Examination of Witnesses (Questions 8440
- 8459)
8440. Mr Cameron: Mr Donovan, can you
introduce yourself to the Committee and tell them who you are
and what your job is?
(Mr Donovan) Thank you. Good morning everybody,
I hope I can live up to that! My name is Christopher Donovan;
I am a local government officer of over 30 years standing and
20 years or so at a senior level. My current job as Assistant
Director at Bexley covers, as well as Head of the Planning Service,
the Lead Officer for Regeneration Traffic and Transport and, amongst
other things, Economic Development Skills and Training.
8441. The purpose of your evidence today is
to present a regeneration case for the extension to Ebbsfleet.
(Mr Donovan) That is correct.
8442. Sir Peter Soulsby: And the papers
that we have in front of us are A90.[49]
8443. Mr Cameron: Mr Donovan, can we
turn up your exhibits and the aim of your evidence is set out
at exhibit 2, and if you would like to read that out?[50]
(Mr Donovan) To consider whether
there are any adverse impacts on regeneration initiatives or a
loss of regeneration opportunities as a result of the government's
recent decision to terminate Crossrail at Abbey Wood.
8444. If we turn to page 3, where I think you
show the original route running from Abbey Wood to Ebbsfleet.[51]
(Mr Donovan) That is correct.
8445. The orange part of the slides shows what?
(Mr Donovan) The orange part is the focus,
if you like, of the areas of deprivation in this part of northwest
Kent, Dartford, and into this part of southeast London; all of
this is a sub-set of the Thames Gateway area as a whole, and in
broad terms the regeneration priority areas are to the north of
the boroughs along the south side of the river, so they tend to
be sitting along the river.
8446. Number 7, the Bexley wards you identified
and then a number of wards in Dartford.
(Mr Donovan) That is correct.
8447. If we turn over to page 4, what does that
show us?[52]
(Mr Donovan) What we have tried
to do here on the next two or three slides is to show, using super
output areas, which are basically just to try and drill down a
little below ward areas, the areas where deprivation is at its
most concentrated—and this is of an England-based comparison—so
that the deeper the purple the more concentrated the wards, and
as you can see from slide 4 that is an overall index and that
is picking up the fact that in Bexley we are talking almost exclusively
along wards along the river, apart from one or two right in the
south, and in Dartford some of the main wards are also in the
north of Dartford along the original Ebbsfleet route.
8448. Slide 5 is income ranking in England.[53]
(Mr Donovan) These are showing
effectively a similar kind of pattern on income relating and that
is again the very dark green of the most deprived wards in England,
and picking those up the pattern tends to be similar in reinforcing
what was shown on the first slide.
8449. You say the most deprived, and if we look
at the key we can see that it is in 25 per cent bands and the
darkest falls within the category of 25 per cent of the most deprived
in England.
(Mr Donovan) That is correct.
8450. Then slide 6, crime ranking in England.[54]
(Mr Donovan) Not directly relating
to regeneration in a sense, but another similar indicator showing
again that similar pattern that where you are looking at the incidence
of the 25 per cent incidence of crime in this area, and again
you can see a pattern particularly on that one in the London end
of it through Bexley and very much associated with that northern
part and also into the northwest part of Dartford.
8451. Slide 7, ward level census data.[55]
What does this show?
(Mr Donovan) It would be perfectly
feasible to put absolutely acres of information in here so what
all this is really doing is just selecting a few of the kind of
indicators we look at and showing in the top half of the slide
the comparisons between London and Bexley and the northern part
of Bexley and in the lower part of the slide the same comparisons
for Dartford in relation to its northern wards and Kent. I suppose
if I were just picking out one to show you, if you look at the
percentage of the working population qualified below NVQ2, which
is effectively an indication of relatively low skills, then despite
what you may think about Bexley as perceived to be a relatively
prosperous out of London suburb, if you compare the London average
of 38 per cent Bexley's overall average is only 53 and North Bexley
wards are at 56. What that is showing is that 56 per cent of the
population of North Bexley are only qualified to a level below
NVQ2, compared to an overall London figure of 38 per cent. And
the other indicators there show similar kinds of patterns. So
we are dealing here with an area that is actually genuinely deprived.
8452. Turning from indicators of deprivation
to your next slide, which is number 8, that is headed "Accessibility
Index", and how does Bexley rate on this index for accessibility
compared to other London boroughs?[56]
(Mr Donovan) Not very well. In
a sense this is the heart of the matter in many ways, that the
lighter the area of the map the worse the accessibility index
is and the plan clearly makes the point that coming down into
Bexley accessibility is relatively low in comparison to other
parts of Thames Gateway such as Barking and Dagenham, and even
neighbouring Greenwich is better partly because of things like
the DLR at Greenwich. Then if you come down below that to other
parts of London it is showing overall that this part of southeast
London is actually in accessibility terms, by London standards,
quite poor.
8453. So Bexley rates on the accessibility index
with a score of 55 compared to the East London average of 83 and
the West London average of 96.
(Mr Donovan) That is correct.
8454. Is there any other borough that you have
identified there with a lower accessibility index score?
