through the heart of our communities. We are appalled at the lack of understanding of politicians, engineers and businesses from outside the area of the disruption and profound impact of these proposals of many years on the lives, health and livelihoods of people living and working here. We have launched a campaign for change and we use all legitimate means at our disposal to achieve change. In particular, we will seek with energy and resolve to defeat the re-election for the political representatives not prepared to meet with us to bring about the changes we seek". This was sent in June 2004 and, as you probably know, we now no longer have the MP that was our MP of the period neither do we have the leader of the council and several of the politicians. Following that meeting and that letter, we then raised a campaign.

11316. MS JORDAN: Could I have the next one. This is the first leaflet that went out, on what has turned out to be a campaign run by Mr Muhammad Hoque including our campaign which has spent hundreds of hours, millions of words, hundreds of leaflets, lots public meetings ‑‑--

11317. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: We can take those as read.

11318. MS JORDAN: I just wish to put on record that we feel it is this campaign and Mr Hoque's work that effected the change in the tunnel and the spoil removal that happened two or three days before ----

11319. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: It does not matter who did it. We got the message. What we are trying to ascertain is what you want.

11320. MS JORDAN: I will then go on. Would you put the next slide up, please. I would like to ask why we were not consulted in round one. This is a code of practice on dissemination of information during major infrastructure projects found on the Deputy Prime Minister's website. It is for stage one consultation. You will see it follows the lines, I have to tick ----

11321. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: Ms Jordan, we are well aware of that. We have made representation very forcefully to the Promoters about what has been done. We have made very clear that this proposal has not been properly handled. This Committee last week made it very clear to Mr Elvin and Mr Mould what the situation was. We have gone through this very carefully. The consultation has not been up to scratch. We did that with Mr Galloway who is a Member of Parliament and with our Petitioners last week. Unless you have got something new to add?

11322. MS JORDAN: Yes, I have. I think the consultation that went on through round two and onwards has been appalling.

11323. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: We know.

11324. MS JORDAN: It has ticked all the boxes. I want to specifically to talk about round one consultation. This demonstrates what should be done in round one. I wish to show to you we were deliberately excluded from round one consultation I think simply because, had we done that, we would have been able to say this is not the route of the line. Had we been able to say this is not the route of the line, then they really have not considered our evidence. Now we are at the 11th hour when we are still told by the Promoters it is impossible, but I wish to show you that I believe that we were deliberately excluded from that process because this is the process that they followed and it is quite true that you will see that they were supposed to talk to people. In fact in a Cabinet paper, my paper 14, a report to Tower Hamlets Council in October 2002, the local authority were urging CLRL to immediately begin communicating the benefits of Crossrail to local residents and businesses in advance of their local public consultation on detailed impacts, something that never happened, or even the local authority, which I find very surprising, were asking in 2002. In 2003, they were writing to a resident of old St Patrick's school, who was on the edge of what was originally the worksite of round one, telling him in fact that they were waiting to go out on public consultation but assuring him it would be a much smaller scale of work. They would be driving in both directions from a site in Hanbury Street, the routes would be used to deliver boxes and lines and at the completion of the works, we will probably have a local route for railway, communications and power cables and telling us that ground conditions for the construction of tunnels east of Hanbury were going to be very difficult. All of this they knew since July 2003, and yet SSBA, you might say, had not an inkling of this until we ran into a neighbour in January 2004. Nobody knew anything about it. In September 2003 they were talking to people in the east of the borough about route alignments and where the portal would be and quite rightly, just as it said in the consultation document of what they were surely doing, they were negotiating and talking. I believe I heard earlier on they moved that portal to a better place having discussed it with local people. Yet we were going to have the only and the largest worksite in our midst and not one word was asked from our community. In fact, when the Department for Transport wrote back to the letters in which I said we wanted to extend the period, they wrote back and said that they understood our organisation was previously not known to Crossrail, the Promoters, but that we would now be on a database and informed of future things. It is true that we were informed of future things. I want to say to them and exactly what I told Mr Stark when I wrote to him, I found it difficult to believe we were not known because on 7 October, less than a week before, in fact, two weeks before the consultation process that they so‑called "took out", I had the land registry people coming to my office asking for details of which properties we owned.

11325. When they were asked what it was for, we were told that they were simply doing a local search and putting data together. For them to tell me that they not know about us, I find that very difficult to believe.

11326. I also find it difficult to believe because we actually petitioned around this area because of our properties in Brick Lane in 1991. We were one of the Petitioners putting in an objection but, nevertheless, they told me that I and my organisation had not heard about it because we were unknown to them.

11327. When we did our own survey of round one consultation we found that most people had not heard of them and had not received leaflets. There was no consultation and yet the round one consultation was through and the position of the line had been decided, as had the work site.

11328. Can I have slide 21, please. This slide is very difficult. At the bottom it says, "Limit of land subject to consultation". Because it says sheet number 13, and most of preliminary sheets say 13, I am assuming that the very thin dotted line, which seems to be the lines of deviation, were also the lines of consultation. Within that area there are some 32 tenants of the SSBA, 47 residential properties of the Spitalfields Housing Association and three properties in which my office has an organisational basis, yet not one of those people received a leaflet or knew anything about the round one consultation. In fact, when I asked for, or somebody did on my behalf, all the copies of the sheets of the display boards which had gone up in the round one consultation to get a better view of what was going on - can you pull up slide 23, please - you will see on this slide at the top it tells us that Crossrail will be the largest civil engineering project in Europe, but the bottom paragraph says, "Proposed temporary work sites - and I expect we were one of those, although we were a ventilation shaft as well - would be subject to further consultation with the local authorities and residents as our plans develop", yet they seemed to have pretty clear plans for these when they were writing to the gentleman who lived near there.

11329. When I looked at these panels, 123 information sheets that were displayed during the round one consultation across London, 116 of them were about the design of stations and shafts, basically the physical design of those particular things, and only seven of those sheets covered general topics. The topics covered were about the Crossrail project itself, the service it would bring in terms of trains, the journey times that it would improve on, the relief of overcrowding it would manage, its regenerative effects for London, its construction and the final one was about the authorisation and the opportunity that I would be able to come and talk to you today. Not one of these sheets included any environmental information for the people of London and I tell you that is wrong. That is something they should have done and we will be pursuing this.

11330. Can you put up 24(a), please? There was a press release which Crossrail themselves put out about a presentation of their tunnelling techniques to a conference in 2003. Mr Torp-Peterson, a gentleman who I have come to know very well and have a lot of respect for, was telling us that engineers never see problems, they only see challenges and that their pre-planning challenge has been to ensure that the scheme is technically feasible and can be built on time and within a controlled budget.

11331. I am sure this is exactly what Mr Torp-Peterson did along with his other engineers.

11332. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: Ms Jordan, I think we have got the idea.

11333. MS JORDAN: I have got one more comment to make on this and then I will go into the detail. Having told us that a great deal of work had already been undertaken to devise a route of least resistance and one which minimises disruption for London Crossrail engineer, and this is what we were, we were not about the considered best-placed position in terms of the overall environmental impacts and everything else, we were simply a route of least resistance. In fact, he went on to say that they had taken into account the existing tube networks.

11334. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: Mr Jordan, I am going to stop you. Can you please come to your point. We have gone through all this and we have made it clear as a Committee that you are just reiterating. If you continue with this I will stop you.

11335. MS JORDAN: I am continuing because I believe I want to bring these points out to you.

11336. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: It has been done. One of the things I said at the beginning is that we do not take repetition. We have made the point.

11337. MS JORDAN: I have missed two of the days, but I have sat here and attempted to listen to what has been put and not one day has anybody told you that during round one consultation no environmental impact studies were presented.

11338. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: We cannot change the past, it is gone, finished.

11339. MS JORDAN: That is true, but let me continue. I believe the route should have been set when the Bill went to the Second Reading in the House on 19 July, and the Parliamentary Under-Secretary reported to you as a Committee that the Secretary of State made it clear on several occasions that, "He expects the Select Committee to be able to consider representations about the objections to the route". These are my objections.

11340. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: We have done this already. Can you please do the objections and keep them concise.

11341. MS JORDAN: I will not talk in great length about what I object to because I have listened to people talking about it here. I fail to see why you should be bored silly with repeats. I will ask the gentleman to put up sheet 28.

11342. The drawing on the left is what Crossrail presented as the new proposals for the new site in Hanbury. I simply give you a photograph of what this reduced hole is. This is the hole which was dug in Highbury in Islington and it is very similar to the one which will be on this site. Is this an appropriate size hole in the midst of our area? On this slide we have a vent pressure shaft which has been built into the foundations of the Moorgate development which is going up at the moment for Crossrail.

11343. This other drawing is a demonstration of what this hole is. Can you see that little man in the corner (indicating) and can you honestly say that the scale of these developments are appropriate scales for the mix of our area?

