Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)
DEPARTMENT OF
CULTURE, MEDIA
AND SPORT
AND THE
ROYAL PARKS
2 NOVEMBER 2005
Q20 Mr Khan: Up until now the cost
of each visitor is about £10 a visit, if you divide the cost
to date by the number of visitors, 600,000, putting aside the
delay point. Were contracts signed with any of the private companies
referred to as key stakeholders in the paperwork? What I am alluding
to is, why has there been no litigation in relation to the companies
who must be responsible for what I call a fiasco but you do not
call a fiasco?
Dame Sue Street: I certainly do
not think it was a fiasco. We do have some on-going negotiation
which has not yet been resolved and of course I will advise the
Committee as soon as that is complete. Although it would be very
tempting to blame the contractors, I do not think that would be
right. I think it was difficult estimating that extraordinary
number of visitors which led to the way in which the ground and
the turf plus the storm caused those early problems, and that
is a function of an innovative memorial in a natural area and
really nobody knowing quite what the draw would be.
Q21 Mr Khan: You have been at the
DCMS since 1997?
Dame Sue Street: No, I took up
my post at the beginning of January 2002.
Q22 Mr Khan: Were you in London in
August 1997?
Dame Sue Street: Yes.
Q23 Mr Khan: Did you see the images
on TV? Did you see the number who took part in the procession
at the funeral?
Dame Sue Street: As it happened
I was abroad at the Princess's death but of course we were aware.
Q24 Mr Khan: It was a big deal.
Dame Sue Street: Part of the reason
that this Memorial was dealt with by so many stakeholders was
the enormous amount of interest, and of course we recognised this
was huge. As I say, the estimate we made at the time was in fact
the right one in the long-term, but was not the right one for
the first few days.
Q25 Mr Khan: You will have seen,
I am sure, when you prepared for today's evidence, the timetable
of events, you will have seen the various hoops which must have
been gone through before the work on the Fountain began in 2003;
a six year process from the Princess's death, before opening eight
years after her death. At no stage during that time was it expected
that people would want to come and see the Memorial to celebrate
her life?
Dame Sue Street: I am sorry?
Q26 Mr Khan: I find it implausible
to believe that nobody said, "Halt, lots of people will want
to go to the Memorial".
Dame Sue Street: We did estimate
up to 5,000 people a day, which is quite a lot really compared
to others. I absolutely accept that if we had had the normal project
management disciplines we would have had a contingency fund
which would have said, "The sensitivities around these visitor
numbers is such . . . .", and I certainly regret that we
did not get our estimate right.
Q27 Mr Khan: Do you accept the figures
in this Report?
Dame Sue Street: Yes.
Q28 Mr Khan: We have been told the
final cost of the project will be in the region of £5 million.
How much of that will be got back from the private contractors
after your negotiations?
Dame Sue Street: It will not be
a large amount. I might take the opportunity, if it helps, of
explaining where the big additional figures came in, but it would
not be right to say to this Committee that a huge amount will
come back after the negotiations. There are two big blocks which
are so significant it might help to explain them. One was a decision
to go for Cornish granite rather than Portland stone. That was
an expensive decision which added £400,000 to the cost of
the stone but it was taken absolutely according to project management
principles, looking at the whole life project, in that over 50
years the Portland stone would have needed constant maintenance
and renewal and water-proofing and cleaning, and over that time
the Cornish granite will last much better and will save about
£2.4 million. So that was a big decision and I think justifiable
under the normal trade-offs of cost, quality and time.
Q29 Mr Khan: Does that particular
type of stone have an impact on the humungous cost of maintenance
in general of a quarter of a million pounds?
Dame Sue Street: It reduces the
cost of maintenance.
Q30 Mr Khan: So your initial projection
was higher than a quarter of a million pounds a year to maintain
this?
Dame Sue Street: No, because the
initial projections did not take into account the staffing, the
stewards, who form part of that quarter of a million.
Q31 Mr Khan: So nobody foresaw you
needed stewards to be around the Memorial?
Dame Sue Street: As we have said,
and we took RoSPA's advice as well on this, it was thought at
the outset that if the patterns of behaviour were as we expected
that due diligence had been complete and that we would not need
stewards. Obviously it was right to put them in given the enormous
numbers and the pattern of behaviour.
Q32 Mr Khan: Bearing in mind what
we have just heard, and you have read the Report, do you think
the Memorial Fountain is an apt legacy and memorial to Diana?
