Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-59)
DEPARTMENT OF
CULTURE, MEDIA
AND SPORT
AND THE
ROYAL PARKS
2 NOVEMBER 2005
Q40 Mr Bacon: I will withdraw that
remark without reservation. What staggers me is that it is so
obvious that if you are going to have thousands of visitors on
waterlogged grass you are going to need to do something, and at
no point in this project management discipline cycle you talk
about did this seem to occur to anybody and I am wondering why
not.
Dame Sue Street: I will back-track
to say that I think this Department should be proud of its record
on some projects such as the Commonwealth Games, the Golden Jubilee,
the Memorial Gardens in Grosvenor Square and many more.
Q41 Mr Bacon: Grosvenor Square looks
like a war zone at the moment, but I do not think that is your
Department's fault.
Dame Sue Street: Not at the moment.
It was successfully completed to time and there are many others.
It was always envisaged that the turf would get soggy and need
to be replaced. I am absolutely not a turf expert so I might defer
to the Chief Executive. It was a collective effort to recognise
that this was a wet area, the drainage was put in and my understanding
is that it was the freak storm and the extreme number of visitors,
which I have already said I regret, which caused that to happen.
Q42 Mr Bacon: Now it is because there
is tarmac there. You need a solid foundation to have thousands
of people standing on it. I think it is a superb monument and
I hope this Committee does reflect that in its report. You did
say you had asked the Office of Government Commerce to review
this to see how it might have gone better. I wonder whether to
welcome that or to be afraid. What have they said they will do
and how long is it going to take them to do it?
Dame Sue Street: We have not asked
them to do anything. We wanted to learn the lessons so that once
the memorial fountain had opened successfully in May that was
a good time to look back and confirm that the approach we now
take to projects, which is a far more formal project management
approach, is something that would have helped us clarify the early
troubles. They do say very clearly, however, that the outcome
is good and a tribute to the people who have worked to overcome
the initial problems.
Q43 Mr Bacon: Mr Camley, Westminster
Council apparently regard the fencing as unsatisfactory although
when we visited you commented on the fact that it does make it
a separate, enclosed area. Is it the plan now to keep the fencing
and do you have the power to ignore what Westminster Council want?
Mr Camley: It is currently under
review. I have agreed to go back to Westminster Council by May
of next year, once the Memorial has been open for a year. We can
monitor the continued use of the area. We probably do need fencing
there.
Q44 Mr Bacon: Is not one of the problems
that the fencing looks rather temporary?
Mr Camley: I absolutely agree.
It was put in as temporary fencing and if we put permanent fencing
in next May it will be similar in style to the rest of Hyde Park.
Q45 Mr Bacon: If you put in fencing
and make it a permanent, enclosed area it would seem very obvious
that you could, if you so chose, have a turnstile or charge people
a pound to go in and, with 500,000 visitors, you would soon cover
the maintenance costs. Have you given any thought to doing that?
Mr Camley: I have. I think the
parks are there to be open to everyone. The people who want to
enjoy the memory of the Princess should be free and able to do
that. Obviously, it is a matter for policy in the future.
Q46 Mr Bacon: £250,000 is quite
a lot out of the £30 million budget you have. It is even
more out of the budget just for Hyde Park. You are effectively
top-slicing everything else and a little bit less is getting done
across all eight parks. Is that right?
Mr Camley: There are three ways
we are looking at this. One is looking at how we can standardise
regimes across the park, including grass cutting and so on. Secondly,
we have reduced some of the work on the ground this year and,
thirdly, we are also looking at other ways in which we can increase
income. At the Lido which is about 100 yards from the Memorial,
takings at the restaurant there in May and June rose by something
in the region of 30%, although it fell away a little after the
July bombings.
Q47 Mr Bacon: Could you send us a
note with a very detailed breakdown of the 250,000 for annual
maintenance costs?[1]
Can I ask you about losing money on events in the park? When I
first read this, I thought how can you lose money on events in
the park but I understand that you commit the money that you are
expecting to get from events such as the Star Trek exhibition
referred to on page 23 and you then do not get it. Have you changed
your policy so that you get the money up front or how do you make
sure you do not commit money you do not already have?