11344. I want to ask something about the traffic and why I think this baseline scheme is absolutely not a good scheme. We have talked about traffic and they assure us that parking the lorries outside the site and everything else will be fine. You have heard some representations today about the school children of the primary schools and that the traffic from these sites will be crossing the track of three primary schools. Unlike Islington, the children in Spitalfields are taken to the school and brought back morning, lunchtime and afternoon by their parents, walking, they do not go in cars, they walk. The children will have to pass this site and the lorries will have to pass their schools. In fact, they are telling us that in order to mitigate against the worst problems no traffic will go past those schools when they are going backwards and forwards from school.

11345. Can I say that the effective working hours we are talking about have now been agreed at 8 o'clock until 6 o'clock but three hours of those will be missed while children are going backwards and forwards to school. Is this a sensible working arrangement? I think not. Articulated lorries and eight wheelers will probably not be able to get round the road junction from Buxton to Valance Road, neither of which are anything like the size of the road that people are trying to represent. Therefore, I would say to you that they will probably have to change the route of those lorries, maybe past the house of the local authority counsellor who has objected to their first proposals but had them changed. He is no longer a local authority counsellor so now they will probably take the lorries down a street where they can get the lorries.

11346. On the working hours, we are told now that it is 6 until 8 but there are things called "shoulder hours2 and these "shoulder hours" are set-up times. These are times when the sites can operate so long as they do not make any noise. I have yet in my whole working career to find one builder who does not make noise on a site. It maybe that we are going to have a miracle in our area, but today I have yet to find either site set-ups or closures done in silence.

11347. Can you put up the next slide up, please. I want to re-endorse something which Gareth said. This is where the hole is (indicating) and this is where the building is. You are seeing here that it says brewery. We are all worrying about ground conditions, but Crossrail do not seem to be worrying about that. In fact, the whole of my working career in this area has been concerned with ground conditions, even the two-storey houses are now built on what were sugar refineries and God knows what else. All of this industrial areas, which are now little buildings, have got piles, so to speak.

11348. We are told that Crossrail are not bothered about the ground but we are absolutely concerned about that. The one thing they are not saying with all their settlement proposals is that settlement is unforeseen, you cannot predict settlement. That is why all buildings, all architects, all engineers will tell you that the one thing they are worried about is the ground. It is equally true when you have tunnelling. Until they hit something, for example, an unexploded bomb, you do not know what you are going to hit. In fact, when I spoke to a man called Mr Armfield - I have included a letter that he has written to the Rt Hon Douglas Alexander - and he was a district surveyor in this area for 30 years before he retired, he is now a private building consults, he knows, as I know, the state of the ground in this area, which is extremely fragile. He wrote of his concerns about the conservation area and I too am concerned about those buildings. You have had ample representation, therefore I will not press it further.

11349. I would like to tell you about our buildings which are not listed buildings, yet they are some of the most exquisite Victorian buildings in the area. Our Dutch gable properties were built as Jewish tenements, as modern dwellings, and have an equal part to play and have got equally bad foundations. If we do settle, it is true, we will probably crack up rather than fall over. If you go down the line and go east of us there are local authority blocks built in the 1970s with rigid frame construction, mass concrete foundations, not piles, large bits of concrete that went in before we got as far as doing piles. It is true to say that if those buildings move, far from just settling as a brick building does, those buildings could well crack up. In fact, similar buildings cracked and people had to move out of them when they dug through the Lime House Link.

11350. The whole question of whether or not things will move and what the settlement will be is entirely unpredictable, it is a risk. I will say to you that digging in this area with our fragile, very beautiful Georgian buildings, some of the nicest Victorian buildings, our local authority flats and adverse conditions, which I would describe only as a Swiss cheese, will cause something to open up.

11351. In these adverse ground conditions is it sensible to put these lines through. I have included in my package some articles about buildings which are moving about and Crossrail disappearing down holes. It is true, I cannot tell you that this will happen in this area but equally Crossrail cannot tell you that it will not happen, and they can only tell you that it is going to happen when it has happened.

11352. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: Ms Jordan, we have had a lot on building settlements, in fact some of the previous witnesses today have done it.

11353. MS JORDAN: I hope you have not done it because I hope they choose not to do it and they do not put these tunnels through the area which is like Swiss cheese.

11354. I will now go on to the southern route, something which nobody has done and nobody has talked about. You certainly have representations to say that they have considered four routes, but they have presented no evidence to you that various bits were done. In fact, when as recently as 19 June Crossrail were asked by myself, and somebody who will be presenting after me, whether Crossrail had considered any alternative route alignments between Liverpool Street and Canary Wharf, we were told that the fixed points of Liverpool Street Station, Whitechapel Station and the Isle of Dogs Station ---

11355. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: Ms Jordan, this has been looked at.

11356. MS JORDAN: I do not believe it has been looked at.

11357. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: We have taken an enormous amount of evidence on the other routes. Mr Elvin and Mr Mould have made representations.

11358. MS JORDAN: I have not seen one representation of the southern route. They have talked about it and talked about it being dismissed.

11359. MR MOULD: If it is helpful, day 39, the beginning of paragraph 9799, Mr Berryman gave detailed evidence in relation to the options for a southern alignment continuing through to paragraph 9803. If you recall, that was in the context of the Petition of the Spitalfields Society represented by counsel who cross-examined Mr Berryman and then made detailed submissions in relation to that matter.

11360. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: Thank you, Mr Mould.

11361. MS JORDAN: Can I say that when we requested plans relating to the Osbourne Street site, which he had referred to from Crossrail, the answer was, "No plans of a site are available as a southern alignment was not progressed because it was not a viable option". However, the plan referred to in 3.41, which was the plan of the southerly route number 40, was the only plan that was shown.

11362. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: We have had the evidence on that, Ms Jordan.

11363. MS JORDAN: You have had a plan ---

11364. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: I am calling a recess. It is now 4.40pm and we will resume at 6'oclock.

The Committee adjourned until 6pm

 

 

In the absence of the Chairman, Mr Ian Liddell-Grainger was called to the Chair.

 

Ordered: that Counsel and Parties be called in.

11365. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: Ms Jordan, I think you want to bring up a few points you have got left. Would you like to continue?

11366. MS JORDAN: Before I sum up I would like to make a few points about the southerly alignment. Could I ask for my slide 40, please? Having looked at the transcripts of the previous people speaking - presumably I refer to these numbers - at 9799, which is Mr Berryman speaking on Day 39, Mr Berryman tells us that they developed four options for the southerly alignment, and one of the problems of other alignments is it is even more difficult to locate sites for the shaft along the proposed southern route. That was particularly when they were considering a site that they could extend the spoil tunnel to coming up to Pedley Street. The problem with the one they had identified was it was quite near a school and educational establishment, and also because it was much closer to Mile End Road. I would like to point out that Mile End Road is a mile and a half away from where we are talking about, so I do not think it is much to do with Mile End Road, but it is Whitechapel Road that should be there instead. You have got even more of a matrix of buildings and traffic movements in the area. That was one of the many problems of the southerly alignment that they chose and, quite rightly, it was a long, long way from Pedley Street and it would have cost a lot of money to get the spoil shaft down to it. Now we have got rid of the spoil shaft one would hope that we could re-look at the southerly alignment.

11367. At 9509, page 24, Mr Berryman also tells us that they spent a lot of time looking at other alignments, a lot of time and money, and without any doubt it is the most controversial issue. It is a shame. We were not a controversial issue in round one but clearly we have become a controversial issue by the very nature that we were not in round one but in round two we have let it be known that we are controversial and we hope we will be listened to by the Committee on that basis. They say they spent a lot of time trying to optimise what they were doing and to look at alternatives. That is probably true but the alternatives were looking at holes they could put in the immediate vicinity of the Hanbury Street shaft. They looked at lots of options there and it took them up north into Woodseer Street. I agree they have spent a lot of time there but in my opinion they wasted a lot of time there and if they listened to us earlier we could have helped them save money.

11368. At 9901 Mr Berryman was talking about listed buildings and telling us that to do detailed appraisals of everything is very difficult and he went on to say for a linear route like this, like any railway, it would be a monumental undertaking because there are so many sites involved. To do detailed appraisal and analysis, I agree costs a whole lot, it is monumental. So they have to pick on issues which are likely to be significant and focus on these in making a route selection. In making that route selection through Hanbury Street, one of the main issues was how to get spoil out quickly and efficiently and it was one of the things that the Montague Report told them they should look at as well, that they should consider their spoil removal arrangements because they needed improving because they may slow them up. Now that they have considered that, they have considered it twice and it is out of our area, we are extremely pleased about that.

11369. Could you go back to number 40, please? You can see the loop at the bottom is the southerly alignment. When trying to establish what had and had not been done, you have to appreciate that myself, colleagues and other organisations asked Crossrail lots and lots of questions and as late as last week, in fact, we were down there asking more questions. On 14 June they replied to my colleagues, who I think will be presenting their petition after me. They requested plans relating to the Osborne site in Spitalfields. I hope I have not lost the site plan. If you look at the map where it says "eastbound and westbound" you can see just below that it says "intervention shaft" and there is a large blob there which is the school and Toynbee Hall that they were talking about. That was where they were proposing the intervention shaft. You can see it is so ridiculous taking it from way up here to down there that they did not even bother joining it on, and I would not have joined it on either because that was not a good idea (same indicated). Now we do not have the intervention shaft it is not that bad an idea.

