Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1900
- 1919)
1900. The other matters of continuing concern
we have reason to hope will be resolved—most of them—in
the course of the discussions which have been going on and will
go on in the months ahead. Those discussions of course are without
prejudice to the Corporation having the right to petition in the
other House, if by that time matters have not been brought to
a satisfactory conclusion. So when Mr Smith, who is going to be
in the event the second of my witnesses, comes before you to give
his evidence I hope, with your leave, sir, you will permit him
just to indicate briefly what these other concerns are that the
Committee are not now going to be troubled with, for the record,
as it were, and, having done that, what we will do is to proceed
to the matters that we really want you to hear about today. I
will now come to the three matters that I mentioned, subject to
any direction from your clerk.
1901. Chairman: I am afraid it would
not proper. We can only deal with the matters that are before
us for the Petition. If there are other matters which are for
other Petitions in other places they should be dealt with by that
route.
1902. Mr Laurence: I quite understand,
sir, but I did not make myself clear. All of these matters are
petitioning matters, so all matters on which we have petitioned.
It is just that we are not going to be troubling you with the
vast majority of them.
1903. Chairman: In those circumstances
that is okay.
1904. Mr Laurence: What I was asking
for was a little indulgence to allow Mr Smith, when he comes on
to give evidence, to mention briefly what those other concerns
are without then going on to invite the Committee to take any
action in relation to those matters on this occasion.
1905. Chairman: It does seem strange
that we are going to have evidence put before us which we do not
seem to have to think about because it will be sorted out at some
later stage, but if you wish to do that presentation, albeit briefly,
then so be it.
1906. Mr Laurence: Sir, I am very grateful.
I will use my discretion and err on the side of keeping things
very short wherever possible.
1907. I have said there were three matters and
there are three witnesses who I am intending to call to deal with
the three matters. One will involve Mr Joe Weiss, from whom you
have heard before, telling you about a subject very close to his
heart, which is that in the Corporation of London you do not need
to have special places set aside for lorry holding: issue one.
1908. Mr Smith—the same Mr Smith I mentioned
a moment ago—when he has finished telling you about the
general matters, very briefly, with which you are not going to
be concerned, does want to mention to you a concern on behalf
of the Billingsgate traders about the parking situation at Billingsgate
once the Promoter has taken, as a work site, the area of land
that is contemplated being taken under the Bill. It is going to
reduce the amount of parking to an extent that it will threaten
the retail market on a Saturday, we say, and you need to hear
about that. I should say that last minute attempts are still being
made to narrow the differences on that issue, but we have taken
the view that we need to trouble you about it, if you do not mind,
sir, and hopefully it can be done in a relatively short compass.
1909. Sir, the third witness is Mr Terry Pearman,
who is a structural or civil engineer—I forget which. The
concern there is the very delicate arrangements that are going
to have to be made in order to carry out the construction that
CLRL have in mind under the eastern end of the Smithfield market.
It is a listed building, the construction process is exceedingly
delicate and it has been the subject, up to now, of continuing
discussions on what is called the Heritage Deed. Putting the matter
I hope simply but still reasonably accurately, what the Heritage
Deed is designed to do is to give the Corporation of London a
qualified right of veto over the method adopted by the Promoter
to carry out its work in relation to the listed building. By "qualified
right of veto" what I mean is this: that the Corporation
can only object to a proposed method for doing the work if it
acts reasonably, and the draft Heritage Deed, which has been under
discussion for many months now, and is still under discussion,
is proposed to give to the Promoter that form of protection, along
with others I think who have listed buildings within their ownership.
1910. The importance of mentioning the Heritage
Deed in that context is by way of introduction to what the third
matter is about with which we are concerned. We are not going
to be asking this Committee to intervene in relation to the provisions
of the Heritage Deed because that is one of the issues which we
hope over the coming weeks and months will result in an agreement
as to the terms of that Deed with which we can be satisfied. But
the Heritage Deed is a good document to have as an example of
the kind of thing we want in order to address our third concern.
