Select Committee on Public Accounts Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-19)

DEPARTMENT OF CULTURE, MEDIA AND SPORT AND THE ROYAL PARKS

2 NOVEMBER 2005

  Q1 Chairman: Good afternoon and welcome to the Committee of Public Accounts. Today we are looking at The Royal Parks and the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fountain, which of course is situated in one of The Royal Parks. We welcome Dame Sue Street, Permanent Secretary at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, and Mr  Mark Camley, who is Chief Executive of The Royal Parks. You are both welcome. Mr Camley, could I please ask you to look at paragraph 3.8 of the Report on page 18, where you will see it says, "Many of the structures and roads in the Parks are in a state of disrepair. Much of this hard fabric has fallen into disrepair over decades and a substantial backlog of work has now built up." Would it be fair to say that the Parks are sliding gracefully into a state of decay?

  Mr Camley: I would not agree with that statement. I think the overall satisfaction levels we have had from users of the Parks over the last two years show that in 2004, for example, on average 94% of users thought the Parks were either good or excellent in terms of condition, and a similar survey this year suggested figures between 90% for Hyde Park and 99% for Primrose Hill.

  Q2  Chairman: Mr Camley, I am sure that is all very true but that is not quite the question I asked you. Is it true that there is an accumulated backlog of £65  million-worth of repairs?

  Mr Camley: It is true that there is a building maintenance liability of £65 million.

  Q3  Chairman: So, as the Report makes clear, the hard fabric is falling into disrepair?

  Mr Camley: I would disagree with that. You have to look at it I think in the same way you would look at looking after your house, where you look at the budget you have, what your priorities are and then do the work accordingly.

  Q4  Chairman: Dame Sue, can I ask you about the  Olympic Games? The Parks are going to be the venues for several sporting events, are they not, during the 2012 Olympic Games, for example equestrian and modern pentathlon in Greenwich Park, the triathlon in Hyde Park and road cycling in Regent's Park. Can you give us an assurance that the Parks are capable of hosting these events?

  Dame Sue Street: We are very confident. Obviously we are going to have to remain vigilant and be absolutely sure that is the case. The International Olympic Committee evaluation team which came last February and went to Greenwich were extremely impressed and Lord Coe has described the Parks as a national treasure. I think they are absolutely capable of hosting the Games but that will be a top priority in the coming years.

  Q5  Chairman: Mr Camley, could you look please at page 21, paragraph 4.2? There are considerable assets obviously at the disposal of your Agency, should you not be aiming to achieve more than an income of £7 million?

  Mr Camley: I think £7 million a year is realistic at the moment, given the facilities in front of us. Clearly we need to balance both the revenue we make and the use of the Parks more generally, so that all users of the Parks are able to use them in the way they would like.

  Q6  Chairman: Can I ask you please about the Fountain now? The original cost was projected at £3  million, is that correct?

  Mr Camley: That is correct.

  Q7  Chairman: And the cost now is £5.2 million?

  Mr Camley: That figure includes both the opening ceremony and the enhancement works which were done since January of this year.

  Q8  Chairman: It is going to cost at least £250,000 a year to maintain the Fountain?

  Mr Camley: That is the estimated figure.

  Q9  Chairman: Was this envisaged at the time it was planned?

  Mr Camley: At the time it was planned the figure envisaged was nearer around £120-£130,000.

  Q10  Chairman: If you look at the C&AG's memorandum, you will see on page 2, a lot of people seem to be involved in a relatively small and simple project—the Department, Royal Parks, the Memorial Committee and various private companies. Did everyone know what they were supposed to be doing?

  Mr Camley: Yes, I believe they did.

  Q11  Chairman: If they knew what they were going to be doing, why within two or three weeks of this Fountain opening did it look like a complete bog and an open drain outside Heathrow Airport?

  Mr Camley: Two things happened. First, we had not anticipated quite how many people were going to come and use the Memorial, or the way in which they did actually end up using it. Secondly, there was a major storm the day after it opened and that, along with the number of people who were using the Fountain, actually led to wet and slippery grass.

  Q12  Chairman: There were all these people involved. Were you adequately consulted in the Parks administration? Anyone walking their dog around there would know that area as a bog anyway, could nobody have foreseen that fragile grass next to a water feature with hundreds, let alone thousands, of people would reduce it to a muddy bog within days, which is what happened?