11370. In fact, when we requested these plans, in the answer they told us that there were no site plans available because they had never done them. They never took that southern alignment past this plan here, which is a pretty sketchy scheme to say that it has been considered in all its aspects. If you look at the line you will see the blobs that are on it, which look pretty severe, are not actually buildings indicated as having deep foundations but they are simply significant buildings. The lower one here is a significant site, as is this, and even my office is on here as a significant site, not because of me but the fact that it was a synagogue. I think the reference to significant sites is, in fact, not to do with the fact that these are significant buildings or deep pile foundations, I think the significance is represented in drawing 42, which is a drawing of the key aspects of the city fringe area. I have not written it on my copy but I have put it on the bottom there, "Overall Spatial Strategy: City Fringe". This is how the City views our area and the area of Whitechapel. Can we go to the next one, please? It gives all sorts of aspects but this one picks up on sites and allocations of what they want to do. You can see all of this block here, some of which was in that block on the southerly alignment, is redevelopment sites. Not potential but ones that they know are in the pipeline. These have not got buildings with deep pile foundations because very soon all of those will be redevelopment sites with major office buildings.

11371. What I really want to say to you - it has taken me a long time - and I thank you for being patient, I did promise me I would be through in ten minutes, is this one is a site I wish to offer up to you. This is a site where the southerly alignment could have a hole in it prior to a major office development going on it. It is just one idea on the back of an envelope quickly looking at the drawings, no horizontal and vertical alignment has really been looked at, but it is certainly on the southerly route.

11372. In my opinion, now that we do not have a spoil tunnel up to Pedley Street there is absolutely no reason why they cannot be on the southerly route. Therefore, Chairman, when you ask me, and I am sure you will, "What do you want, Ms Jordan", I will say I want you to take the advice that my father gave to me when I started practising. My father clearly said, "Look, just remember, if it is not broken do not mend it, but if risk is identified then what you should do is avoid it if you can". I would say that after all our presentations we have undoubtedly identified risk. You are risking the lives, the health and the wellbeing of the people of Spitalfields, without any doubt at all. You could possibly be risking the buildings in Spitalfields, both our amazing and absolutely precious conservation area of Georgian buildings and our Victorian buildings, and even our 1970s, dare I say, slab blocks, because ground conditions in Spitalfields are so bad, it is such Swiss cheese, that they do not know, they cannot tell you, and I cannot say, that these buildings will not go down holes. Until it happens we do not know. They do not know and I cannot tell you. You will be risking a whole load of buildings, some of which are the most precious Georgian buildings in London.

11373. Therefore, in those circumstances and in view of the fact that you are charged with considering the situation about the route, I want you to tell Crossrail to go south to avoid all these risks, to avoid any unrest, any difficulties with the community, in an area where major developments will be going on anyway where they can put their shafts in without any of the problems that we are going to have to face.

11374. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: Kay, thank you. Mr Mould?

11375. MR MOULD: I do not want to say any more about the merits of a southerly alignment as against our proposals. You have had Mr Berryman's evidence and Ms Jordan has referred to that and given her views. That is something which the Committee will be looking at as part of its deliberations. Mr Elvin will close in summing up our points in due course.

11376. I do want to say on the points about consultation to remind you that we have given you detailed evidence on Days 40 and 41 through Mr Dean which explains in some detail the consultation process that we have been through, including rounds one and two, set those in context, and you will recall at the end of last Thursday, Day 41, we produced the NOP survey material at the request of Mr Binley in particular, I think. You will have noted that was produced in order to show how we have tested the effectiveness of the consultative process through the work of those consultants. Again, Mr Elvin will be talking about that and summarising our position in closing.

11377. Just turning from the general context to the particular concerns of this petitioner. The question was asked why was this organisation not consulted in round one, and there was the suggestion that Crossrail had not wished to consult the organisation at that stage. I can say immediately that was not the position. I simply refer the Committee to the letter of 30 January 2004, which is page 19 in her documents on the electronic numbering. You recall that understandably she wrote in January 2004 to ask why it was that her organisation had not been consulted on round one and at the bottom of the page you will see an answer to that concern and an explanation for why it was was given by Crossrail. Over the page, perhaps the most important point, thereafter the Association was added to the database and so was included within the consultation round. We have explained to you the difficulties we had in assembling the database of local organisations to consult at an earlier stage and we have said to you that frankly we were hoping that Tower Hamlets were going to help us with that and they have not been able to provide us with information. From the beginning of 2004 this organisation was included within the consultative process. Certainly there was no question of choosing to exclude them from that process. Just to remind you, by way of illustration, of the quality of material that was included within the second round of consultation, some of you will have seen this before, Mr Elvin has put it up on the screen. (Document shown) This was the information panel that was produced in the second stage to deal with the Pedley Street shaft proposals. I will not take time to read it out but there it is. It gives you a flavour of the material we were producing at that stage.

11378. If I can turn from that to the suggestion that the consultative material at round one was grossly inadequate because it failed to say anything about environmental impact, again if I can just remind you by way of illustration of two panels that we have already shown the Committee from the first stage, the round one stage. There is a panel which consulted on what was proposed in relation to the environmental impact assessment and summarised what we anticipated as being some of the main impacts of the project if it was to proceed at the construction phase. If you are content just to glance through that I will ask Mr Fry to put up a second panel if that is not too quick. There is another panel from round one dealing with the environment and in particular a series of objectives which Crossrail set out at that stage for consultation purposes in the bullet points at the bottom of the page.

11379. We would, with respect, not accept the criticisms made of the quality of the consultative process in terms of the substance of what was produced to consultees at that stage also, and we will deal with that further in closing and summarising our position.

11380. Can I also, just to tie up this point, remind you of the exchanges between the Committee and Mr Uddin, the witness who gave evidence on behalf of the Spitalfields Housing Association at the end of last Thursday's proceedings where certainly you had, I think it is fair to say, a slightly different flavour of the views of local people. There is a range of views before the Committee as to the quality of the consultative process both in terms of the process and the substance of the material that was produced. The Committee will be looking at that and weighing it up when it comes to consider its decision.

11381. If I can then turn away from that to one or two other matters that were raised during the course of Ms Jordan's presentation. You will recall she put up a picture of a shaft under construction which was within her bundle of materials and she suggested that the shaft in question corresponded in size to the proposed shaft at Hanbury Street under our revised proposals. So far as we are concerned that is not right, the shaft you see there is at least six metres in diameter larger than the shaft which is proposed at Hanbury Street. One should view that photograph with that thought in mind.

11382. In relation to working hours, you have heard us say something about that already, the Committee will receive more detailed information about that in due course, reflecting the agreement with Westminster City Council but I ought to say that our position is, as a matter of generality, that the working hours arrangements that we have agreed with the local authorities broadly reflect typical arrangements for construction works within the City of London and within the metropolis from day-to-day.

11383. The question of settlement has been dealt with in great detail and I need say no more about that, save to remind you that the suggestion that what we are proposing is an unpredictable process is in fact not right. The whole purpose of our settlement policy and process is to seek to predict and to make arrangements for investments and assessment and remediation where necessary in the light of that predicted assessment.

11384. The Limehouse Link was raised as a possible comparator, that is not helpful either. That is a cut and cover tunnel, I think, and does not bear any relation to the proposals which are before you under this Bill.

11385. In relation to the southerly route, you have had a series of points made by the petition in relation to that. As I say we have given our evidence on that and we will close on that in due course. It is also, finally, just fair to say that the photograph of a development site which was put up as the last of the petitioner's exhibits, we think if one seeks to orientate oneself as to where that is, it is very close to Aldgate East Underground Station, and it is clearly a site which is already under development so I am not sure that assists with the point the petitioner is seeking to make.

11386. I have confined myself to trying to correct points where we think corrections are needed and on that basis I propose to finish there.

11387. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: Thank you very much, Mr Mould. Ms Jordan, have you got any further remarks?

11388. MS JORDAN: Can I just come back on a few points, just quickly.

11389. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: Very briefly.

11390. MS JORDAN: On the consultation issue, and your market testing, I would point out that your market testing was simply in 2004 and 2005. I think that clearly demonstrates that thanks to our campaign and our raising the issue we were actually much better at getting information to local people than you had been in 2003. Had you done it in 2003 the response would be that nobody knew what was going on.

11391. As far as the environmental impact slides are concerned, I am grateful to see those two slides out of 123. It is quite true that these were not in the package that was sent to me, I have not deliberately missed those out. The letter that I was sent said that it was a full set of things. I withdraw the remark that there was nothing but in fact two out of 126, or now 128 I think. If you like I would like to respond to that in writing and I will do that if I think there are any points there.

11392. As far as the housing association are concerned, yes it is true they were here and they did give a response. Most of the petition they read out was what I helped them write because they had come to me and in fact I think they offered to do you a bit of consultation in the future, never ones to miss an opportunity for a bit on the side.

