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.
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