Examination of Witnesses (Questions 9720
- 9739)
9720. We have also focussed, as did Tower Hamlets,
on what has become known as Woodseer 2, and you will be familiar
with that concept. We have done that not on the basis that it
is necessarily the best alignment or necessarily the best site,
but rather on the basis that a) it appears likely to offer significant
benefits in terms of mitigating impacts on the local community;
and, b), it is the furthest advanced of the possible alternative
alignments.
9721. Like the Council, we say that it would
be wrong to make a final decision on the alternatives before a
more detailed assessment is made, both in terms of optimising
the alignment and assessing the construction impacts; because
we say the Promoter's assessment of alternatives to date cannot
properly be described as either objective or thorough. We submit
that a further assessment needed should include other alternatives,
including in particular what has become known as the "southern
alignment".
9722. Fourthly, our evidence will focus on the
relative sensitivity and relative impact associated with the two
alternative routes and shaft sites. In doing that, we will seek
to avoid duplication of evidence that has been heard last week,
but we necessarily present a slightly more apt view and perspective
of what is going on, and hopefully the Committee will allow us
to do that.
9723. So far as the relative impacts are concerned,
we are of course placed at a very real disadvantage by the absence
of an up-to-date and accurate Environmental Statement assessing
those matters, because the Promoters have promised (and it is
repeated in their response to our petition) that there will be
supplementary environmental information assessing the impacts
on this part of London as a result of the change in the tunnelling
strategy. That has not been provided. As the Promoters point out
in their response to our petition, one of the main purposes of
the Environmental Statement (and this will form part of the Environmental
Statement—this further information) is to "provide
the public with the basis on which to make representations to
Parliament as appropriate on the environmental impacts of Crossrail".
This is our opportunity to make representations but we have to
do so without that important information available to inform and
to guide our case.
9724. Although we wish to avail ourselves of
this opportunity to explain our case to the Committee, we must
nevertheless reserve our position as to the need to present any
further evidence once that supplementary environmental information
has been published and we have had a fair opportunity to consider
and respond to its contents. Those are the brief opening submissions
I wanted to make.
9725. There are two witnesses I want to call,
and I will ask them to come forward in a moment. With your permission,
what I propose to do by way of format is to copy the approach
that was taken by Tower Hamlets council last week, which is to
have both of my witnesses together, I will deal with them both
in turn and then turn them over for cross-examination. I think
there is a little bit of overlap between their evidence, and it
might help the Promoters to hear the whole thing.
9726. Mr Liddell-Grainger: Do carry on,
Mr Philpott.
Mr Rupert Wheeler and Mr Roy Adams,
Sworn
Examined by Mr Philpott
9727. Mr Philpott: Could I first introduce
Mr Wheeler to the Committee. Mr Wheeler, could you give your full
name, your qualifications and your position to the Committee.
(Mr Wheeler) My name is Rupert Wheeler. I am
Chartered Architect of about 20 years' experience in private practice,
many years of that have included working on a considerable number
of listed buildings of all categories. I am a resident of about
eight or nine years of Spitalfields.
9728. Having introduced Mr Wheeler, before I
ask him to go through his matters, and I will call Mr Wheeler
first to give his evidence and then Mr Adams, I would also like
to introduce Mr Adams to the Committee. Mr Adams, can you give
your name, relevant qualifications to the Committee, please.
(Mr Adams) My name is Roy Adams. I am an urban
planner and a member of the Royal Town Planning Institute. I regard
myself as a specialist in urban regeneration and major development
schemes. For 10 years I was Chief Executive of Europe's largest
multidiscipline firm of architects and engineers; and I am currently
an Executive Director of one of the largest construction companies
in the UK. I have been involved in the implementation of many
large development projects, ranging across infrastructure, housing,
shopping centres and stadia; and my current responsibilities include
a £200 million mixed use development scheme on Brighton Marina.
I was awarded an OBE in January of this year for services to urban
regeneration in North Belfast, where I am chairman of a cross-community
ministerial advisory panel charged with producing a development
strategy for a £300 million project on a 30-acre inner-city
site.
9729. I am going to begin by asking Mr Wheeler
to give his evidence. Could I start, Mr Wheeler, by asking you
just to summarise briefly for the Committee the issues you are
going to be dealing with in your evidence.