11393. Could I also say about the presentation of the shaft, I am sorry if my photograph one was untrue but I have not been down there with a measure so I did not know, and I just happened to have that photograph in my records. Certainly my photograph on shaft two I believe is in fact a true representation of the kind of thing we would be having in Spitalfields, equally gross and totally inappropriate for our tight knit area.

11394. From the point of view of working hours, could I say that you have just stated that they are working hours within the City of London. The City of London does not contain the residential community and population that we have, maybe I misinterpreted that.

11395. MR MOULD: Greater London.

11396. MS JORDAN: Greater London. I would say that these are totally inappropriate in the scale of residential area that we are. We have put up with all sorts of buildings but to be putting up with these sorts of working hours for four years is too much.

11397. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: Kay, you are winding up.

11398. MS JORDAN: Just two more things. One is about the Limehouse Link. Because I was rushed in my evidence and actually flustered I was unable to point out that I brought up the reference to the Limehouse Link not because there were similarities in the tunnel but the fact that the building that had to be knocked down --- In round one of the consultation in the Limehouse Link they were told us "Trust us, don't worry, it will be all right" and when they went into the kind of detail, looking at the building that you are telling me that they will be doing now, the people were told "I am terribly sorry but now we think it will come down". I am saying that sort of information should be available to the people of Spitalfields now, not later when the line has been settled.

11399. As far as the development site on the corner is concerned, it is quite true it is one little plot but I will point out that next to it in the blob that was on your drawing is a major redevelopment that will be going on at Guildhall University which has now decided that its buildings are redundant and they will be flogged off for a great deal of money in order to help the university carry on. Those developments, as the spatial plans show you, will be happening before 2016.

11400. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: Have you finished your case?

11401. MS JORDAN: That is fine.

11402. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: Thank you very much. I am very grateful to you. Could I now call Mr Guy Carpenter.

 

The Petition of Mr Guy Carpenter.

 

The Petitioner appeared in person.

11403. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: First of all, there will be a division in the House in the next few minutes or so, so when the bells go I will call "Order! Order!" and suspend the Committee for 15 minutes. Mr Elvin?

11404. MR ELVIN: Mr Carpenter appears in his personal capacity. He is the owner of the second floor flat at 55 Hanbury Street. That property, as the Committee will be aware, is above and adjacent to the proposed eastbound running tunnel and is in the vicinity of the proposed shaft at Hanbury Street.

11405. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: Mr Carpenter?

11406. MR CARPENTER: Yes. I am the secretary of the Woodseer and Hanbury Residents' Association but I am here to present my own petition, although a lot of these things overlap so I have got certain things which I will leave.

11407. I am a resident of Hanbury Street and have been there for over 12 years. I have had the Promoter's response to my petition and I do not consider that many of my concerns have been addressed and therefore reserve my rights on all of these points. If I do not refer to aspects of my petition it is because I believe the Committee is already well aware of these matters and do not wish to go over issues already covered. I have listened to the proceedings and read many of the transcripts so I will have to touch on certain things but I will be as brief as I possibly can be.

11408. I support many of the concerns and objections that have been raised about the Crossrail project and the impacts it will have on residents in the community.

11409. Turning to the consultation first. I have been personally involved in the matter of Crossrail in Spitalfields. I went to the round one consultation exhibition in Woodham Gardens in Whitechapel in October 2003 and I know of only one other person from Spitalfields who visited that exhibition. There were exhibition boards but no leaflets on Hanbury Street to take away. I have noticed that the Pedley Street information that was put up just a moment ago, that was in round two because at round one consultation there was no mention of Pedley Street. I do not think you have said that but there was no mention of Pedley Street in round one.

11410. Just so I do not have to say too much more, I have here a WHRA Consultation Report on the Crossrail consultation in Spitalfields and it details everything that we have come across. I have only got one copy now but I would like to present that to you.

11411. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: We will get it circulated to everybody.

11412. MR CARPENTER: Okay.

11413. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: That is basically your case?

11414. MR ELVIN: I am quite happy with that but we have had quite a lot of correspondence with Mr Carpenter over the last two weeks answering his questions and we have not been supplied with a copy of this document so I do not know what it says.

11415. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: Everybody will get a copy and rest assured it will come out. This is basically your case, Mr Carpenter?

11416. MR CARPENTER: Yes. It is not really my case for the petition, we have produced that over the years and it details the failure of consultation at Spitalfields and what contacts we have had with Crossrail. A lot of people have said a lot of things and a lot of things have happened and it is down to the detail whether you received a leaflet or whether you did not. We did our own survey of residents' groups on 20 February 2004 because we were so concerned about whether people had got leaflets and information and what was going on. Out of 19 groups surveyed in Spitalfields, 15 had not had leaflets, so only four had had leaflets. I have that there with a few other comments about what contacts people had. Generally some had leaflets delivered giving an afternoon's notice and people had registered interest with Crossrail on several occasions. For example, WHRA only had a response from Crossrail after complaining to the Crossrail referee. It is just one sheet but I would like that put in too. I am sorry; I did not make any photocopies. That basically covers the consultation

11417. The reason I bring up the October 2003 round one consultation is because no alternative alignments were shown at that exhibition. Crossrail consultant, Dick Dunmore, advised me that I would have an opportunity to comment on the plans when they were presented to the council's planning committee. I presume that would have meant after the Bill had been passed. I pointed out that the exhibition was not actually in Spitalfields and there were two suitable community centres on Hanbury Street and that Crossrail could contact me and I would be happy to give details. I left the email address of the WHRA. I filled in a response card and I took others for WHRA residents to fill in. I waited but received nothing. To finish with that part of it, I question whether residents would have ever found out about this plan if I had not stumbled across it that evening on my way to a friend's house in Whitechapel. Whenever I talk to people in Spitalfields about Crossrail everybody remembers where they were when they found out about Crossrail. It has been a significant thing since October, January as people have found out. It has become a significant moment when you find out about that.

11418. I have looked into consultation and we have looked at what should have happened. Crossrail is a part of TfL - Transport for London. We have heard the Promoter quote from the Code for the Dissemination of Public Information but not the guidelines set by the Transport for London consultation toolkit. The Transport for London consultation toolkit says consultation occurs if: "you are seeking to inform any decisions which have not yet been taken and if you are inviting comments, views and responses". It goes on to say : "never ask for comments, views or responses if all you want to do is explain what is going to happen anyway and if you have no intention of changing anything." On its legal obligations, it states: "consultation must be undertaken at a time when proposals are still at a formative stage". Finally, it says: "it is important that TfL has not closed its mind to alternatives". Crossrail has never exhibited for public consultation alternative routes and never had any intention in my mind of changing the tunnel alignment in the Spitalfields area.

11419. As we have heard from the evidence of the Spitalfields Society last Tuesday, Crossrail have produced reports since then on different alignments, and we saw one just now, that on closer examination appear to be about rubbishing any other proposed route that anyone seems to suggest. I have the Mott MacDonald feasibility study report, "Tunnel Alignments East of Liverpool Street Station" dated February 2002. It says: "Spitalfields is identified as being extremely sensitive environmentally". It says: "English Heritage provided 4,000 pages of data over the study area, which it was not possible to review fully". There is only one alignment shown in that document and since then the alignment has moved only a few metres to the north to line up with the Hanbury Street shaft. Basically only one alignment is what you see today as the Hybrid Bill scheme.

11420. There are just a few points that I would like to make as a lay person. I have no qualifications in anything other than I have got involved in Crossrail by living in Spitalfields. They have told us that the current alignment has a substandard curve coming out of Liverpool Street. It goes under a building, Dome House, that has 26 metre deep piling. Under Britannia House it has 20-25 metre deep piles. They say they do not know the depth of the Cutlers Gardens' piling. That was the last contact I had when they said that. They say it cannot go under Cutlers Gardens, Cutlers Gardens being a refurbished old building that they say has blocked any other alignment out of Liverpool Street. Engineers Whitby Bird, who were involved in that building, say they may be able to do that. I think the main reason that the tunnelling site needed to be close to Pedley Street was to take the spoil out. That is why we have Hanbury Street and that is why we have the alignment we have had, as Kay has said. The need to be near Pedley Street no longer applies. Since the recent major change in tunnelling strategy, which we welcome, the Promoter has not looked at alternative alignments. The Woodseer options, which were brought up by the Society, are still historically based on having a spoil tunnel to Pedley Street which, as Kay pointed out, is a very limiting factor.

11421. To sum up on that, I am really just saying please ask Crossrail to go back and present real route alignment alternatives for the people of Spitalfields so we can fulfil that round one function and have a proper consultation.

11422. I would like to move on to talk about settlement. I live in a building which is known locally as the Epstein building. It was an old furniture warehouse and furniture factory. I have a flat there on the second floor. It is a block that runs from 49-59 along the north side of Hanbury Street. I was here for the evidence about 19 Princelet Street, the museum, and its cast iron frame. I too live in a building from the late 1800s with cast iron columns and frames. It had not even occurred to me that there are cast iron pillars in the building. The building also has deep basements. The ceilings of the basements are much higher than they are in my flat. There is a lift shaft with a deep pit that runs below basement level. There is no building specific settlement report for 55-59 Hanbury Street, which I take to mean only a generic assessment has been done. Very, very recently I received a one page sheet from Crossrail telling me that when I checked that information.