  Mr Camley: In terms of the planning of the Fountain itself, something in the region of a thousand tonnes of sand and topsoil was put into that area, recognising that it had previously been a marshy area, and somewhere in the region of over a mile of drainage pipes were also put into the area.

  Q13  Chairman: £700,000 has had to be pumped into it this year, has it not, to make good all this lack of planning? That is right, is it not?

  Mr Camley: That is correct.

  Q14  Chairman: Is this coming off your budget?

  Mr Camley: £400,000 of that is coming off my budget and £300,000 of it is coming from the DCMS.

  Q15  Chairman: What is the effect on essential works in the rest of Hyde Park, looking after trees and other features?

  Mr Camley: We have tried to address this in three different ways. First, is to look at efficiencies across the Park, and standardise our regime, including our grass-cutting regimes. Secondly, to look at ways in which we can increase income, including the restaurants and so on. Third, we have looked at the  parade ground at Hyde Park and how we maintain it, and it is true that we will be putting less into that than we did in previous years.

  Q16  Chairman: As a result of this cost rising from £3  million to £5.2 million, what other works have been cut in Hyde Park?

  Mr Camley: Specifically in Hyde Park, as I said, the parade ground where we host events, we will not be putting as much effort into grassing in terms of turf and re-seeding that area.

  Q17  Chairman: Dame Sue, what do you think are the lessons we can learn from this? Is this another prestige project which has gone wrong? Perhaps it should have been left to the charities to organise it in a co-ordinated way with one person being in charge?

  Dame Sue Street: I think the main lesson is that we should have had the kind of formal project management framework with responsibilities that we now have with the OGC, and with which I manage all the projects in the Department, in place at the start. We did not have that benefit at the beginning. I think the roles and responsibilities should have been clearer, and I accept that. I think the second mistake, and it is very difficult to know how that could have been avoided, was in estimating the extraordinary number of visitors. We knew it was going to be popular. The estimated "up to 1 million visitors a year" is actually almost exactly what we are now getting, but in the very first few days we were getting 5,000 visitors an hour, and that was an extraordinary load on the ground in a site no bigger than a football pitch. The main lessons for me, and of course we have asked the Office of Government Commerce to review how this might have gone better, are the ones which I hope we have already learnt from the Commonwealth Games, the Golden Jubilee and other successful projects, that the classic project management disciplines need to be applied.

  Q18  Chairman: These are wonderful national assets, are we looking at their full potential? If you look at paragraphs 3.10 and 3.11 on page 18, it talks about the apparent lack of benchmarking against other national and international venues. Are you satisfied we are getting enough out of these extraordinary national assets in terms of commercial development, maintaining the fabric and avoiding disasters such as we saw happen at the Memorial Fountain, where clearly there was a break-down in project management?

  Dame Sue Street: I am absolutely delighted in the progress the new Chief Executive is making. The benchmarking is proceeding, he is in touch with very many international park leaders, the Green Flag recommendations have been implemented, two of the Parks have got the Green Flag already and plans are in place for the remaining Parks to gain Green Flag status. It remains a challenge, in the absence of a flowing tap of public money to go to everything it remains a challenge, but there are very, very high satisfaction levels and both tourists, Londoners and those across the UK say The Royal Parks are amongst the highlights of our national assets.

  Chairman: Thank you very much. I am afraid there is a division and we will have to go and vote. I have been warned there may be more than one vote.

The Committee suspended from 3.41pm to 4.31pm for divisions in the House

  Q19 Mr Khan: Could I ask Dame Sue, would you accept the way the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fountain plans have been executed and the problems once opened could be described as a fiasco?

  Dame Sue Street: No, certainly not. I have explained to the Chairman that there certainly were tough lessons to learn about a stricter project management discipline and we have taken those to heart with all subsequent projects. I do not think it can be described as a fiasco because since May, after the teething problems—the very severe troubles—have been put right, we have had over 600,000 visitors to the Memorial. It is obviously enormously popular, there were 16,000 on the anniversary of the Princess's death, there have been four accidents in the whole of that time compared to the beginning when, and I will be absolutely open with the Committee, we were overwhelmed by the number of visitors in the first few days. It has been a troubled project with a good and lasting outcome and some tough lessons learnt along the way.


 
previous page contents next page

House of Commons home page Parliament home page House of Lords home page search page enquiries index

© Parliamentary copyright 2006
Prepared 21 March 2006