(Mr Wheeler) I want to deal with the relative
sensitivity of the two alternative shaft sites, with reference
to construction issues, access issues, affects on the adjoining
properties and on the listed buildings in the Spitalfields Conservation
Area.
9730. If you could start then, I think you have
got a note of matters you wanted to raise; if you could just pick
up where you want to begin.
(Mr Wheeler) I will deal with the considerable
difficulties and adverse impacts associated with the Hanbury Street
shaft which I consider there are likely to be; and that in a number
of important respects the Woodseer alternative is likely to be
better. I should just mention here that the further review of
the Hanbury Street shaft, which you looked at last Wednesday with
the council of Tower Hamlets, was not supplied to us by the Promoter
until last Friday morning. We have taken some bits out of it but
it has been a bit of a hurried exercise. I will not go into the
engineering and curve issues that Dr Bowers dealt with last week;
and have to say that a line under Bishops Square may not be a
problem at all and, even if it is, the risk to be dealt with by
best engineering practice; and, even if not, a revised curve which
is operationally acceptable can be found. We will take it that
a line through Woodseer is feasible, as referenced by page 32
of the Council's evidence, paragraph 9564.
9731. That is a reference, is it not, to the
transcript of the evidence of last Wednesday?
(Mr Wheeler) Yes. I should explain to the Committee
that the Woodseer site is a huge, redundant former brewery site
with tracts of open ground. In fact, it is misleading to call
it the Woodseer Street Option, for this reason. This is why it
seems to be appropriate to look at it in depth, the reason being
that it is entirely contained within the brewery; it has no access
on to Woodseer Street at all.
9732. I am sorry, I think you wanted to look
at some slides. Is that right?
(Mr Wheeler) Yes, slides 7 and 8, I think.
9733. I think those have been given in advance
We can start off perhaps by looking at slide 7, then you can tell
us which one you want to actually speak to. Slide 7 is the appropriate
one to start with.[17]
(Mr Wheeler) Can I point out,
while we are talking about this brewery site, this site did not
feature at all in the early options looked at by Crossrail, and
that is why we choose to dwell on it now, and I believe the Council
did the same. Slide 7 in front of you, is a fairly distant view,
but the orange lines are known as the Woodseer 2 option and you
are obviously familiar with the base case. You will see that for
much of the route as it passes through Spitalfields it actually
runs entirely through the brewery site as opposed to the base
case route which runs entirely through the conservation area and
under a great many houses and businesses. Can we go to the next
slide?
9734. Slide 8 is centred on the shaft.[18]
(Mr Wheeler) It is worth just
dwelling on these. Your Committee made a visit to the area a couple
of weeks ago, and I was on that visit. I do not know if any of
the Committee here today were on that visit, but we were shown
the Hanbury Street site here, we walked around this corner, we
stopped and looked at these gates here and how close these dwellings
are—close, they actually immediately adjoin it—we
then walked up here and as we were walking up here I asked Keith
Berryman: "Are we not going to look at this site?" and
I was told: "No, no, we are not going to look at that, it
is not part of our presentation", and we were hurried on.
None of the Committee saw this site and we were hurried on up
to this street, where we went down here and looked at the schools
inside the lorry access route. I want to take you through this
bit because even if you had attended the site visit you would
have missed this site, which is a bit of a shame because it is
fairly obvious when you walk past it.
9735. We have photographs of that, which we
will look at a little later so the Committee can get an idea of
what is there.
(Mr Wheeler) It is particularly peculiar because
in Mr Berryman's evidence he named it as the most controversial
issue on the whole project, so not to look at the site that is
a critical part of it seems odd. Can I move to slides 9 and 10?
9736. Yes, start with slide 9.[19]
These are both showing the Option A, as it were, for how the Hanbury
Street site might be worked. Is that right?