(Mr Donovan) No, none there, and I am relatively
sure that there are not many in London; Bexley is almost now the
only borough left in London which does not have either a transit
system or an underground station somewhere within its boundaries.
So we are talking here about relatively very low accessibility.
8455. Turning to slide 9, the consequences for
car use. What does slide 9 show?[57]
(Mr Donovan) Exactly that point,
that because of the relatively low accessibility of public transport
then Bexley is forced into a position where the car has a very
significant use. Even in, interestingly, the more deprived parts
of Bexley you will see that actually the percentage of the working
population travelling by car to work is actually higher than the
average for Bexley as a whole. The reason for that is because
Bexley as a whole will also include a lot of commuters into London
who will actually be able to access the main rail network into
it. But overall you will see there that the average for Outer
London is 28.9 and Bexley is getting on for twice that. In Dartford,
interestingly, the pattern there is that the North Dartford wards
are actually very much the same as Kent as a whole, which would
be quite surprising given that Dartford is a reasonably urban
part of Kent and much of Kent is still rural, although people
in Kent might say semi-rural, but basically there is a pattern
there.
8456. What does slide 10 show?[58]
(Mr Donovan) Ten drills down in
a little bit more detail in the sense that here we are just talking
about from a survey done in the Belvedere area that the Erith
and Belvedere employment area is at the heart of that North Bexley
area that I was showing you, and that is one of the largest employment
concentrations in the whole of Thames Gateway, and there you will
see that even now 70 per cent of the people employed there are
having to use a car.
8457. If we then turn from accessibility and
mode of transport used in planning and regeneration policy framework,
I do not anticipate there is going to be a great deal of dispute
about this so we can take this relatively quickly. Can you take
us through the exhibits on regeneration policy framework?
(Mr Donovan) The first one, number 11, is really
showing the whole of the Thames Gateway right up from Tower Hamlets
in number 1, right the way through on the north and south side
of the river, rather conveniently putting Bexley in outline to
show that we are, as we kind of describe ourselves, at the heart
of Thames Gateway.[59]
It is showing where the priority areas are and it is indicating
that a lot of them are along the river and that that is where
the main focus for regeneration is likely to be in London and
the southeast over the next 20 years or so. As a result of that
in number 12 you can see that there are some quite large figures
being suggested through the government's own analysis of how we
will actually achieve up to 300,000 new jobs, mainly developing
through brownfield land, because in a lot of the previous slides
I have shown you a lot of that land is actually brownfield.[60]
As it also says there in that extract, it is a strategic location
but it will be very much tied in to major transport links as well.
8458. Page 13, we turn from jobs to homes.[61]
(Mr Donovan) Again the picture
is extremely large and talking there of at least 120,000 homes.
Could I make one extra point there? The key to that is the homes
and employment together. If Thames Gateway is going to be sustainable
it is actually being able to put those two things together, and
we all know that if you have big homes and jobs the critical thing
is the journey to work and the critical thing to that is the transport
accessibility, and the slides that we have shown up to now in
a sense make the point that the more public transport we can get
into that Thames Corridor the more important it is, otherwise
what will happen is that the jobs will still be there, the homes
will still be there and we will be thrown back on the car again.
I am sorry, that was a bit elaborate, but I think that point is
fundamental.
8459. You have highlighted that the government
recognises that transport links are critical to the development
of the Gateway.
(Mr Donovan) Absolutely fundamental, and I
think critical within that it is slightly implied that it has
always been public transport links because that is the critical
part of shifting the mode of transport.
49 Committee Ref: A90, London Borough of Bexley-Exhibits
of Mr Christopher Donovan. Back
50
Committee Ref: A90, Aim of Presentation (BEXYLB-32005C-002). Back
51
Committee Ref: A90, North Bexley and Dartford Crossrail Route
(BEXYLB-32005C-003). Back
52
Committee Ref: A90, Deprivation with Bexley and Dartford-Deprivation
by Super Output Areas (SOA) Index of Multiple Deprivation 2004
(BEXYLB-32005C-004). Back
53
Committee Ref: A90, Deprivation with Bexley and Dartford-Deprivation
by Super Output Areas (SOA) Income Ranking in England 2004 (BEXYLB-32005C-005). Back
54
Committee Ref: A90, Deprivation with Bexley and Dartford-Deprivation
by Super Output Areas (SOA) Crime Ranking in England 2004 (BEXYLB-32005C-006). Back
55
Committee Ref: A90, Deprivation with Bexley and Dartford-Ward
Level Census Data (BEXYLB-32005C-007). Back
56
Committee Ref: A90, Existing Accessibility Index 2001 (BEXYLB-32005C-008). Back
57
Committee Ref: A90, Existing Accessibility Bexley and Dartford-Travel
to Work by Car/Van (BEXYLB-32005C-009). Back
58
Committee Ref: A90, Existing Accessibility Mode of Transport
by staff in Belvedere Employment Area (BEXYLB-32005C-010). Back
59
Committee Ref: A90,: Thames Gateway (BEXYLB-32005C-011). Back
60
Committee Ref: A90, Sustainable Communities Plan-Brownfield Sites
(BEXYLB-32005C-012). Back
61
Committee Ref: A90, Sustainable Communities Plan-Homes (BEXYLB-32005C-013). Back
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