Examination of Witnesses (Questions 900
- 919)
900. Sir Peter Soulsby: Mr Laurence,
I think we hear what you say on that. I do not think it would
be appropriate for us to take a view on it at this stage. Are
there any other questions from Members of the Committee? If not,
I have a couple of remarks to make.
901. Kelvin Hopkins: Very, very briefly.
I wonder if it would be possible to produce that concentric circle
map about distance from the platform to offices.
902. Ms Lieven: We have got that on the
list. We will try and do that by tomorrow.
903. Kelvin Hopkins: The point from the
centre of the platforms rather than the exits.
904. Ms Lieven: Absolutely, Sir.
905. Sir Peter Soulsby: Before we conclude
for lunch, I have a couple of remarks to make. During the morning
we have had a number of new pieces of material put in front of
us and while I am sure the Committee would not want to prevent
anything of relevance being put in front of us, it would be very
helpful indeed if counsel, both for the Promoter and Petitioners,
could be sure of exchanging documents in advance, preferably the
night before but earlier if possible, and certainly depositing
them with our clerks the night before. I am sure the Committee
would not want to prevent papers of relevance being brought in
front of us but it would be very, very helpful to have that done
in advance. Do you want to comment on that, Ms Lieven?
906. Ms Lieven: If I could, Sir. With
respect, I could not agree more and it would be enormously helpful
for everybody, I would have thought, if there was more advance
exchange of information. What we had hoped, and Mr Elvin referred
to this earlier, was perhaps unusually the Committee might encourage
both the Promoter and the Petitioners to produce some kind of
summary or short statement of what their evidence is going to
be. The difficulty is that if we do not know the evidence—this
goes for both sides—until it is given orally, it is absolutely
inevitable that there will be lots of rushing around and producing
documents at the last minute. We will do our utmost to exchange
information with the Petitioners but obviously that depends on
co-operation from both sides and ultimately it depends on the
degree to which we know what the Petitioners are going to say.
The Petitioners know pretty much what we are going to say because
we have produced those long and detailed petition response documents,
but in some cases we have little idea what the Petitioners are
going to say. That is why we hoped to go down the line of producing
some sort of short summary of evidence in advance. Even without
that we are more than happy for an indication from the Committee
that both sides should be exchanging whatever material they can
at least 24 hours in advance.
907. Sir Peter Soulsby: Mr Laurence?
908. Mr Laurence: Sir, of course it is
consistent with the way things are done these days in court for
there to be cards on the table, maximum disclosure on both sides,
point one. Point two, what Ms Lieven has just elegantly done is
to try and cause you to reverse a ruling that you made last week,
and I am not suggesting that she should not try and do that. We
are neutral on the subject. Point three, it is really unacceptable
for her to contend, if she is meaning to include us, that we have
somehow known what the Promoter was going to be saying as a result
of reading her response document. There have been lots of detail
and lots of responses but this one has been pretty short. Having
said that, let me make it absolutely clear that I find this an
extraordinarily complex subject matter and although you have quite
understandably directed that the Committee do not want to be troubled
with underlying figures, except where it is absolutely necessary,
which I take as implicit in what you said, the truth is unless
you grapple with the underlying figures you cannot put an intellectually
coherent and honest case to the Committee. That is a process which
has been going on over the last weeks between the Promoter and
us and it is going to carry on going on, and it is in everybody's
interests that we try and achieve as much convergence as we can
in relation to agreeing numbers. Whether directing the parties
to summarise their cases and put stuff in in time beforehand is
going to achieve that objective, I do not know. All I know is
we want the best project if possible and we see co-operation with
the Promoter as being absolutely essential to that and will continue
to do so, Sir.
909. Sir Peter Soulsby: At this stage,
I do not think I would wish on behalf of the Committee to make
any direct ruling, I would simply say it would be very helpful
indeed if you can adopt a principle of being as open as possible
with each other and doing your very best to ensure that anything
that is going to be put in front of us is deposited the night
before, exchanged the night before, and is available to the Committee
in good time. It may be that the issue of presenting summaries
to us is something we can return to. Perhaps the general message
of openness and timeliness is one that I would want to emphasise
at this stage. It is now beyond one o'clock. I am aware that we
do reconvene at 2.30. I think, Mr Weiss, it would be appropriate
before closing to thank you very much indeed for your evidence,
it has been very helpful. Thank you.
The witness withdrew
After a short adjournment
910. Sir Peter Soulsby: Mr Cameron?
911. Mr Cameron: Sir, I am going to call
Adrian Penfold as our first witness. Just before introducing him
can I explain that Mr Penfold works for British Land so he is
the first British Land witness. Sir, by combining the two cases
we hope to reduce the amount of evidence you have to hear. We
hope to avoid duplication but Mr Penfold gives planning policy
and other evidence and there may be a slight overlap with Mr Rees's
evidence but we are going to try and avoid that if we possibly
can. Can I also indicate which documents we are going to rely
on, and I am going to ask for them to be circulated now so that
everybody has them before we start. You are going to be handed
shortly, sir, one bundle of documents which will look like that
(indicating) and one bundle of exhibits which is A3 size. Sir,
I will be adding on further documents which we will hand out when
we get to them and I have given a copy of that to Mr Mould, admittedly
only within the last few moments, but he has got it. There is
only one other document that I will be referring to and that is
volume 4a of the Environmental Statement. Sir, it looks as though
you have got the additional document. I will call that document
69.