(Mr Wheeler) Yes. We have a number
of sites which I have taken from the Promoter's evidence about
how these sites work. This is a plan of Option A. You will see
that the site is so small that lorries are shown on these two
plans as having to offload in the street. Slide 11 is a photograph
of a street.[20]
Let me just dwell on this briefly. This is the lorries loading—
9737. Can we go back to slide 9?[21]
(Mr Wheeler) There is the articulated
lorry unloading in the street. Here are the gates at either end
which represent the other access. You can see from this plan that
not only does the lorry have to unload in the street (God knows
what happens when two lorries turn up!) but even these lorries
cannot get on and off the site in a forward gear. Under any highway
principles in a development such as this they would be obliged
to get on and off site in a forward gear; they cannot be reversing
out on the highway. What is not also apparent from the previous
evidence we have heard from the Promoter is that, of course, this
site takes up the pavement as well as much of the street while
this lorry is being unloaded, so all the pedestrians are going
to have to cross from the south side of the street on to the north
side to access Brick Lane. There are enormous mansion blocks over
here to the east and the local shopping area, the centre of the
community for most of these people is Brick Lane, so there is
a lot of pedestrian traffic along here. Not only do they have
to cross the street but they actually have to cross the very same
street that the Promoter is bringing all his construction traffic
in. Can we move to slide 10? I do not think I need go over slide
10. Let us move to slide 11.[22]
It makes the same point: the lorry is still unloading in the street.
This is the street in question. This is the site. This building
would be demolished under the Promoter's proposals. This lady
here will not be able to walk up and down that pavement because
that will be taken into the site area; she will have to walk over
here and cross this road. These are bollards in the middle of
the street. I imagine those would be moved. This is where you
see that lorry parked. Obviously, it fills half the road, so this
is going to have to be a one-way street of one sort or another,
with traffic lights. This is a small area of landscaping; these
are the flats that overlook the site and there is a little children's
playground here, which is accessed off this road. Next slide,
please.
9738. Just before we move on to slide 12, I
understand there is a point you wanted to make about the dimensions
of the lorries that were shown.
(Mr Wheeler) Yes. There are a couple of points
I could develop here. This is the lorry shown. Keith Berryman
made considerable play that these lorries are shown to scale.
Well, they are; we have scaled them. This lorry is 15 metres.
Most modern, articulated lorries and, certainly, all flat-bed
loaders and so on are not 15 metres, they are 16.5 metres long.
That is quite critical. That is probably the difference between
the end of that lorry and the edge of the site here, in this instance.
These are not accurate and they are using very old-fashioned vehicles
to service this site, which I am sure will not be the case in
reality. There is another point here: this plan does not show
it, of course, because it is at an earlier stage of this particular
development, but all these developments use a tower crane. That
tower crane, to unload lorries parked in the street, will have
to swing out over the public highway. That conventionally is not
allowed. It also swings out over these buildings, although they
use a flapping rig which means that they can possibly raise the
arm so that it does not go over these houses, but whether you
believe that they will do that every time is open to question.
Certainly they cannot be allowed to be swinging out over the highway,
and if they were to do that they would either have to do it at
night time working or they would have to close the street entirely,
for obvious means of safety to the public and passing traffic,
and so on.
9739. If we go on to slide 13, I think this
is a photograph from which we can see the entrance that is indicated
on Option A.[23]
Is that right?
(Mr Wheeler) Yes. Can I just go
the previous one and explain the route that lorries take to get
into this site, and then I will come back to this photograph.
This is a slightly different version (I am not quite sure which
option this is) but it shows an articulated lorry coming in through
this entrance here and, presumably, it will leave here and then
turn up here and out.
17 Committee Ref: A113, Woodseer Street Shaft, Alignment
Option 2-Plan at Shaft (TOWHLB-32805-006). Back
18
Committee Ref: A113, Woodseer & Hanbury Street, Worksite
Location (TOWHLB-32805-007). Back
19
Committee Ref: A113, Hanbury Street Shaft, Worksite Layout Sketch-Piling
Operation based on Option A: Basement Option (TOWHLB-32805-008). Back
20
Committee Ref: A113, Photograph of Hanbury Street/Spelman Street
junction (TOWHLB-32805-010). Back
21
Committee Ref: A113, Hanbury Street Shaft, Worksite Layout Sketch-Piling
Operation based on Option A: Basement Option (TOWHLB-32805-008). Back
22
Committee Ref: A113, Hanbury Street Shaft, Worksite Layout Sketch-Piling
Operation based on Option B: Above Ground Option (TOWHLB-32805-011). Back
23
Committee Ref: A113, Photograph of Spelman Street/Hanbury Street
junction (TOWHLB-32805-012). Back
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