Our third concern is: what if the proposed method of work is one
to which the Corporation does not feel able to object, acting
reasonably, under the Heritage Deed, because it is satisfied that
the proposed method of work will leave the structure intact, but
the proposed method involves the building having to be vacated
and perhaps the services that enable the building to operate at
the moment as a meat market to be suspended over what may run
into numbers of weeks? In that case there is not the same qualified
right of veto built into any document and no suggestion from the
Promoter yet that he would regard it as appropriate that we should
have the same right of veto in relation to what I might describe
as a listed market trader, as we have in relation to the listed
building. Our concern, on behalf of the Smithfield traders, is
to make sure that their occupancy of the building remains uninterrupted
throughout the whole process and what we seek, if the Committee
is willing to direct the Promoter to provide it to us, is an undertaking
that the Promoter will procure the nominated undertaker in due
course, and not to carry out the work which involves the listed
building without giving to the Corporation the opportunity, acting
reasonably, to veto that proposed method of work should it affect
the continued occupancy of the building or should it threaten
to affect the continued availability of the services. The argument,
sir, is simply this: that the traders cannot realistically bring
claims of damages if they are out of occupation for a week or
two, or three or four weeks; the loss they will inevitably suffer,
even if it does not drive them to having to give up business altogether,
is a loss that they simply cannot afford and cannot realistically
make claims to be compensated for. So what we want this Committee
to do, if it is prepared to do it, is to extract from the Promoter
an undertaking which will give the maximum possible reasonable
protection to those traders and of course to its landlord, the
Corporation too in that respect, as can be done consistently with
good and safe working practices.
1911. I should stress that if acting reasonably
the Corporation was not able to veto a proposed method of doing
the work, e.g. because it was going to cost another £10m
in order to enable people to carry on working while the work was
being done, then the qualified veto we seek would not kick in
and so this Committee may, we hope, take the view that it is not
an unreasonable thing we are asking for given that this Committee
may be of the view, as we are, that the livelihood and protection
of the market traders at Smithfield is in its way just as important
as the integrity of a listed building in respect of which the
Promoter is willing to give us that kind of protection.
1912. That is the background, sir, so may I
begin with Mr Weiss, please?
1913. Chairman: Yes.
Mr Joe Weiss, recalled
Examined by Mr Laurence
1914. Mr Laurence: Mr Weiss, it is not
necessary to reintroduce you to the Committee. Just for the record,
you are Joe Weiss and the Transportation and Projects Director
for the City of London Corporation, are you not?
(Mr Weiss) That is correct.
1915. I think first time round, as it were,
you gave the Committee the benefit of knowing what your relevant
qualifications are. You must have left out some of the many so
is there anything that they have not previously heard which is
relevant to what you are about to say today?
(Mr Weiss) There is. My previous
job in the Corporation was the Highways and Transportation Director
and under that role I was responsible for managing what we considered
in the Corporation to be our Considerate Contractor Scheme, which
is very relevant to lorry holding.
1916. What are you here to do today, Mr Weiss?
(Mr Weiss) Essentially I would like to explain
that in 1987—it is going back a long time ago—we decided
that the best way to get on with heavy construction in the City
is not to have—which is very commonplace in industry—an
adversarial approach, but to try and gain a cooperative arrangement
between those who have to get dirty, mucky jobs done in the environment
and one with the high quality environment that we have in the
City so that both sides can sit alongside each other. Therefore
we launched the scheme, which was the first scheme in the country,
and I think there is an exhibit.
1917. It is exhibit 17, the Considerate Contractor
Scheme of the Corporation of London.
(Mr Weiss) This is basically a scheme free
of charge to the major contractors that work in the City, explaining
how we would like them to carry out their business within the
square mile. But, most importantly, whilst the vast majority sign
up and are part of it—and there are some pictures inside
of a typically large construction—most importantly it engenders
a spirit of pride. We have gone away from an adversarial approach
to contractors actually and positively competing against each
other to do their best, so much so that every year we have a competition
where they all line up—and I do not want to go into too
much detail, but some of these labourers, construction people—we
are not talking about management, we are talking about the ones
who create the mess and the damage—roll up to a ceremony
probably in a suit that they last wore at their weddings, to feel
really proud that they have done a good job, they have done better
than a rival performer, and perhaps have the Lord Mayor shake
their hand and have a photograph, and it means that the standards
are willingly brought up to a high level.
1918. I want you to go into the detail of that
in due course, but so that the Committee can have a feel for the
outline of what your evidence is going to be, if you have your
proof to hand at paragraph 2.3, where does the Crossrail CLRL
proposal come into what you have just been saying about the Considerate
Contractor scheme?
(Mr Weiss) Crossrail is proposing that there
are dedicated lorry holding areas taken out of the public ground
on the highway, specifically for the Crossrail construction sites.
I am contending that these are unnecessary, that the scale of
the operation of the Crossrail works are no larger than those
we are actually seeing at the moment where present developers,
albeit of building an underground railway, are actually creating
more lorries than Crossrail predict themselves and are still found
to be unnecessary.
1919. I interrupted you somewhat rudely while
you were expanding on the scheme. Is there anything more in section
3 of your evidence that you would like to say about that?
(Mr Weiss) Yes. As part of the enjoyment of
engendering friendly competition to do better we have guidance
notes.
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