11423. I am going to quote from document D12 that Crossrail sent me. It is ground settlement section 2.3.4 and it states: "The generic assessment is only sufficiently informative for buildings with relatively shallow foundations. Buildings with a foundation level deeper than four metres, or greater than 20 per cent of the depth to tunnel axis, automatically qualify for a stage 3 assessment after the stage 2 process". The basements and lift pit in my building are at least four metres deep, so I think that building qualifies for a stage 3 assessment. Given all of this, I am also concerned that a stage 3 assessment has not been done and as we are on the shoulder of the tunnel - I am not sure what you call it - the edge of the tunnel, we will have a differential settlement from the front of the building to the back of the building which the cast iron frame will not like and will simply crack. It is a very brittle Victorian cast iron frame.

11424. MR ELVIN: If, as Mr Carpenter says, his foundations are that deep we will carry out a stage 3 assessment and show the results.

11425. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: Is that fair enough?

11426. MR CARPENTER: Yes, if that is an undertaking, that is great. That would bring me on to the deed of settlement. I have got so many questions about it that cropped up when I looked at the document. I only have repairing responsibility for my flat but it is likely that other parts of the building will need to be repaired and what happens then, what happens if the landlord, who is a commercial landlord, does not have a deed settlement? What if the landlord and Crossrail get into a legal dispute and I cannot live in my flat because it is not structurally safe? I have got all of those questions which I have not had answers to. I would like to be included in the deed of settlement and for it to apply to the whole building. I am sorry if I am being terribly naļve about it but I have looked at it and I am not a property lawyer so I do not understand the implications of what I would be signing.

11427. If Crossrail present me with something I do not understand and it has got these far reaching implications and I do not understand what they are then I will be signing this deed without any advice. I really do not want doubt and uncertainty over something as important as my home as I need to protect my home from that. I would like the Promoter to pay for me to get independent legal advice on the deed of settlement, if that is possible.

11428. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: The compensation is fairly rigidly set and there is documentation which I know the Promoters have to do with compensation.

11429. MR CARPENTER: It is not really to do with compensation. It is to get advice before I enter into the deed of settlement, that is all, so I know what I am entering into and I can have it tailored specifically to my circumstances.

11430. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: I think you would have to ask the Promoter. I am not sure this Committee can comment, but we hear what you say.

11431. MR CARPENTER: Thank you. I will move on to health impacts now. Specifically I want to limit myself to noise. I know a lot of people have spoken about that. I want to talk about myself and my life, the enjoyment of my home and how I live in Hanbury Street. I have an honours degree in fine art. I have diplomas in electronic imaging and sound design. My vocation is that of a sonic artist and composer based in Hanbury Street. I use sound as an artistic medium and I manipulate it as if it were any other medium using various different techniques. When treating actuality sound, that is sounds other than musical, which are the kind of sounds I work with, any background sound recorded with it will be treated as well. That background sound may be hardly noticed when it is an ordinary sound, just a straight forward recording, but once you treat it, it often makes it vividly apparent. Low rumbling is a good example of sound that then becomes intrusive. I am concerned that my work will be affected by the noise from the site over its years of operation. I have communicated my concerns to the Promoter and today I received an email from petition negotiator, Tom Mantey, stating: "Our predictions are that neither noise mitigation measures nor temporary rehousing will be necessary in order for you to continue working from your property as a sound artist".

11432. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: I suspend the Committee for 15 minutes.

 

The Committee suspended from 6.46 pm to 7.10 pm for a division in the House

11433. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: Mr Carpenter, would you like to continue?

11434. MR CARPENTER: I was talking about the impacts of noise from the Hanbury Street site. I mentioned that I am an artist and I was discussing that I was concerned that my work would be affected by noise from the site over the years of its operation. I was just reading a quote that I received today in a letter from petition negotiator, John Mantey, when I communicated my concerns about my work being affected by the noise from the site. In the letter it says: "Our predictions are that neither noise mitigation measures nor temporary rehousing will be necessary in order for you to continue working from your property as a sound artist".

11435. I would like to say I am very concerned at the predicted noise levels. The part of Hanbury Street that I live in is a narrow street with tall buildings either side. Further along with the site where the Pedley Street shaft will be, we have the backs of the Princelet street properties and in front of the site, the other side of the road, we have Boden House. These will act as very efficient reflectors of the noise from the site. We also have the massive Atlantis Building to the north of my property, that is a large ex-industrial block that is part of Truman Brewery, the big yellow brick building there, which, again, acts as a giant sound reflector. I actually listened to the ambient noise levels on Sunday night and - I am quite used to this as a resident - the Atlantis Building will reflect the noises from the street in Hanbury Street from that corner. It is a very large reflector of sound. This will mean that there will be substantial reflection. Do you want me to point out where these buildings are on the map, sir?

11436. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: We have got the maps in front of us as well.

11437. MR CARPENTER: The Atlantis Building is above my building there (same indicated). That is my property there and the Atlantis Building is up there. It runs right across here. This is Boden House and that is the site there, and these are Spital Street buildings. I am concerned about the reflection of site noise around the area which will exacerbate the impacts of any sounds made at the site, particularly early in the morning and late at night.

11438. I have studied the noise schedules and I do find them appalling. The noise schedule runs from January 2008 until October 2012, that is four years and ten months of noise events and noise activity on the site. We know that the normal working hours in the Code of Construction Practice are 12 hours a day, seven until seven, which will include Saturday and Sunday working. The working hours can be extended later, such as in the summer, and 24 hours a day for certain activities and deliveries. All in all that adds up to a frightening number of hours a week that this site will be potentially running. Any activity on the site will have some kind of noise impact. Reading the evidence given by the noise expert, Mr Methold, for the London Borough of Havering, and that of others who have given evidence, has really not inspired confidence in the approach the Promoter is taking over noise with regard to their responsibility to the community.

11439. I would like to quote Mr Methold when he was dealing with Crossrail's approach to background noise. He says: "Clearly you want Crossrail to abandon this approach. We do not believe it is appropriate. We think it is concealing the results of their Environmental Statement. We want them to reassess those impacts using a minimum background noise level, as we would have expected them to. We also want to ensure that we do not see this approach re-emerge during detailed design stage." He also goes on to say: "The Promoter is not prepared to be constrained to the noise levels that were predicted as part of the development of the Environmental Statement." That is where my concern lies. Just as the Promoter often refers to the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, I too wish to refer to the impacts on residents in King's Cross. I have met with residents of King's Cross affected by CTRL where they have suffered enormously for many years and they have fought battle after battle just to try and get some sleep. They told us "Do not rely on assurances and commitments. You have no rights unless you have undertakings and mechanisms with which to enforce them". I think that the crude tests applied to the concept of sound levels, background sound levels and the likelihood of complaint, that were brought up by Mr Methold hide a lot of potential misery for residents. To illustrate our powerlessness with this the residents were told by Tower Hamlets Council that Crossrail would be monitoring noise on the Hanbury Street work site when we asked them if they would be monitoring the noise. Last week Crossrail told us that the council would be monitoring the noise. That really does not inspire confidence.

11440. From my own experience, I have had problems with the council to enforce planning conditions and noise nuisance for over five years. The problem continues even though the local government ombudsman has found in our favour. We have absolutely no confidence in our council when it comes to things like enforcement on these matters. What I suppose I am saying is residents need clear evaluation and control of the noise and vibration from the site which is something I am really asking for.

11441. I am also concerned that my building with deep basements and a brittle cast iron frame will act as a very good transmitter of ground borne noise and vibration. I have talked to Crossrail's sound expert in the break and he is coming to Spitalfields so I am hoping he will come and I will be able to talk to him when he comes to Spitalfields. We can talk about that further.

11442. I wanted to talk about my own experience in terms of all these dBs and values that you get with sound. All sound is not equal and a sound meter measures them in that way. It measures them equally. Vibration is also even more of an unquantifiable nuisance. I know that low frequency vibrations can cause people to feel ill.

11443. Just as an example, we know the sound of a dripping tap at night is not a loud event but it can stop you sleeping, there is an irritation factor. It is the same with a barely audible dull thump of bass from neighbours, if someone is having a party. It might not be X number of dB but it can cause distress and anxiety and keep you awake. To have a noisy neighbour move in for four years and however many months is not something we want. We can see that coming towards us, that Crossrail will be a bad neighbour.

