Examination of Witnesses (Questions 10840
- 10859)
10840. Chairman: Thank you very much
for your attendance today. We will now call the Spitalfields Community
Association, Jil Cove is the next petitioner.
The Petition of The Spitalfields Community Association.
Mrs Jil Cove appeared as Agent.
10841. Chairman: Good afternoon Mrs Cove.
Can I thank you because when we went to your area we met you and
you very kindly stressed to us the importance of us traversing
the route and that was most advantageous and I am very grateful
to you because sometimes you miss things particularly when you
go out to new areas and your argument that we should walk a small
distance has been very useful to Committee Members because you
drew light for us on all the arguments in your area so we are
very grateful. I thought I would make that point again. Mr Mould,
are you dealing with this?
10842. Mr Mould: I am, yes.
10843. Chairman: I wonder if you would
like to give us an outline.
10844. Mr Mould: Yes, the Community Association
was formed in April 1998 and its remit was to be involved in and
participate in public decision making processes that affect the
quality of life and working environments of people in the Spitalfields
area. I understand it currently has a membership of some 185 members.
The concerns raised in the Association's petition, I hope I am
not doing them dis-service if I say, essentially reflect the broad
range of concerns that you have expressed over the course of recent
days in relation to Crossrail's proposals for the Spitalfields
and Hanbury Street area.
10845. Mrs Cove: I have brought some
photographs of the lorry route because I know the majority of
the members of the Committee were not able to join us on our walk
about. I would like to set the scene a little bit, as you can
see my name is Jil Cove and I am secretary of the Spitalfields
Community Association which arose out of a 15 year campaign relating
to Spitalfields market. Our Membership is across the diverse community
that we do have in Spitalfields and we are very pleased to be
able to say that but because I am representing the petition on
behalf of such a diverse community I am not going to be dealing
with very specific issues but much more generalised issues in
relation to a whole range of things. I will try not to repeat
what you have already heard but I do not know what you have already
heard because I have not been here so forgive me if I do cover
some of the ground that you have already had discussed with you
here over the past few days.
10846. I want to deal with this Petition in
eight separate sections. They are dealing with Tower Hamlet's
council, the Crossrail consultation, lorry routes and photographs,
planning matters, pollution, the Health Impact Assessment and
the conclusion, then I have a number of questions which I have
set out, and will leave with the Committee, and which I will be
asking Crossrail on behalf of the Promoter to address.
10847. Can I start off by saying that I am not
here to have a long complaint about the Tower Hamlet's council,
but I have to say that many of us are bemused by the council's
approach to Crossrail's plans for Spitalfields and Whitechapel.
They have never explained to us what the benefits of the Whitechapel
Station will be in the way of being of benefit to local people,
or why moving the intervention shaft from Hanbury Street to the
Woodseer Street site would again be of any benefit to the local
people. We have been told consistently—the only thing that
we have been told about Whitechapel—is that it is to regenerate
the area. We recognise the need for regeneration, and particularly
in the market area because it does need some help, however, our
experience in Spitalfields of regeneration—I am talking
generally here because Whitechapel is part of Spitalfields as
such—is that it very rarely benefits local people. It is
mostly of benefit to our very rich neighbours in the City of London
and a lot of people feel very frustrated and very angry about
the amount of money which is being put into Spitalfields on the
basis of regeneration.
10848. If the Whitechapel area is to be regenerated
we would suggest that it is much better that it is done with the
consent and involvement of local people and using some of the
millions of pounds that Tower Hamlets has in its coffers from
planning gain money which over the years they have accrued, which
we do not believe has been spent to benefit of local people. We
would rather they did the regeneration of Whitechapel in that
means rather than other devious means by trying to get Crossrail
to regenerate the area themselves.
10849. The council's suggestion of a re-site
from Hanbury to Woodseer Street for the shaft presents people
in Spitalfields with exactly the same problems as would be if
it stays at the Hanbury Street site. Those problems are related
to traffic, noise, dust pollution and the impact on health, et
cetera. As I said, I am not here to have a moan about the council
but it does need to be said that we sometimes feel that we have
been trying to argue this case with one hand tied behind our backs
because the council have not been specifically helpful to us.
