Examination of Witnesses (Questions 3420
- 3439)
3420. In respect of this Bill, have you been
involved in the meetings inter-borough and with Crossrail?
(Mr King) Yes, I have. I have been involved
in virtually all the meetings between the Promoter and the City
Council and representing the City Council on the planning forum
established by the Secretary of State under the Chairmanship of
Chris Waite, and also on the Heritage and Design sub-group, which
covers planning and conservation matters, and Westminster has
become the host and chair of the authority of the inter-borough
group, which is a group of principally London boroughs but it
does include some of the outlying districts as well, who get together
before the planning forum to discuss and agree how best our combined
interests can be represented in the promotion of this Bill.
3421. What is the basis of the City Council's
in principle support for the Bill?
(Mr King) The City Council is always aware
that it holds the role of having to balance conflicting demands
and pressures at the heart of the world city. We have a residential
population of a quarter of a million, a working population of
a million. If you take those two alongside the figure that we
have somewhere in the order of 26 million visitors per annum to
the City, that gives you a world-class economy, and it is affecting
250,000 people who live here and those others who work and visit.
There, therefore, needs to be a balance drawn on a variety of
occasions throughout the year both in policy and operational matters
as to how you come down and allocate scarce resources between
those competing groups. They are all vying for the same piece
of turf, frankly, and not all interests are co-terminus, there
are tensions in opposition to each other. However, given that
the economy of Westminster is, for example, twice that of the
City of London there is no denying the economic power, vitality,
character and function that both brings people here and is required
to bring people here to produce the high percentage that currently
contributes to the GDP. That needs to be done in the context of
the historical environment and therefore it is a balance. If you
take those matters into consideration it has always seemed to
the City Council wrong to stop with the railway speculators in
the 19th Century as to where they put their terminuses and with
the rather inelegant connections provided by private tube entrepreneurs
at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th Century to connect
these things together. Crossrail is a way of overcoming those
issues and, therefore, promotes a role for central London that
directly affects the adjacent regions, eastern England, the South
East in particular, by overcoming the bottlenecks that occur at
main termini interchanges.
3422. Let us flesh that out, can we, with just
a few statistics as to the special and unique character of Westminster.
I believe it has got a large number of Royal Parks, or a large
area of Royal Parks, including Buckingham Palace and the Palace
of Westminster. So that is a good start. Go to more detail or
the more subtle elements.
(Mr King) I think, on the more subtle elements,
many of which are touched on by this Bill, in terms of its ambition,
its construction and when the railway it seeks to build is operational
needs to be borne in mind. For all the economic vitality, two
kilometres of Oxford Street, Europe's largest shopping street,
is perhaps one example. We have two-and-a-half times the number
of listed buildings Bath has got; we have 11,000—76% of
the City is a conservation area. What those two figures alone
mean is that all that activity takes place within the historic
environment that has been recognised as some of the first conservation
areas ever designated in the country, and we were second to Stamford
on 1968 in designating one. The fact of that environment is one
of the reasons—a significant reason—26 million people
come here and a large part of the million workforce work here—you
included, I have to say. You are not only conservation area listed
buildings but a World Heritage Site, and all the issues that concern
this building are writ in concentration along the Crossrail route
and, frankly, buildings of a similar grade to this one of almost
the same significance, but also the West End conservation areas
which do factor in the West End, and we will concentrate on that
in a moment. It is worth bearing in mind that this is further
emphasised by the fact that Paddington is a Grade I listed railway
station and, quite possibly, one of the three most important railway
stations in the world. Crossrail seeks to dig up the road alongside
it as a means to connect it. The people that will be using Crossrail
will be acting as people who come to visit 38 theatres, 60 cinemas
and, currently, 17 casinos—and we expect that to grow. I
think we have a third of the national number of casinos in Westminster
at the moment. We have 130 embassies. We have in Westminster 40%
of all the Greater London's hotels. So the fact that Crossrail
goes to Heathrow and the West End, and with 60% of people coming
to Heathrow Express wanting to be in the West End, for a whole
variety of business and commercial reasons means, it is essential
for us that the project does what it now says on the safeguarded
routes and delivers that in a way which produces the benefits
of being able to access the West End, from the rest of the world,
in fact, via Heathrow, without giving rise to the impacts which
are unacceptable either at street level or in existing buildings.