912. Sir Peter Soulsby: I am advised
that it would be helpful if we refer to the documents as A12,
A13 and the larger format document as A14.[24],
[25],
[26]
Mr Adrian Penfold, sworn
Examined by Mr Cameron
913. You are Adrian Penfold, is that right?
(Mr Penfold) It is.
914. And you are Head of Planning and Environment
at British Land; is that right?
(Mr Penfold) I am, yes.
915. You are a Member of the Royal Town Planning
Institute. I think you are going to tell us something about British
Land and I will just lead you on this part. British Land is a
FTSE 100 company with significant assets valued at over £14
billion; is that right?
(Mr Penfold) It is.
916. And your land holding includes some four
million square feet of office floor space in the Broadgate complex
at Liverpool Street station in the City of London?
(Mr Penfold) It does. I should probably add
that there is a fair bit of retail—a health club and an
ice rink, which is fairly well known—and that four million
square feet comprises just over 20% of the company's overall assets.
917. Those are not your only land holdings in
the City of London and in particular around Liverpool Street station.
Can we go to A14 and exhibit 1 please? What does that show us?
(Mr Penfold) This shows us the company's land
ownership interests in this part of the City. There are one or
two other rather smaller interests further to the west which are
also in the City of London. We have marked the standing assets,
if you like, the existing buildings, in blue, which has come out
as purple on the screen. We have two sites under construction
at the moment, one at 201 Bishopsgate, which is in the top right
hand corner of the ownership interests, and we have marked that
in yellow and it has come out as orange on the screen, and the
other one is at 51 Lime Street, which is another yellow/orange
site shown on the screen. The second one, 51 Lime Street, is being
built for an insurance company, Willis, and 201 Bishopsgate and
Broadgate Tower, which are the two buildings you can see, are
being built speculatively and we do not have a pre-let at this
point. The construction has only just commenced. As I say, that
is a further 1.23 million square feet of property in the City
of London. Those are the blue sites; they are not part of Broadgate,
and those two sites under construction that I have referred to
amount to something like 1.9 million square feet, mainly offices
but again a fair bit of retail at ground floor level. We also
have planning consent for the erection of a tower building at
122 Leadenhall Street, and that is just at 11 o'clock from the
Lime Street building that I have described.
918. Turning to Crossrail, are British Land
supporters of the Crossrail project?
(Mr Penfold) Very much. We have significant
ownership interests which will benefit from the line. We have
a strong commitment to London, particularly the City of London,
so beyond the specific ownership interests. Obviously, we wish
to see London, and particularly the City, and indeed Canary Wharf
where we also have ownership interests, prosper, and believe that
Crossrail will make a significant contribution to London's economic
growth.
919. Now the scope of your evidence. I am not
going to ask you to repeat things later but can you set out, so
that the Committee understand how your evidence fits in with the
evidence of others who give evidence on behalf of British Land,
what you are aiming to cover?
(Mr Penfold) I am trying to explain the extent
to which my company, British Land, understands and relies on policies
set out by national government, the Mayor of London, the City
Corporation, in their planning policy and other documents in reaching
decisions regarding investment, in this case in the City of London,
and other parts of London are affected in a similar way. Inevitably,
those policies affect our ability to gain planning consent for
the developments we wish to undertake but also tell us a lot more
about what else is planned for the area and particularly the transport
infrastructure that is planned in the coming years. I am going
particularly to focus on policies which identify the City of London
and the fringe areas surrounding it as locations for major intensive
office development in support of the financial and business services
cluster and London's role as a world city, and policies supporting
that on the upgrading of public transport. I will explain British
Land's concerns regarding the proposed Liverpool Street Crossrail
station, much of which you have heard already, and I will reiterate
that without duplicating too much. They focus on the impact on
an already congested station, the opportunity to provide an appropriate,
well designed station at Liverpool Street for Crossrail and the
important relationship between new public transport infrastructure
and the City of London's role as a world class financial centre.
I will finally consider the potential impact of the proposed design
that stands at the moment on existing and potential major tenants'
perceptions of the area around Liverpool Street as a competitive
location in which to operate.
24 Committee Ref: A12, Capacity of Liverpool Street
Station. Back
25
Committee Ref: A13, Report of the City Planning Officer: Planning
and Transportation Committee-26 July 2005. Back
26
Committee Ref: A14, Capacity of Liverpool Street Station. Back
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