10850. Firstly, for about 12 months they forgot
to pass on the contact details of the local interested groups
to Crossrail. It was only when they were reminded that they suddenly
remembered that they had forgotten to do that.
10851. Secondly, they have chosen never to arrange
any public meetings to talk to local people about the impact that
Crossrail could possibly have on our community. They say it is
not their job to do that because it is a question of Crossrail
doing that, and it is not their project and why should they get
agro from the local community.
10852. Chairman: Mrs Cove, before you
go any further, I think every single person in this room has had
some kind of problem with their local authorities. It is not in
the remit of this Committee to deal with complaints about local
authorities. If they really are not doing their job there is only
one recourse which is locally. I know that might sound frustrating,
but every single Member of Parliament who is on this Committee
has to cope with that every single day of their working lives.
It is a problem. You have made your point but it is not something
we can deal with.
10853. Mrs Cove: I do understand that,
Chairman, but I have got two more points with regard to the local
authority before I move on to Crossrail.
10854. Chairman: That is not to say that
all local authorities are like that but there are some who for
their constituents they are not compliant.
10855. Mrs Cove: Let me say then that
the council supported wholeheartedly Crossrail's plans to tunnel
from the Hanbury Street site until such noise was made by the
local community that they eventually commissioned a report which
made Crossrail change its mind. We are very pleased that you say
that idea of the whole questioning of tunnelling from Spitalfields
seems to have gone on the agenda. We are very pleased with that
reaction that we eventually got from the Tower Hamlets community,
but we do not feel that they have represented our views in any
way, shape or form but on a personal level I am not unduly surprised.
10856. Moving on from that, I do appreciate
that the Spitalfields Community Association has not perhaps been
as actively in contact with Crossrail as other community associations
or other local organisations and groups have been. No doubt—I
have heard this morning—that you will have heard many complaints
about Crossrail's means of consultation. Certainly we, in the
Spitalfields Community Association, do not believe that we have
been properly consulted. What has happened is we have been told
what is going to happen and that this is the best possible option
that Crossrail can come up with. They have never taken any account
of the issues which have been raised with them. There has been
some misinformation given by Crossrail on the basis that until
quite recently the Hanbury Street site was only ever described
in their publications as a ventilation and that was even when
it was going to be a tunnelling shaft and an intervention. Now
at least it is recognised that it is an intervention shaft and
a ventilation shaft.
10857. I have to say that although we do have
a nominated Petition negotiator, unlike Susie Symes before me
who praised the negotiator, I am very, very disappointed because
I have had no pro-active action or contact with him apart from
the receiving the response to our Petition which I got on 9 May.
That was seven months after we launched our Petition. That response
provided some really fascinating technical information, for instance,
like how the concrete spraying in the tunnels is going to be done
and which road traffic Acts are going to be implemented or amended
to allow for the lorry routes as such. What they failed to include
was useful information which would be a map of the lorry routes
and a description of the lorry routes. I have been in contact
recently about another document, the Health Impact Assessment,
and I will be coming back to that. Eventually I got a copy of
that on 23 of May, but unfortunately it did not have the supporting
documents with it. I got piles and piles of stuff from the internet
which was un-requested information and eventually yesterday at
just past one o'clock I got the supporting document from Crossrail.
Unfortunately I have not been able to make an assessment of the
relevance of that document because of the time it arrived.
10858. It seems to me that the information that
Crossrail have provided us with changes as you go along. I was
here on 23 May when Patti Singleton presented her Petition on
behalf of the Hampton Court residents. I heard Crossrail's response
to her was that lorry movement in Durwood Street would be halted
between eight o'clock in the morning and nine o'clock and three
o'clock in the afternoon until four o'clock to allow the safe
passage of children to and from school. I see from the information
provided by Tower Hamlets that Crossrail are now offering only
to stop the lorry movements between 8.30 and 9.00 and 3.30 and
4.00. I do think there is some issue here about them changing
their minds.
10859. Secondly, in the Crossrail response to
me they told us that the lorry movements in Spitalfields would
be 27 a day, but in the information received from Tower Hamlet's
exhibits I see that has been reduced to a maximum of 16 a day.
We welcome that reduction but what I am saying to you is that
as the information constantly shifts and changes we do not know
what action to believe.
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