There is then the concern with all this development activity.
It is worth bearing in mind that we are dealing with 10,000 planning
applications a year. That is the same as the whole of the City
of Birmingham, which has a population of 2.5 million, but we have
to manage all of this development activity along with managing
Crossrail. So some of our more detailed, and sometimes called
generic concerns, reflect the probability that although Crossrail
may, as it has been for some time, be one of the larger projects
on their books, it may be the biggest project being built when
it gets under way, but it would certainly not be alone. The public,
residents and the business community have every reason to expect
that it behaves itself in a way which is commensurate with the
powers and pressures which all those other people have.
3423. Going on from there, did you hear me introduce
the Westminster position on generic issues? Did I get that right?
(Mr King) Yes, you did.
3424. I think next what we will do is notionally
go to the Hon members' walk yesterday. If we take up the bundle
of exhibits, let us do what the Committee did yesterday. What
I would like you to do is begin perhaps at the Tottenham Court
Road sheet, which is headed "Crossrail Transport's Links:
Bond Street to Tottenham Court Road", and it is up on the
screen, thank you.[1]
Just take us through, Mr King, and tell the Committee what the
headline points are that have either been addressed or are in
the process of being addressed, and what the issues are?
(Mr King) In broad terms what
this shows is the existing underground spaghetti which Crossrail
will cut through. It shows in orange the existing tube lines.
These are the corridors of the tube lines and they are numbered
one to six on the far side, as to which line they are. They are,
reading from Tottenham Court Road end, running east to west, on
the Central line down Oxford Street, the Northern line, north
along Tottenham Court Road, and we are then into the Piccadilly
and Bakerloo lines, running through Piccadilly Circus and the
Jubilee line running through Bond Street. You will see also shown,
because I think it has been mentioned and it is an existing railway,
to the north of Oxford Street the underground post office robot
railway, which is now currently defunct and awaiting a new use.
You will see also to the south of Oxford Street in blue the safeguarding
route with the hatched areas affecting the surface interest of
the current scheme. You will also see in dark red where the stations
are. I think this is important to bear in mind, because one of
the things that Crossrail is most welcomed by, in terms of the
City of Westminster's interest, is the relief this will give to
the existing unacceptable levels of overcrowding on the existing
tube network. So, for example, the fact that at Tottenham Court
Road we have a scheme which addresses the very long-standing measures
which came from safety measure considerations back in 1989/1990,
which have been approved previously by this House but not implemented,
is very welcome news, but it does bring with it the possibility
that, in fact, at Tottenham Court Road some works will start this
autumn but would not be completed with over-site development for
a further 10 to 12 years potentially from today. That is a long
time to consider the impact on the critical gateway to the West
End. It may be the border between Westminster and Camden but I
have to tell you that in practical terms as well as, frankly,
in terms of how local authorities get on, Westminster and Camden
are absolutely at one on this issue; that border is something
which exists for our administrative convenience. It is not something
which characterises the West End as some kind of Berlin Wall.
We expect to see benefits and the issues be dealt with across
that boundary and, indeed, they are. So the more recent moves
by the Promoter, either under the guise of their involvement through
TfL/London Underground works or directly, reassess the public
role concerns, which the Committee saw yesterday, which will transform—the
removal of the fountain in front of Centre Point which is in Camden—will
totally alter the arrangement of footways which are, at the moment,
in Westminster. The fact that there will be a hole in the ground
for three years plus a temporary diversion of Charing Cross Road
may sort out some of the issues, although the details are still
to be proven on that matter, but how the pedestrian movement happens
at this important north/south junction between major shopping
streets—
3425. Work is on-going on refining that with
the Promoters. Am I right?
