Examination of Witnesses (Questions 9622
- 9639)
Ordered: that Counsel and Parties be called in.
9622. Mr Liddell-Grainger: As usual,
I inform the Committee that it is my intention to suspend at a
convenient time, some time or thereabouts at 11.45 so that everybody
can have the opportunity of a comfort break. As there are so many
cases to hear today, I will now explain exactly how we will proceed.
9623. The Committee wants to hear every Petitioner's
case. However, as you know, the Committee will not listen to the
same evidence being made more than once. We understand that many
people here do have similar concerns. We would ask you to listen
carefully to the case being made to you and other responders by
the Promoters and try not to repeat, if possible, anything that
has been said. If you agree with the case that is being made,
you can tell us which points you support, that is absolutely acceptable,
and you do not then need to repeat the argument. Some of the issues
which are revolving around Hanbury Street and Whitechapel have
already been raised by the London Borough of Tower Hamlets in
last week's committee and have already been taken into account
from what was said last week. Equally, we encourage, dare I say
it, counsel for the Promoters to refrain also from repeating counterarguments,
where possible. I remind everybody that any witness brought forward
by the Promoters may be cross-examined by each and every Petitioner,
should they wish to, after they have made their case, but we understand
it would be helpful to hear the first two cases and then we will
ask counsel to respond. We will then call each additional Petitioner
to make their case after the first two. Mr Elvin?
9624. Mr Elvin: Sir, the first two Petitioners,
and I am not entirely sure which order they are being presented,
are the Spitalfields Society and Dr Pedretti.
9625. Mr Liddell-Grainger: I think we
are going to take Dr Pedretti first.
9626. Mr Elvin: Sir, I am going to give
an introduction which will just go over some of the main issues
the Committee will be hearing from Petitioners today. This will
cover not only issues raised by Dr Pedretti and the Spitalfields
Society, but some of the more general issues that are raised because
I do not propose then to repeat myself, taking my guidance from
what you have just said.
9627. As the Committee has already noted, the
Petitioners this week follow on to some extent from the issues
raised by Tower Hamlets last week and there is a degree of overlap,
particularly on the issue of the Hanbury Street shaft. Sir, since
a large number of the Petitioners are raising similar issues and
there is considerable overlap, I will go through the main issues,
although Petitioners should note that I am not dealing with each
and every issue in their Petitions, just the very broad issues
which are in common.
9628. Those issues appear to us to include issues
relating to a station at Whitechapel, secondly what is now proposed
as a ventilation and intervention shaft at Hanbury Street, construction
impacts on individuals and on the community, the alignment of
the tunnels and the impacts in terms of noise and settlement,
especially on the many Listed buildings in the Spitalfields area,
and compensation issues.
9629. If Mr Fry could please put up plan A2
from the Environmental Statement, volume 4A, and zoom in please
on Hanbury Street, that is the main area under consideration.[1]
Of course the Committee are very familiar with this, having had
a site visit and seen the documents on a number of occasions.
Whitechapel of course is to the east of this plan. We have also
provided for the Committee, and I will have paper copies distributed,
a plan which is GEN-0101 which shows you the location of most
of the Petitioners' properties in the area.[2]
It is a bit difficult to read on the screen, so I have asked for
A3 copies to be provided, but what this will do is give you the
Petition numbers, and some of the Petitioners have properties
which are off the plan, but the intention is to give you an idea
of where the Petitioners are living so that you can cross-reference
to Petition numbers.
9630. I remind the Committee, and really say
this more for the benefit of the Petitioners than the Committee,
that concerns about the various types of impact have been assessed
at considerable length, particularly those relating to noise,
vibration, construction, lorries, settlement and heritage issues.
They have been assessed in various parts of the Environmental
Statement, not only the main Environmental Statement, but the
first Supplementary Environmental Statement deals with Hanbury
Street and the first Environmental Statement relating to AP1 deals
with the revised proposals for Whitechapel Station.