Dame Sue Street: It is not for
me to make a personal judgment. I think the enormous numbers—which,
as I have admitted, we did not foresee at the beginning, but perhaps
more interestingly now, we have already attracted over 600,000
since May—are testament to a great public appreciation of
the Memorial. Of course with any work like this, it is innovative,
it is contemporary, some people will love it, some people will
hate it, and I think it is best for the public to decide.
Q33 Mr Khan: Bearing in mind the
lack of foresight with the stewards, with the cost, with the maintenance
cost, with the number of visitors originally predicted and the
quality of stone, do you still think it was not a fiasco?
Dame Sue Street: I am absolutely
certain that this was not a fiasco. This was a project which would
have benefited from the sorts of disciplines I have described
but which will be a lasting memorial, much-loved by the public,
and as of course it continues up to 200 years I think it will
come to be considered, as it already is, a landmark in London's
parks.
Q34 Mr Khan: My last question is
on The Royal Parks generally, do you believe bearing in mind the
lack of people who use The Royal Parks, and in light of the lack
of income these generate, that we can be satisfied with the way
our national assets are looked after?
Dame Sue Street: One of our problems
is that we do not know exactly how many people use The Royal Parks.
The last solid estimate was around 30 million in 1994. All the
feed-back we get from tourists, from Londoners and those outside,
is that the Parks are an absolute national treasure in London.
Together with the Chief Executive, the Department and the Parks
want to encourage greater usage, and that is the road we should
be on.
Q35 Chairman: What do you mean in
answer to Mr Khan when you talk about patterns of behaviour?
Dame Sue Street: I was just quoting
from The Royal Parks view at the time. RoSPA also said due diligence
in the design of the water feature had been exercised, the design
had taken into account the very open nature of the site but they
noted that in view of the unusual nature of this site it would
be necessary to monitor how patterns of behaviour developed and
how safety measures stood up to use. That was indeed prescient
because what we found was that with the huge numbers of visitors
and the way in which children and adults played in and enjoyed
the Fountain in those numbers, we obviously had more accidents
in the first 16 days than anybody would have wished, although
I think none of them was serious.
Chairman: The public were encouraged
to use it in that way, were they not?
Dame Sue Street: Absolutely. Certainly
part of the feature was that people should enjoy the water. Of
course you might say we should have foreseen it but the way it
was used, the coach-loads of children who arrived in swimming
trunks when there was a lido very near, was not what had been
envisaged for a place of contemplation and enjoyment.
Q36 Mr Bacon: Dame Sue, you have
referred to basic project management disciplines and the sensitivities
around numbers for the Diana Fountain. Would common sense, let
alone basic project management disciplines, have not indicated
that if you have grass and waterlogged ground, with thousands
of people per day standing on it—whether it is 5,000 or
10,000 is immaterial from this point of view—you are going
to need something rather stronger than the grass path which was
there, in other words what is there now? Would common sense not
indicate that? Why did nobody see that?
Dame Sue Street: It was certainly
thought the drainage and the quality of the turf was adequate.
Q37 Mr Bacon: But the drainage has
been enhanced subsequently, has it not?
Mr Camley: It has.
Q38 Mr Bacon: So the drainage was
not adequate to start with?
Dame Sue Street: It proved not
to be adequate.
Q39 Mr Bacon: Do you have a lawn
at home where you live?
Dame Sue Street: A very small,
pocket handkerchief one.
Mr Bacon: If you have 5,000 people a
day walking on it and you were spraying it constantly with water—this
is waterlogged ground—would you expect your lawn to be in
good condition or turn into a quagmire? That is really what I
am asking. Our friends from the media are busy licking their pencils
and they want to knock this. The Committee went to visit the Fountain
the week before last and I have to say having visited it, and
I had not visited it before, I thought it was superb, absolutely
superb. It is a tribute to the Princess, it is already a land-mark,
at 10 o'clock on a weekday morning it was plainly a magnet for
people in the Park and I am sure it will continue to be a success
for many years to come. What is amazing to me is that even something
which is a great success, given the Department's record with Pickett's
Lock, Wembley Stadium, the British Library and so on, you have
managed to balls up. You manage to balls up even great successes
and I am wondering why.
Chairman: Is that parliamentary language,
Mr Bacon? Would you like to withdraw that?
| 