(Mr King) Work is on-going. It will be necessary
for that work to develop very quickly if we are to present the
public later this year, as I understand it, notwithstanding the
progress of this Bill, with London Underground's attempts to bring
forward the utilities works to start this autumn. You will see
these are very live, complex matters and the agencies involved
are trying to pull together the most effective response that is
possible.
3426. Shall we go west to Hanover Square?
(Mr King) The big issue with Hanover Square
we have today is that in an ideal world one might think it would
be appropriate to connect Crossrail, with all its regional transportation
benefits, to Oxford Circus. We have always accepted the Promoter's
(indeed, one should say, various promoters of Crossrail) assurances
over time that it is simply too difficult to do. There are too
many people at Oxford Circus, there is too much underground kit,
formed by the late bringing together of two separate underground
railways. No one built Oxford Circus, the Bakerloo line built
their bit and the Central line built their bit, and since the
1920s London Underground may have tried to make a sensible co-ordinated
job out of it. It is now extremely busy, both at footway level,
where we are in separate discussions with Transport for London
and others as to what should happen with Oxford Street, and, also,
at underground level. So we accept Hanover Square. Without regaling
the history to this Committee of why we have ended up where we
have ended up, probably in planning terms it is the second-best
option, but the most practical first option is no longer open
to the Promoter to follow. It was but—
3427. That was to take the Gardens themselves?
(Mr King) No. Sorry. The very best idea would
have been to take the building on Regent Street but the Crown
Estate were not interested in changing their plans. As they are
a developer who is unable to take the risk to make this available,
that would have been our best case that was outlined sometime
back. We resisted the Promoter's first intention, that you have
just mentioned, which was to take Hanover Square Gardens because
we felt it entirely iniquitous for this part of Mayfair conservation
area to lose an integral part of the very early planning and development
of Mayfair, which was the first part of the 18th Century, which
forms a set piece with St George's Hanover Square, which is further
down St George Street, and, also, would lose a major public amenity
which is very well-used by people who visit and work in the West
End for a considerable period of time, and then replace it with
a railway station entrance. The City Council preferred, from day
one, the loss of two very unprepossessing 1960s buildings which
were built before the area was made a conservation area. Otherwise
we would not have lost the rather more interesting buildings that
had been there.
3428. Were they pointed out in the inspection
yesterday?
(Mr King) Yes.
3429. So the Committee knows exactly where they
are.
(Mr King) It was exactly where the coach stopped
yesterday. Therefore, we are in favour of the Hanover Square location
that has now been chosen. Our continued discussions with the Promoter,
which appear to have been resolved by very recent correspondence—I
think last week—now seems to preclude, other than in an
emergency, any use of the gardens themselves. The problem with
the use of the gardens is not only the loss and impact of trees,
and loss of green space, but there would obviously be, if part
of the gardens went, activity there which would have a knock-on
effect on the use in the remaining part of the garden. So we hope
that issue is now resolved between us and we look forward to the
fine details of the undertakings over that matter.
3430. As we are going through, the other plans
show the land-uses, the conservation areas and listed buildings,
residential density, office uses and tourism uses, to give a sense
of what is on the ground, so to speak. Also, embassies in Westminster.[2]
The last document is Paddington, which we will come to. Let us
stay for a moment, please, with Hanover Square. Tell the Committee,
would you, what the issue is that we lay before the Committee
today?