9631. As the Committee also knows, in addition
to the various volumes of the Environmental Statement and the
technical reports on matters such as noise and settlement, there
have been available to the public for some time not only those
matters, but the IPs, the information papers, and each Petitioner
has received an individual Petition response document which the
Committee also has.
9632. I will deal firstly then briefly with
the issues around Whitechapel Station. As you know, sir, the current
proposals were revised in the first AP and described in chapter
4 of AP1. Perhaps Mr Fry can put up the illustrative drawing which
the Committee has already seen of the proposed Fulbourne Street
ticket hall.[3]
The justification and the benefits will be explained briefly by
Mr Anderson when I call him. The Committee will recall that in
the Tower Hamlets evidence, Mr Whalley, the officer from Tower
Hamlets who gave evidence to the Committee last week, spoke strongly
in support of the Crossrail station here and of the enlargement
of Whitechapel Station and said that it was fundamental to Tower
Hamlets' support for Crossrail. The reference to that is the transcript
for Day 38, paragraphs 9471 and 9482. Indeed Tower Hamlets' position
is that they want the station, as the Committee may recall, with
even greater street presence than proposed and they were arguing
for the demolition of McDonald's to allow an even greater access
to the station. The importance of the station is underlined by
the Mayor's London Plan which targets Whitechapel as an opportunity
area. These are areas in association with regeneration areas in
the London Plan. It is areas targeted for the regeneration of
jobs and homes, the promotion of social inclusion, increased accessibility
and it is all tied to improvements in accessibility and public
transport, such as the East London Line and Crossrail. The key
issues which justify a station at Whitechapel are the assistance
of regeneration in Whitechapel, which fits in with the Mayor's
Strategy in the London Plan and the fact that the station acts
as a major interchange, as the Committee knows, between a number
of different rail lines, the Tube, the East London Line and Crossrail
itself.
9633. I turn then to the issues with Hanbury
Street and the Hanbury Street shaft. As the Committee is also
aware, Hanbury Street was originally a proposed site for the launch
of a tunnel-boring machine. This was revised following the revision
to the tunnelling strategy in April with a proposed change in
the tunnelling strategy. The proposals at Hanbury Street have
been scaled down to a much smaller intervention shaft for emergencies
and for ventilation and the position with regards to the new Hanbury
Street proposals, which will be the subject of an AP in due course,
are set out in a revised information paper D8. As the Committee
also knows, the intervention shaft is needed for access during
emergencies, particularly by the fire brigade. The Committee is
also familiar from the evidence given during the Greenwich Petitions
on Arsenal Way that a one-kilometre spacing criterion is preferred
by the fire brigade because of the difficulties they have in getting
down the shaft and accessing the points of any emergency and getting
out again safely. That guidance, I can remind the Committee, is
Exhibit 21804-023.[4]
The guidance which is currently given by the HSE the Committee
can see there and it was produced some weeks ago, but the Committee
can see that the reference to the distance is of the order of
one kilometre where there are twin single-bore tunnels with adequate
intermediate cross-passages which is what is proposed here.
9634. The revision to the tunnelling strategy,
as I have already mentioned, led to the revision of the proposals
for Hanbury Street and the shaft and its impact will be much reduced
over that originally intended. For example, as the Committee will
have heard last week, Britannia House will no longer need to be
demolished and the shaft itself will be much smaller. Can I ask
Mr Fry to put up 21804-025.[5]
This is a plan which I think the Committee saw last week. The
left-hand side is the original Bill scheme and it shows the land-take
needed for the original version of the Hanbury Street shaft. The
Committee can see on the right-hand side the considerably reduced
land-take, less than half of what was required originally, and
Britannia House is outlined which will no longer be required to
be demolished. These matters were drawn to residents' attention
not simply by general publicity, but a letter was sent to the
Petitioner residents on 22 May, which is Exhibit 21804, page 001,
which is the first page of it, and it runs over five pages.[6]
It was a letter written to the Petitioners living in the area
which explains to them what the revised tunnelling strategy meant
in terms of the Hanbury Street shaft and the Committee can see
that it sets out the information, including the confirmation that
the Pedley Street shaft and the additional tunnel will not be
required, Britannia House will remain, no need for a conveyer,
no need to store excavated material at Mile End Park, et cetera,
but it did not mean the alignment would be affected; the running
tunnels would remain where they were.