11444. For me noise does impact on my health. I am particularly concerned about night time noise affecting my health and wellbeing. I have always found it quite difficult to sleep, I am quite a light sleeper. I was shocked to read the evidence given to the CTRL planning appeal from the then director of public health for Camden Primary Care Trust, Dr Fiona Adshead. In her report in section 7 - you were introduced to that when Jill Cove of SCA gave evidence - Dr Adshead mentions the primary effects of sleep disturbance. She states that the primary physiological effects can also be induced by noise during sleep, noise events that happen while you are asleep. That includes increased blood pressure, increased heart rate, vasoconstriction, changes in respiration and cardiac arrhythmias, and that is irregular heart beat. This last point is a major concern for me.

11445. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: Can I ask you, Mr Carpenter, what you actually want

11446. MR CARPENTER: I have this condition ---

11447. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: You have got a medical condition.

11448. MR CARPENTER: Yes. Sorry I took a long time but I wanted to quote her.

11449. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: It is fascinating what you are saying but I am just trying to get to the bottom of what you are saying. You have a medical condition.

11450. MR CARPENTER: I suffer from cardiac arrhythmia which was diagnosed a few years ago. I had not known about this connection with noise until I started looking into it for the petition. It occurs more when I am tired or stressed which is common with this condition. I am concerned that the works at Hanbury Street shaft will affect not only my health during the works for these four years ten months but also may lead to a permanently decreased quality of life for myself due to my condition deteriorating over the years of the shaft works.

11451. Because of this, and to avoid any uncertainty, what I would like is an undertaking to be included in the noise and vibration mitigation scheme and to be provided with ground floor secondary glazing, additional ventilation and blinds. I also have an external door in my bedroom, facing east, facing towards the site, for which the scheme offers noise insulation which I would also like as part of that. I would like to talk to the Promoter about the construction process because I would like to be offered temporary rehousing for the very noisiest part of the construction process if that turns out with the new scheme to be very noisy.

11452. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: You need to have that discussion with the Promoter. We hear what you say.

11453. MR CARPENTER: Right. They have already refused me in that way and I was wondering if they would give me an undertaking or the Promoter would respond to that now. That is really to conclude on that. I would like the Committee to consider each of my points: the noise and vibration mitigation due to my health; the stage 3 impact settlement, which you have discussed and that has been agreed; the explanation of my position as a long leaseholder with a deed of settlement and legal help with that and also in the wider scheme of things a proper consideration of alternative route alignments, alternative to the shafts. On my final point, with CTRL they looked at lots and lots of different areas for different sections. I believe Michael Schabas has made that point already. The CTRL committee, when it was at that stage, made the Promoter reduce the environmental harm and impact of the health hazard by insisting the Promoter follow rail lines and lines which did not impact on built-up residential areas. Obviously they did that and we have still seen the impact in King's Cross from residents' point of view. I really have not seen anything from Crossrail which really looks at it from a residents' centred point of view. That is why I am here and I am very anxious, and all the residents are very concerned, everybody is concerned, because it is only from a development point of view. That is really all I can say.

11454. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: Thank you very much, Mr Carpenter. Mr Elvin would you like to respond?

11455. MR ELVIN: Sir, I am just going to deal with the specific points that have been raised. In terms of the exhibition, can I just remind the Committee the round one consultation which Mr Boyd Carpenter attended specifically refers to the Pedley Street tunnel. If you look at the last paragraph on the information sheet you will see "during tunnel construction spoil removed via an underground connection to temporary sidings to be located in Pedley Street". You will see the blue line which shows the beginning of that, it does not show the terminus, that is absolutely correct but nonetheless there is an indication.

11456. Secondly, so far as alternative alignments are concerned, yes, alternative alignments were not shown as part of the consultation round one because they were not part of the project being consulted upon. That does not stop people giving consultation responses on alternative alignments but the position with alternative alignments, as Mr Berryman explained, is a considerable amount of work went into it and he gave the reasons which relate to engineering, settlement and related matters which explains why the southern alignment was rejected. There is no ulterior motive, we are not picking the Hanbury Street alignment just to make everyone's life difficult, it was picked because, as far as CRRL and its experts are concerned, it is the best route. The southern alignment I will deal with in my detail when I close the Spitalfields objections generally.

11457. So far as consultation is concerned, Mr Boyd Carpenter is wrong, we did use the TfL toolkit, it is referred to in the Spitalfields report which Mr Simon Dean spoke to on Day 40.

11458. So far as the Hanbury Street site being selected for Pedley Street, Mr Berryman tells me - and I pass this on to the Committee later if necessary - Hanbury Street was selected before the idea of the Pedley Street conveyor emerged and Hanbury Street is not just there because of the Pedley Street conveyor, Hanbury Street is required regardless of the Pedley Street issue for the reasons that were explained by Mr Berryman last week.

11459. So far as legal advice is concerned, I am afraid I cannot offer to pay Mr Boyd Carpenter's legal costs. The compensation provisions have been explained. There is nothing to prevent legal advice being taken on the settlement deed if that is what is wanted but compensation, such as it is provided in terms of settlement, relates to a need to carry out surveys post work and during monitoring.

11460. So far as noise is concerned, we do not offer mitigation at this stage for the simple reason - and Mr Thornley-Taylor has explained this to Mr Boyd Carpenter and he is going to, as I understand it, meet him in Hanbury Street when he visits other residents as well - that the noise levels which will be experienced are below the most sensitive noise criteria of 25 decibels which are the criteria applied for noise sensitive properties such as studios, concert halls and the like. Regardless of issues of noise reflection, the noise levels which will be experienced will be low enough so that they should not disturb even the specialised activity which goes on in Mr Boyd Carpenter's premises. That is the same for both ground borne and air borne noise.

11461. The only period - and this I said when Mr Serota was here during Christchurch Spitalfields - of audible noise in terms of the tunnelling should be the period when the tunnel boring machines go through cutting the tunnels which is a period of seven to 14 days, as I explained to the Committee last week. Subject to that the operation of the tunnel should not cause Mr Boyd Carpenter problems.

11462. The issue that he referred to, Mr Methold and the London Borough of Havering was not dealing with this issue at all, it was dealing with the specific adjustments made under British standards for the noise from fixed plant, it was not dealing with the general questions of ground borne and air borne noise, so the comment, I am afraid, is not related to this specific context.

11463. Finally, so far as the steps to be taken in monitoring, the Code of Construction which is part of information paper D1 makes it clear that monitoring is not the responsibility solely of the local authority. The nominated undertaker will also be required to monitor and to comply with the noise levels which are set and you will find that in sections 5.1 and 5.2 of the Construction Code in IPD 1. Thank you.

11464. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: Mr Carpenter?

11465. MR CARPENTER: Yes, there are quite a few points I would like to respond to very briefly. I had a letter from Tom Mantey concerning the work in my flat today so I was concerned about the health impacts on me as well as being able to work there. They have 60 dBA daytime and 43 dBA evening noise. I was talking about night time noise events which do not wake you up but disturb your sleep, that is the concern they will impact on my health in that way. These noise events are not loud enough to wake you up but they are loud enough to disturb your sleep and cause the cardiac arrhythmia. On the measurement of the noise, my point on that is it is the level that you set the background noise against. If your background noise level is set high then everything looks okay against that background noise level, but we are talking about adding noise events to the existing sound scape that is there. That is what that discussion was about. If you say the background noise level is 60 dB when it is in fact 40 dB, that is a colossal difference. I am not saying that, I am just giving you that as an example. I am a bit concerned about that.

11466. The shaft originally was in Princelet Street on the 2002 guide and was moved across the road to Hanbury Street. It was Hanbury Street but it had been in Princelet Street, so it was not fixed in place, I do not believe, until the spoil adit system was put in place. I think that was part of that. Prior to that you can see on the map of Princelet Street there is a big area that says "warehouse" just to the left of the coloured part of the site across the road and that was where the original vent shaft was proposed in the original alignment. It was moved to Hanbury Street. The only things I have seen have always said Hanbury Street and that has always been to do with the adit as far as I have seen, I have not seen any other information than that. Crossrail have always said they need to take the spoil out through that tunnel and it needs to be there, and that was what they told us and we believed them. They told us they could not move it anywhere else because that would make the tunnel for the spoil too long and it would not make it economically viable to move it. They told us that information. That is what I am going on.

11467. I am a bit surprised that as residents that we were expected to look at an exhibition board in Whitechapel that had one sentence about Pedley Street, which is a very, very long way away from Whitechapel, and be able to spot that. I am sorry I did say there was no mention of it, I am very, very sorry, there was mention of it, it was mentioned, it just was not on the other maps. Again, I do not think that has satisfied too many of my concerns. It has some of them with the stationary impact assessment and so on, I am very pleased about that. I have presented you with detailed evidence on the consultation from the WHO reports, and those will explain the situation of residents in some detail. That is all I want to say.

11468. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: Mr Carpenter, thank you very much indeed. Can I call Ms Thornton, please.

 

The Petition of Woodseer and Hanbury Street Residents' Association.

 

MS THORNTON appeared as counsel on behalf of the Petitioner.