(Mr King) The narrow issue, which
you have referred to in the past in your presentation, is the
matter of car parking. Hanover Square, because it has virtually
no—we think only one—residential occupier on it (which
is fairly unusual) and because of the range of uses in and around
the Square, is an area where the City Council can make provision
on street for the parking of coaches, particularly on the east
side (this is to serve the tourist trade of Japanese airlines
and Korean airlines who operate a remarkable arrangement of facilities
for their national shoppers in this country in their premises
there) and for motor-bikes, for which there is a growing demand
in the City—a figure of 80 was put before you earlier. If
we doubled that number here they would be taken. That has been
one of the major growth areas for sometime, particularly however
since congestion charge introduction in 2003. That would appear—
3431. Just in passing, the reference document
for this is 5.39 of volume 8B.
(Mr King) Then there is the issue of car parking
spaces, 33 of which are shared use. This is for commercial users,
people who just turn up but it is also available for residents.
That is because we have an increasing number of residents in this
area and, in fact, quite a large number in the streets behind,
not all of which can accommodate their own residential needs.
So it does act as a major resource for various uses as well as
being a bus route. It also has a taxi cab shelter and a taxi rank.
So it is, despite—indeed because of—its Georgian layout,
a major road transport resource for the area. If you bear in mind
the ground floor use diagram, diagram 2, or conservation and listed
buildings diagram 3 in the bundle put before you, you will see
a huge intensity around Hanover Square of the range of uses which
characterise the West End. To this I should point out that the
West End, unlike the City of London, is not characterised by large
floor-base, single-occupied uses. According to the VAT register
there are 47,000 VAT-registered businesses in Westminster, the
majority of them in the West End. The nature of the buildings—many
of them listed and many more are conservation areas—are
small and traditional and meet exactly that need. You will also
appreciate that in relatively few of these buildings, the area
has suffered little bomb damage for a variety of reasons—therefore
land holdings are relatively unaltered in the last 50 years—and
has not experienced large-scale redevelopment which you will see,
for example, in the City of London. So you actually have the Georgian
city with a surprising number of Georgian buildings left. What
that does mean is that those buildings have virtually no on-site
provision for deliveries, servicing or for parking. That takes
place on the street. For that matter, where we have car parking
on the street it is a matter where we try to keep it and make
it as disposable as possible to the widest range of people who
have a reason to be there. That constitutes the policy reason
for our case. The second reason for our case is this: if a developer
comes forward, as they do every week, one of the 10,000 a year,
quite often they will only be able to build their development
by using our highway. They will not have enough room, particularly
if it is a refurbishment, to have all their facilities exactly
where they are needed. We ask them to, we urge them to but we
will at times have to allow the suspension and removal of parking
meters for development to take place, and you will see the yellow
hoods put over the parking meters and those have been suspended
for that reason, I am sure. It is normal practice for us to charge
that developer for that period of suspension. The calculation
that was read to you earlier is no more than that. It is obviously
capable of negotiation, re-calculation, further revision, further
refinement, I am sure, but in order to give a magnitude to this
Committee, it is, we feel, not a misleading figure to put before
you. The £1.7 million, or whatever it turns out to be, is
not generally income to the City Council, it is income to the
Parking Place Reserve Account for which we are separately responsible
to reporting to the Secretary of State for Transport under road
traffic regulations, and can only use that money for a prescribed
list of purposes. They relate to public transport, road safety;
they relate to the costs incurred in providing those services.
They relate to, for example, the cost of us providing our proportion
of the taxi-card subsidy, which enables disabled and elderly people
to have more mobility in the City at a cheaper rate than would
otherwise be the case. It is also spent on very major infrastructure
projects which the City Council have been responsible for, and
is therefore part of making the City continue to work on a daily
basis. It does not offset other expenditure from other—
3432. So you have laid before the Committee
the issues. The remedy now. What is it that Westminster seek in
due course?
(Mr King) The remedy comes in a combination
of three factors, I would suggest. One is further discussion as
to exactly what this impact will be and for how long. Bear in
mind that over-site development requires—it could be the
ironic position where if over-site development follows the normal
rules, as is now being suggested, that the over-site developer
will pay for the suspension of the bays for the period he needs
the suspension while he builds his building, whereas Crossrail
will have had the same space, effectively, at our expense for
two-and-a-half times as long while they built the railway.