Mr Camley: There are three things
we do. One, we ensure that we check out the viability and the
risk associated with anyone we are going to work with. Secondly,
we do look to get payment up front. Thirdly, we require event
organisers to take out a bond so that if there is damage done
to the park we can use that to reinstate the damage that has been
done.
Q48 Mr Bacon: Given that these are
such important, iconic central locations in London and of such
importance in the whole culture of rural parks, do you think your
marketing and PR effort is adequate?
Mr Camley: Our charging regime
we have benchmarked against other heritage organisations and parks
in London and we charge more than other parks for events in London.
Q49 Mr Bacon: I was talking about
the parks per se rather than just events.
Mr Camley: There is certainly
more we could do although Hyde Park and Regents Park could be
recognised as parks worldwide. There is more we could do in terms
of regular and individual events and what is happening locally.
Q50 Mr Bacon: Can I ask about the
£10 million backlog? The Report says that you are doing a
review to try and find a more accurate figure. Where are you on
that?
Mr Camley: We have conducted the
review using the British Standard for workload maintenance, BS3811,
and the figure should be £64.5 million.
Q51 Mr Bacon: Dame Sue, do you think
that the Department is going to come up with this money between
now and any time soon?
Dame Sue Street: Even if we did
the parks would not be able to expend it all at once. This is
a rolling programme of works. I am very impressed with what they
have done which is to prioritise 39 projects which need attention.
As with any of our bodies, we cannot suddenly fund a huge dollop
of extra money.
Q52 Mr Bacon: Are there discussions
going on inside the Department as to whether you should cure this
backlog by introducing a PFI or PPP and having an annual unitary
payment to some external commercial company to do all this work
for you and get it done more quickly?
Dame Sue Street: We are not currently
looking at that option.
Mr Bacon: Thank God for that.
Q53 Kitty Ussher: I would like to
probe the relationship between the parks management and local
communities. Perhaps you could outline what arrangements currently
exist to make sure you are working with the local communities.
Mr Camley: There are three things
we are involved in. There are groups of friends which support
the park, including raising some funding for the park. There are
in particular areas—an example is Bushy—stakeholder
involvement where an average of 40 people have been to each of
16 events we have held there, to look at how we might develop
that Park. There is help through our education and support programme.
We are reaching out to the local community, trying to get them
involved and to bring children and adults into the park.
Q54 Kitty Ussher: I am glad you mentioned
Bushy Park as an example. What have you learned from that? It
is working so well. Why does it not apply to all parks?
Mr Camley: The reason we particularly
focused on Bushy is that we have a major project which we hope
to launch down there in the new year, where we are looking to
invest significant sums in refocusing what happens in the park,
looking at some of the major features that there are in the park.
I would hope that, if that is successful, we will apply the same
model to the other parks.
Q55 Kitty Ussher: Because the parks
are national treasures as well as amenities for the local community,
there must be a tension between the friends of groups, who I presume
represent the local stakeholders, and the national organisations,
bodies or coaches of school children from the other side of the
country. How do you reconcile those tensions?
Mr Camley: We have to balance
a whole series of tensions, including people who want to play
sport, people who want to listen to music, people who want to
sunbathe, people who want to look at horticulture. Part of what
we do is survey users and non-users of the park to understand
what people enjoy when they come to the park and to get a sense
of why people do not come to the park.
Q56 Kitty Ussher: Am I right that
local groups would prefer that there were not coach loads of people
from all over the country messing up their park? Is that too crude
a characterisation?
Mr Camley: All the local groups
and groups of friends that are there are supportive of the work
we do and will get involved in organising some events themselves.
For example, the Greenwich Group organised a garden opera at Greenwich
Park this year and last year.
Q57 Kitty Ussher: How often do you
survey users across the spectrum?
Mr Camley: Since the National
Audit Office's Report, we have restructured our survey so that
we go to half the parks each year and do a more in depth study
so that we get a better understanding of what people enjoy in
particular parks and what they would like to see more of.
Q58 Kitty Ussher: Are you sampling
people who use the park on that day or are you going out more?
Mr Camley: We do both. We survey
people who are users and we do telephone surveys to non-users
of the park.
Q59 Kitty Ussher: Do you have examples
of how the research has altered your decisions on what you do?
Mr Camley: What happens with the
information once we have it is that the park managers, who produce
their annual plans, look at it and build it into their plans so
that they are taking account of the views of the people using
the park.
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