Select Committee on Crossrail First Special Report


8  Woolwich Station

Issues relating to Woolwich station

133. On 25 July 2006 we announced a series of interim decisions to allow the Government to undertake work with a view to amending the Crossrail Bill. These included a recommendation that there should be a station at Woolwich. The Promoter's response to these recommendations was published on 11 October 2006. The Promoter rejected the Committee's request to bring forward an additional provision for Woolwich Station. We regret that, in response to these developments, the Government insisted that the Committee had exceeded its powers in considering the new station.

134. During the subsequent debate the Committee pointed out that during our consideration of the Bill, the Government had the power to propose an instruction to the House of Commons instructing the Committee not to consider any particular aspect of the project. For example just as we were directed not to consider Reading, we could also have been instructed not to consider a station at Woolwich. The Government could also have challenged the locus standi of the Woolwich Petitioners, but chose to give their own evidence. We heard ten days of evidence for and against a station at Woolwich and came to our decision based on the information before us. We urged the Government 'in the strongest possible terms, to reconsider its position on this matter and to respect our views'. In a Parliamentary debate on 31 October 2006, the then Secretary of State maintained his position challenging the financial viability and desirability of a station at Woolwich.[35]

135. Subsequently the Committee made a Special Report to the House on 1 November 2006, to highlight our dissatisfaction with proceedings, regarding Crossrail and Woolwich. We strongly agreed with the arguments presented to us regarding the addition of a station at Woolwich. We also visited the proposed site with representatives from each party. We noted that the Petitioners' calculations of cost for this station showed that it would provide exceptional value for money and we called upon the Promoter to bring forward the necessary additional provision to add this to the Bill.

136. In March 2007 the Government announced that the station would now go ahead on the basis that the cost could be met by a private company, Berkeley Homes. The key to this has been the London Borough of Greenwich's recent proposal for a major revision to its spatial plan, to allow a significantly higher density of development at Woolwich. This, in turn, had prompted Berkeley Homes to offer a means of enabling a station to be built at Woolwich but, crucially, without adding to the current cost of Crossrail. In light of this, agreement had been reached in principle with Berkeley Homes under which they would build the basic box structure of a station at Woolwich and then construct their own development overhead. All this would be done at their own risk, using their own money, to the specification laid down by CLRL, with a payment back to Berkeley Homes equivalent to the saving CLRL would make through avoiding other works at Woolwich, when it constructed the line there. In due course, Berkeley Homes would then arrange for the completion of the station box to full operational status. Both they and Greenwich Council recognise that the completion of the station would be conditional on receiving sufficient funding contributions from those developers and businesses that stand to benefit from a Crossrail station at Woolwich. A new Instruction to the Committee to allow for this development was approved by the House on 25 April 2007.

137. The Promoter has told us that they recognised that a strong case has been made for a station at Woolwich. In the light of our decision, the Promoter has looked over the summer at the design of a station to explore ways of reducing its very high cost. A key reason why the station would be expensive to build is the depth of the running tunnels. A shallower station would be possible if the running tunnels in that area were nearer to the surface. This appears, in principle, to be feasible although much more detailed work would be needed to understand the wider environmental consequences. The cost of a shallower station is in the order of £200m.

138. We were pleased that the Secretary of State followed the request of the Committee and brought forward the necessary additional provisions to build a station at Woolwich. However, we have been concerned about the cautionary language used by the Promoter when bringing forward this additional provision. This Committee has always been firmly of the view that there must be a fully operational station at Woolwich. We have seen the evidence that demonstrates it will provide exceptional value for money and be a valuable transport link in an area of considerable deprivation. Accordingly, we reiterate our view that the station at this site is and must remain central to the project.


35  Crossrail Bill Committee, First Special Report of Session 2005-06, The Crossrail Bill: Woolwich Station, HC 1597 Back


 
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