3433. So, there is further discussion as to
exactly how many bays have to be lost. Arising from that, where
within the general area, and it is a fairly small area of a couple
of hundred metres around the Square, you could relocate some of
the space, and if you do what is the knock-on effect on those
areas. That is something we would expect the Promoter to bear
the cost of working through.
3434. There is then the issue, obviously, of
straightforwardly making financial settlement with the City Council
along the lines that any other developer would, at the appropriate
time. We are not looking for the money upfront: we are looking
for when the loss of parking occurs for that to be, first of all,
reduced to the absolute minimum, mitigated by if not on-site adjacent
reprovision, and if all else fails a financial settlement to be
settled at the end of the occupation of the space which, as I
say, is then in most cases likely to be reoccupied by the over-site
developer who actually will pay under the rules.
3435. So we regard ourselves in treating the
Promoter in this case as no different from any other form of developer
who requires the suspension of parking bays in an area where there
is known and, for all we can see, continuing demand for on-site
parking for pay and display, residents and bikes.
3436. So anything else on Hanover Square? Do
we keep going west?
(Mr King) We keep going west. In terms of going
west we turn then to Davies Street, right at the edge of the plan,
and in Davies Street, as I think the Committee saw yesterday,
we have another example of a location which is incredibly important.
The deep red area at the junction of Oxford Street and Davies
Street is the existing station that serves the Central Line and
now the Jubilee. These stations have become much busier, and certainly
the Jubilee extensions. This is a much busier interface. However,
that interaction takes place within a building known as the West
One Shopping Centre, designed in the early 1970s to accommodate
the initial Jubilee scheme, not the extension scheme. It is a
shopping centre with offices over; its owner has petitioned this
Committee on its concerns, Westminster's case is similar in many
respect to the Grosvenor's case, and we therefore will be continuing
discussions with the Promoter and Grosvenor and London Underground
and will come back to you on Grosvenor's slot, and appeal to you,
Chairman, if we have not been able to resolve matters.
3437. The matters we seek to resolve are simply
these. It is clear from the above ground buildings and the London
Underground station that those facilities are wearing out more
quickly than the devisers of that scheme 25-30 years ago would
have thought, and it is likely within the life of the Bill you
are considering as a railway under construction, that someone
will have to step in there and do something.
3438. We would therefore like to see the best
of all possible worlds come from that necessity, as well as the
necessity of taking out the rather unpleasantly large neo Georgian
building in the 1950s and replacing it with a new station with
a new over-site development we can control under today's hopefully
more enlightened planning policies than those that are the same
age as I am.
3439. One of the issues that ties these together
is in the management of the public realm. Given how busy Oxford
Street is as a pedestrian route, and I do not have to go into
any detail of that I do not think, the influenced of how this
affects Davies Street, how people flow to and from it, how this
adds to the character and vitality of Oxford Street and brings
more improvement both to the transport user and also for the person
that is simply visiting it to shop is something we think the scheme
is capable of doing, without moving outside the scope of building
the railway. This is not building a railway across green fields:
this is not building a railway through a brownfield area of regeneration:
this is building a railway through the heart of the West End with
one of the most valuable and dynamic property investment portfolios
in the world. That is not a boast: that happens to be the case.
The Promoter has to accept that reality in the same way we have
to accept that reality. It should not be assumed Westminster likes
that position: it causes us untold grief on regular occasions
at planning committee every week, and we do have planning committee
every week, but it is a balance that has to be struck and the
Promoter simply relying on the fact that all we are doing is building
a railway is frankly a weak response to the issue that we are
facing.
1 Committee Ref: A41, Crossrail: Transport Links-Bond
Street to Tottenham Court Road (SCN-20060215¸001). Back
2
Committee Ref: A41, Crossrail: Ground Floor Land Uses-Bond Street
to Tottenham Court Road (SCN-20060215-012). Back
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