11469. MR ELVIN: I say nothing more by way of introduction than this is the Residents' Association.

11470. MS THORNTON: Members of the Committee, I will be brief this evening. I am very aware you have heard a lot of evidence from the Spitalfields' residents already. In preparing the presentation this evening we took the opportunity to review all of the transcripts of the relevant sessions and we have annexed them to a letter which I hope you have got before you, just to demonstrate that we have tried to prepare as best we can to avoid repeating arguments that have already been made. I firstly want to check that everybody has the letter I am referring to and presenting on. It is a letter from Guy Carpenter, who you have actually just heard from, in his capacity as Secretary of the Residents' Association.

11471. MR ELVIN: I am afraid we only received it before the Committee resumed so it has not been introduced.

11472. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: If you could have it circulated.

11473. MS THORNTON: There were copies circulated earlier.

11474. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: What was the number?

11475. MR ELVIN: It has not got one. This is the first time it is being presented. It has got "Woodseer and Hanbury Residents' Association" on the top.

11476. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: The only one we have got is A126. We will call this A127.

11477. MS THORNTON: Perhaps if I could explain. The letter arrived before you this afternoon because those instructing me reviewed over 500 pages of transcript to ensure we did not repeat ourselves and as the transcripts had only arrived by the end of last week the process has taken time. We apologise and we hope the Committee understands the reason for that. I will take you through the main points of the letter.

11478. Before I go further I would just like to say that I intend to be relatively brief this evening. Just because I am being brief does not in any way underplay the state of concern and anxiety that is felt by those affected.

11479. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: That is absolutely understood, Ms Thornton, thank you very much for bringing it to our attention.

11480. MS THORNTON: There are three aspects I want to cover tonight. The first is a simple point. Given the revised tunnel strategy for Hanbury Street, and this is a point that has already been made by others so I repeat it, we would like to understand whether there is still a need for the shaft at Hanbury Street. We would like to hear from the Promoter as to whether the shaft at Hanbury Street is still necessary given as we understand there is greater flexibility now the tunnel strategy has been revised. That is point number one.

11481. Point number two is we want to explore the protection measures that are available to residents. You are aware of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link experience of residents. That, it seems, is now a success story in terms of the relationship between residents affected by the construction works of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, the contractors and the promoters. There seem to us to be some real practical examples there which the Committee could seek to replicate as one success story to ensure that Crossrail can proceed along the same lines.

11482. The third part of what I want to say will be very brief. It is to support arguments on wider issues made by others.

11483. The point about the need to look at the tunnel strategy for Hanbury Street is my clients are grateful for the changes that have been made to the tunnel strategy so that we no longer need a tunnel boring shaft. Because, as we now understand, there is greater flexibility in that, whereas before when you were boring right down to the earth and bringing out the tunnel spoil you needed a nearby railway line and a nearby street to take the spoil out, that is no longer taking place. There does seem to be a change of circumstances. There seem to be implications from that change of circumstances, ie greater flexibility about the location of the shaft. As far as we are aware the Promoter has not demonstrated why the Hanbury Street shaft is necessary or looked at whether there are now better alternatives given these change in circumstances. It may be that in this particular area, we are not saying there are, there is a better piece of land, derelict land, waste land, abandoned buildings, we do not know. As far as we are aware that assessment has not been carried out. Given these change in circumstances, given the impact and disruption that this Hanbury Street shaft is going to cause for the next five years, it does seem to be a matter of fairness that at the very least that assessment is carried out and the residents I represent receive the results of that assessment. That is the first thing we ask for.

11484. The second point I want to make is a point about trying to understand what the day-to-day impacts are going to mean for life for residents. I am picking up on some of the debate that has already taken place this evening. If one is trying to appreciate the concerns of residents and the difficulties they face, one of the problems is it is very difficult to understand what this is going to mean on a day-to-day basis for people. I say by way of preliminary point, the Government has accepted in the context of the Environmental Impact Assessment that the general public, when faced with a construction project of this sort of magnitude, feels anxiety and concern. Much of that anxiety and concern is about the fear of the unknown or the fear of these unforeseen effects. By providing proper information it is widely recognised you help to allay public anxiety; things may not be as bad as people feel. It is unfortunately the case that the information that is coming out in this project is not allaying anxiety and concern. I will not go into the detail of it because I think you have heard it before.

11485. Mr Elvin has already referred this evening to generic documents when responding to individual petitioners. It may be simply inevitable in a project of this size that you have to rely on generic documents but I think it needs to be recognised when you are trying to understand the concerns of residents that generic documents, very technical documents, decibel limits, et cetera, when it is hard to understand what that is going to mean for day-to-day life, creates fear and anxiety. If you have got those problems sometimes you can get round them by consultation. You have heard about the problems with consultation in the Spitalfields area and I do not propose to repeat them, apart from making one particular point that is a source of significant anger and frustration to those I represent, which is in the round one consultation, which people now realise was their only opportunity to talk about a route, there was no explanation that there were alternative routes that could have been considered in a round of consideration. You have heard Mr Elvin's response tonight which is just because they were not in the consultation document or made available, people could have still commented on them. Quite frankly that is unrealistic when you have got residents who do not have the resources, who are acting on their own initiative, to be presented with proposals which do not refer to alternatives is to circumscribe what we are going to talk about. It is only now that people have realised they have lost the chance to talk about a particular route. I mention that because that is a point I have been asked to raise.

11486. Having said that you have got information problems here, you have got consultation problems, it therefore becomes very important that you move to protection measures. There is a sense I am getting from behind me, from those who are instructing me, that there may be a sense of greater preparedness to wait and see, to see if it is as bad as they fear, yet the Promoter says it will not be as bad. If they feel that at the point at which they have waited, they have seen it and actually it is getting quite bad, and they raise their head above the parapet and say, "Actually things are getting bad. The noise is getting bad. The lorry movements are getting bad", if at that point they felt confident that there would be a responsive resident focused sympathetic speedy dealing with the problem then I think that would go a long way to resolve some of the concerns.

11487. Those instructing me have tried to set out at page four of the letter what the impacts are likely to be for this particular part of Hanbury Street. Quite frankly, having heard the debate tonight, I do not think it is worth going down that route because what I am hearing is there is just going to be a debate about impact. "Yes, there is going to be an impact". "No, there is not going to be an impact". "It is not going to be as bad as you think". It goes to the same problem, there is a lack of proper specific information, for example there are no details yet of where the lorries are going to go in the streets in Spitalfields. I am hearing somebody saying to me "Yes, there are". Yesterday a letter was sent saying, "No details yet of specific routes the lorries are taking". This came from Tom Mantey, who I understand is the negotiator. The understanding of those who instruct me is that detail is not available.

11488. MR ELVIN: It is in the Environmental Statement.

11489. MS THORNTON: We can perhaps produce the letter.

11490. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: I think we will just continue.

11491. MS THORNTON: Anyway, the point is exemplified in a way by the dispute you have just heard. It is not clear, there is an element of doubt, there is an element of confusion about what these impacts are going to be. That creates the uncertainty, it creates the concern, it creates the anxiety. If you cannot tie it down in advance you have to provide proper protection measures to pick up the pieces when they start to go wrong and that is what I want to look at tonight and try and identify, and I will do so briefly as I am aware of the time.

11492. At page five I talk about what exactly can we do to try and make people's lives better. Just to say here, this part of the letter comes from extensive consultation with what I will call the Channel Tunnel Rail Link affected residents. We cannot get a better, clearer example of what it is like for residents who are living through this day-to-day. They have this experience, and it is to be relied upon. There is a video available if you want to see what the residents affected by the Channel Tunnel Rail Link are saying. I understand that is difficult for the Committee. That has not been provided but I do not want you to think that we are not putting forward any direct evidence tonight, it is available. What the consultations with the Channel Tunnel Rail Link affected residents show is that there are four or five very important principles which ensure the protection for residents. We have set those out on page five.

11493. The first, and it bears repeating, is it is no good relying on assurances, it is no good relying on expressions of commitment and goodwill that a Promoter may make often at a stage when he or she is trying to get the project approved. That is not sufficient when one or two years down the line in the dead of night you have got someone who has a real problem. The legislative and regulatory spotlight has gone, people need assistance. That comes from legally enforceable binding undertakings, and that is what we are seeking tonight. So far as we understand, the Promoter has rejected the proposal that there be undertakings. I do not have the specific details but that is what I am instructed. I remain to be corrected on that and I would be delighted if I was corrected on that.

11494. Regular meetings with the contractor so people understand in advance what work is going to happen to them over the next few weeks. A clear allocation of responsibilities so the Promoter, the contractor and the local council cannot all shift the problem. The procedures need to operate under the principle of equal partnership between the residents and the contractors. Residents should not have to negotiate with the local authority because, quite frankly, a local authority will never care as much as residents do. What made the major difference in the Channel Tunnel Rail Link was clear disciplinary procedures and clear penalties if the Construction Code was breached.

11495. Further additional points I make very briefly on how we best move the process forward given we are where we are in this particular Bill and these particular proceedings. You have heard evidence on a lot of health impacts, vibration impacts, noise impacts from petitioners. This generates additional concern from those sitting behind me as they hear more and more information being put forward before you, new issues being raised that they feel have not been adequately dealt with. If we are to move forward from here we need, those instructing me say, an independent assessment of the particular issues that have been raised before you on noise, vibration and sound with non-technical summaries so that people receiving them, wherever they are, can understand the outcome of those.