9635. It also made it clear on the second page
that the revised tunnelling strategy did not remove the need for
the works at Hanbury Street, and it referred to the fact that
an additional provision would be required, and then attached are
a couple of plans and a diagram. The issue of where the shaft
should be has been debated with Tower Hamlets, and I do not propose
to go over that. As the Committee knows, the main alternative
contender is Woodseer Street which is two streets away.
9636. So far as the additional provision is
concerned, it will have its own Environmental Statement in due
course, although I will ask Mr Thornely-Taylor to give a brief
view as to the comparative position in environmental, noise and
vibration, impacts of the two locations. You will recall I said
I would do that last week during the course of Tower Hamlet's
Petition, but Mr Thornely-Taylor was not available last week.
9637. Crossrail has taken the view that, even
before the Environmental Statement has been provided, it is likely
that the environmental impacts, in terms of noise and vibration,
of the two locations will be broadly similar, and there are good
engineering reasons for preferring Hanbury Street over Woodseer
Street. As the Committee will be aware from Mr Berryman's evidence
last week, there is a range of options for a Hanbury Street shaft.
He described Options A, B and C going from a maximum underground
intervention where there is much of the equipment placed underground
and that involves more excavation, but there is then less equipment
and shaft on top of the ground, which allows, if it is thought
necessary, greater over-site development, to an option which puts
more overground and has less construction impacts and a lesser
construction period. That is all a matter which is open for discussion
with the local community through Tower Hamlets, as we made clear
last week. The options as to what will go on the shaft site precisely
remain to be determined.
9638. It is the case that we consider the impacts
of the Hanbury Street shaft to have been exaggerated, for example,
in terms of lorry movements and perceived impacts on the community
over a lengthy construction period, and I just wanted to make
it clear now, and this came out in Mr Berryman's evidence last
week, that Crossrail's view is that the construction period for
the Hanbury Street shaft should be, on the worst case, of the
order of two years, not four or six or eight, but two, and that
the two years is probably the maximum if you go for the maximum
intervention and underground construction as opposed to the option
which puts more of the equipment above ground. If you will recall,
in terms of lorry movements, Mr Berryman last week said that he
thought of the order of five lorry movements a day for that two-year
period and less frequently than that, maybe one a day or less,
after that. It is important to put those impacts in context.
9639. On the issue of noise and vibration, Mr
Thornely-Taylor will explain the position. It is clear that there
are likely to be some impacts from noise and vibration during
construction. That is unavoidable with any scheme of this sort.
They will be fully assessed for the revised Hanbury Street shaft
with AP3 and the ES which comes out with that. We have of course
assessed the comparative position of Hanbury Street and Woodseer
Street for the original Bill scheme with the greater impact and
that is, as we dealt with last week, in the first Supplementary
Environmental Statement, and Mr Thornely-Taylor will explain the
position briefly.
1 Crossrail Environmental Statement Volume 4A, Whitechapel
Station, Construction Works & Impacts (LINEWD-ES16-035). Back
2
Crossrail Ref: P87, Location of petitioners based in the Spitalfields
area (TOWHLB-GEN01-001). Back
3
Crossrail Ref: P87, Whitechapel Station, Fulbourne Street Ticket
Hall from Durward Street, (TOWHLB-21804-017). Back
4
Crossrail Ref: P87, Railway Safety Principles and Guidance, Part
2 Section A Extract, Emergency Intervention Point Requirements
(TOWHLB-21804-023). Back
5
Crossrail Ref: P87, Hanbury Street Shaft, Worksite Comparison
(TOWHLB-21804-025). Back
6
Crossrail Ref: P87, Correspondence from CLRL to The Spitalfields
Centre, 22 May 2006 (TOWHLB-21804-001 to -002). Back
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