11496. You have already heard detail of the settlement, I do not propose to repeat it but can I say just on this point about the deed of settlement, the response of the Promoter is apparently "you can pay for your own legal advice". We hear that. It seems to us one option would be for legal resources to be made available for one lawyer on behalf of all the residents to negotiate a pro forma deed of settlement which residents could either sign up to or not. The only reason these residents are in the situation they are in is because of the Promoter and to hear that they have to pay their own money to get legal advice creates continuing frustration.

11497. I have talked about vehicle movements and regular meetings to understand about vehicle movements. On compensation, I simply refer you to the evidence given by Norman Winbourne on behalf of Mayfair Residents, a chartered surveyor with 50 years' experience who talked about the inadequacies of the Compensation Code, and now we understand it is not a code.

11498.
Finally, on this - it is the point I made earlier, and possibly it is the most important point - as and when things go wrong having a resident focused responsive procedure to deal with these impacts. That means not just looking at whether people fall under schedules or under thresholds at the highly technical approach, it means looking at - and I appreciate this is difficult to achieve in practice - somebody in front of you who is vulnerable, who is suffering a problem maybe because they have a greater sensitivity or a greater vulnerability and being able to take that into account in any discretion you have and incorporation of some sort of principle along those lines to assuage their concerns. If you have got irresolvable differences then you need an independent appeals process that has to be seen to be independent. That could involve community representation, possibly not members from within the particular community but outside the community to involve a greater degree of objectivity. It might be local GPs, it might be head teachers, the post might be applied for and advertised, it is about creating a sense that this is a scheme that is looking after people as and when they need looking after.

11499. I finally want to say something very briefly on the two wider issues that you have heard a lot about and I do not intend to repeat. One of them is alternative routes and the second is the existence of the Whitechapel Station. I fully expect the response on Whitechapel Station to be, "This is a point of principle about the Bill, the time for debating that has gone". What I will say in response to that is that is not helpful to residents who, as I have already pointed out, feel they lost their only opportunity to be adequately consulted on the route at round one, for the reasons I have given, no consideration of alternatives. To hear now that the time for debating that has gone sits very uneasily.

11500. On alternative routes, I refer you simply to the evidence of Michael Schabas for the Mayfair residents, delivered by a man of significant expertise in this area, 25 years of expertise. You heard him say that this Promoter has considered alternative routes only superficially and only to discard them. You then heard the witness for the Promoter attempt to rebut those arguments. We wholeheartedly support the evidence on alternative routes. You do have the power, as we understand from your instructions, to go back to Parliament to comment on the adequacy or inadequacy of the Environmental Statement. That point was made by counsel for the Promoter in his opening. We would urge you to exercise the power that you have according to your instructions to comment on the adequacy of the Environmental Statement as it relates to alternative routes.

11501. Very finally, on the Whitechapel Station you have heard about the absence of a cost benefit analysis, you have heard whether there should even be a Whitechapel Station or not and the confusion about whether we need that station. I am not going to repeat those arguments, apart from to refer you to the evidence.

11502. In conclusion, at annex two we set out a list of undertakings what those who instruct me would like. I will not read them out, I have covered them already. Suffice to say they start with this undertaking that the Promoter should come back to the residents and say why the tunnel alignment at Hanbury Street is still necessary. They go on to look at the noise vibration measures that I talked about, details of the chosen route for lorry movements as soon as practicable, application of best practice industry standards in residential areas, clear allocation of responsibilities, regular meetings with the council, advance information, an independent appeals procedure, and there is a further one I would like to add which is the provision of legal resource for one lawyer to negotiate a deed of settlement on behalf of residents.

11503. Guy Carpenter is behind me if you would like to hear any evidence from him or if you have any questions. The Channel Tunnel Rail Link residents have said they would be very happy to come and talk to you. I know you have got a lot of people talking to you. That is probably the point where I end. The Channel Tunnel Rail Link residents were a success story, eventually. It took a number of years to get there but there is the opportunity for Crossrail to start where the Channel Tunnel residents have ended up and we would urge the Committee to do whatever it can to start that process. Thank you.

11504. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: Mr Elvin, you have eight minutes.

11505. MR ELVIN: I have rescheduled my overall closing to 2.30 tomorrow, if that is acceptable to the Committee. Can I just make my very specific points. I will deal with those quickly so Ms Thornton can hear them because she may not be around at 2.30 tomorrow.

11506. The majority of the concerns that have been raised are dealt with by the Construction Code. I would like to assure the Residents' Association that the environmental scheme and the controls here build on the CTRL experience, as I explained to the Committee on Day 1, transcript paragraph 64 and others. We are well aware of the experience of CTRL and, indeed, many of our team are CTRL veterans. We are building on the experience of CTRL, so that is already done. The Construction Code itself is the primary means to the majority of the concerns. It may not deal with what is wanted as a matter of very specific detail but it deals with matters such as standards, enforcement and environmental requirements. I might remind the Committee that I gave an undertaking, the first one I gave, at paragraph 112 of the transcript on Day 1, on behalf of the Secretary of State to ensure that such steps are taken as are reasonable and necessary to secure compliance with the environmental minimum requirements set out in the Construction Code. They are secured by undertaking and I do not need to repeat or to give a further undertaking in that respect.

11507. On the issue of Hanbury Street and the need for it, the alternatives are set out in material. Clearly they may have passed by the Association. I have referred to them already. Supplementary Environmental Statement 1, section 6, eight alternative sites considered. So far as the renewed need for the shaft in the light of the new tunnelling strategy, I can assure the Residents' Association, as I have done on many occasions over the last two weeks, this will be the matter of a further Bill amendment, AP3, and will be the subject of a further Environmental Statement which will accompany AP3. This is not the end of the process, there is more consultation to come on the issue of the alignments and the selection of Hanbury Street. It is not that consultation round one was a lost opportunity, the whole course of consultation includes the Environmental Statement and the Bill process, the representations made to this Committee, which include the as yet to be published AP and further Environmental Statement, so those issues are far from closed and more will be put before the Committee and Parliament in due course.

11508. So far as the Spitalfields lorry route is concerned, can I show the letter from Mr Mantey at paragraph two. What it makes clear, and the Committee will see it, is "the final fixing of the lorry routes will be in consultation with the authorities, as it has to be under Schedule 7 of the Bill, but the position of the likely lorry routing is set out in detail in the Environmental Statement" and this letter sets out the references. It is routes the Committee has already seen on the plans. The currently proposed lorry routes are already there in publicly available information with an explanation in volume 8b as to what is proposed. Of course, the final selection will have to be in consultation with the local authority and no doubt that will involve local residents as well.

11509. On the Compensation Code and legal costs, the position is what the position is. Parliament has decreed the current Compensation Code, which is applicable to this and to all other projects. It has rejected proposals for reform from the Law Commission and it has consistently applied that code to major infrastructure projects. I have made that point before and I do not elaborate on it.

11510. Finally, so far as Whitechapel is concerned - Ms Thornton has obviously missed this point from the transcripts but the Committee has already made it clear - this is part of the principle of the Bill. It was accepted by the House on second reading and is not open for debate before this Committee. I say that simply to inform the Association, not to remind the Committee of what it already knows and has already made clear.

11511. I say no more in response now, I will carry out my main closing at 2.30 tomorrow afternoon and I will circulate in advance copies of my written submissions.

11512. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: Thank you, Mr Elvin. Ms Thornton, we have ----

11513. MS THORNTON: We will be less than a minute, although we have three minutes. Mr Elvin has talked about the Construction Code but our point is the Construction Code is not finalised yet a lot of detail that is highly relevant to the residents is in there. It is not yet finalised, therefore there is continuing uncertainty.

11514. We are obviously pleased to hear about the further Bill amendment and the further Environmental Statement on the Hanbury Street alignment. It does raise a question which we would like to ask. Do we have another opportunity to come back before you?

11515. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: Indeed you do.

11516. MS THORNTON: Fine. Thank you very much for that. On Whitechapel, Mr Elvin may not have heard me when I said I predicted there would be an issue about principle and I made the point that principle means little to residents who feel they lost out on consultation earlier on. That is my point on that.

11517. The Compensation Code and the legality of it, I do not propose to say anything more on.

11518. On the lorry routes, as I understand it there is still a lack of clarity over Buxton Street and whether that is going to be used.

11519. MR ELVIN: That is going to be used. I explained that earlier.

11520. MS THORNTON: Absolutely fine. I will not make any further points on that.

11521. Finally, I have been asked to mentioned that the CTRL rail scheme did look at a large number of alternative routes and that is what clearly distinguishes it from the Crossrail scheme which has not looked at alternative routes. I have been asked to raise that point. I have no further comments.

 

11522. MR LIDDELL-GRAINGER: Ms Thornton, thank you very much. Given that we have a minute to go, thank you for your minute. We will now adjourn until tomorrow at ten o'clock.