Examination of Witnesses (Questions 11000
- 11019)
11000. Mr Elvin: It was put in evidence
two days ago. It has not got the document number and I will see
if I can give you the detail. Yes, that is it.[30]
11001. Mr Mould: This was dealt with
in some detail on Tuesday and we will give you the reference,
as Mr Elvin says. I have no further questions for Mr Anderson.
I am not going to say anything by way of winding up on this Petition.
Mr Elvin is going to cover one or two points in general closing.
It is for the Petitioner to sum up.
11002. Mrs Cove: Before I move on, if
Mr Elvin is intending to wind up on Spitalfields this afternoon,
there are other Petitioners that are going to be heard next Tuesday
from Spitalfields, and we need some clarity on that.
11003. Chairman: Mr Elvin is going to
deal with matters that we were dealing with this week and it is
your opportunity to finish your summary, your Petition.
11004. Mrs Cove: Can I perhaps, first
of all, deal with what Mr Anderson has said in specific terms
of jobs. In Spitalfields we are immediately adjacent to the City
of London and if the City of London, like the Isle of Dogs, changed
its policy towards employing local people, we would not have it
unemployment that we have. People from Spitalfields only have
to walk across Commercial Street to get to the city. They will
not have to go to Crossrail, Whitechapel, and then get on another
line to the Isle of Dogs. It is a change of ethos of employment
practices from within the city and the Isle of Dogs that will
reduce this issue of unemployment in the area. The claim that
Crossrail is going to feed into 25 per cent of improvement of
jobs in Tower Hamlets, I am afraid, does not provide me with any
reason to support the whole Whitechapel site. The question of
labour: it is useful because it does provide people with local
jobs, but, then at the end of the construction, they are left
without any jobs because they are not taken on to jobs over a
period of time. We know about that in Spitalfields from all the
construction regeneration jobs that we have had local people get
employed; they get a job as a labourer for a few months, maybe
a couple of years, maybe they develop some skills and work habits,
or whatever, but at the end of it they are left back on the unemployment
register. None of the stuff Mr Anderson has said here today encourages
me along the lines of the Whitechapel site at all.
11005. Going back to the issues Mr Mould raised,
what I would like to have clarified is that I will get a written
answer to all of these questions rather than just what he has
said here today because I do not read the transcripts on a daily
basis, in fact not at all. I would like a written document coming
back on those particular questions.
11006. Chairman: What I asked Mr Mould
for and he has agreed to give is he has taken away your questions
and will answer them. Copies will come to the Committee and, of
course, I will ensure you will also get the minutes of today so
we can compare what you have said with what you have received.
11007. Mrs Cove: Thank you. I would also
like him to include the relative supporting documents he talked
about—C9 or something, which I have not got in my response—those
documents along with that would be very helpful.
11008. Can I go back to the questions on more
specific issues. With the Health Impact Assessment—I have
given it to the stenographer, the Crossrail one—there is
absolutely no evidence in that this is a work in progress. This
is the document, as presented: it does not say there is going
to be more work done, or they are going to do a Health Impact
Assessment or include consultation because we have not been consulted
about the production of that document. When I spoke to Dr Safir
about it, in fact I gave him a copy of that, he had not seen it.
When I asked him if he knew that a Health Impact Assessment had
even been done, he did not know what I was talking about. He is
a GP in one of the busiest practices in the middle of Spitalfields.
I am somewhat reassured by the fact there will be proper consultation,
but I hope the proper consultation does include local community
groups who live in the area and it does include the local practice
where the GPs know what the health issues are.
11009. Chairman: That is why, Mrs Cove,
I asked about the status of stakeholders and I think we got that
by guarantee from Mr Mould.
11010. Mr Mould: I think I will remind
you because I do not think some of the members were here yesterday
afternoon, but the Doctor was here yesterday and we will embrace
him in further consultation on this.
11011. Chairman: I was quite specific
when I said "stakeholders' Petitions and other bodies".
11012. Mrs Cove: Where the Health Impact
Assessment falls down is there was no evidence it is a work in
progress and is going to be continued. We welcome that and are
very pleased and we would like to be part of the consultation
process.
11013. Chairman: The question of consultation
is a question we have been dealing with for quite a few hearings
and we are as concerned as you are in what you have expressed
and this is why we have extracted a guarantee from the Promoters
that this is the issue.
11014. Mrs Cove: Thank you very much.
Just going back to the issue about the lorries and the fact that
the chosen or the expected route is particularly one of the roads
that is a local distribution road. I do not know what road they
are talking about, but for the distribution road if they are talking
about Buxton Street, as you, Chairman, have seen, it has been
closed off. It can hardly be designated as a local distribution
road. We find it ironic that they are going to open it up to let
heavy lorries to go through. It was also said the discussion with
the council on the particular route has been dealt with as an
assessment. We have no evidence that an assessment of the lorry
route has been done and yet the route is enshrined in all the
information and documentation that you have got.
11015. With regards to the Code of Construction,
I am really interested to hear they are going to possibly use
recycled water and the question of whether a draft order applies
to a construction site is an interesting one. If I cannot use
a hose pipe, why can they wash down wheels? I do not know. I was
concerned about what you said, Chairman, about leaving it up to
the trade unions and construction companies about making sure
that there is action taken on lorries that do not sheet up properly.
On the basis that if Crossrail are employing construction companies
to do the work on site, which I assume they will be doing, they
could make that a pre-requirement and not necessarily leave it
up to conditions of construction and things like that. It could
be a pre-requirement.
11016. Chairman: I raised it as a personal
view and I suspect many of colleagues here would agree with it.
It would not be proper, in my opinion, for us to demand from the
Promoter that written into the contracts might be a thing like
disciplinary proceedings against a worker on a contract they had
signed. That is the reason I balked at that. I thought a better
route towards that is to ensure, in reflecting what your request
was, they would perhaps take the view that they should have in
hand proper approaches to contractual obligations by people who
work on a site rather than simply say that there would be disciplinary
procedures brought against an individual. That, I believe, would
be outside normal industrial practices. I think the trade union
would be very reluctant to go down that path. It is also agreeing
something in advance of the stakeholders, in this case which would
be the local authority, the planners, the Promoters and everybody
else involved to draw up a set of guidelines that would be imposed
on the workforce at the end of it. I am saying let us hold for
a moment and just have proper approaches to that.
11017. Mrs Cove: I take your point. Coming
back on that particular point, but I do not, as you probably gather,
have a lot of confidence in the council to enforce particular
things and that is why I wanted to raise it as a particular issue.
I will leave it there. I notice the comment on airborne pollution
has again been reiterated that there will be no significant impact
on the health of people close to the site. The Health Impact Assessment
provides no evidence. It just makes this blank statement and we
do not believe blank statements can come like that without supporting
evidence. I was reassured here Crossrail are going to get into
market development, but I am very concerned about them talking
about market developments because we know the price of land in
Spitalfields is astronomic. It is so expensive that if local housing
associations, small business associations and any sort of organisation
like that wants to provide social housing or social work spaces,
they cannot afford the land in our area to be developed, so I
am very concerned it will be subject to market plans.
11018. Chairman: I can well understand
that. Can I point you to it is in the ability of the local planning
authority in Tower Hamlets to extract in any blank proposals they
give things like needed housing projects, or whatever, 106 agreements
and so forth. They have a local planning authority and at the
moment you do not have the greatest deal of faith, I would commiserate
you, but it is not a matter to be dealing with or for the authority
deal with at this Committee.
11019. Mrs Cove: Chairman, I understand
why you are getting a bit frustrated with what I am saying. What
I am saying is once the development in Hanbury Street, for instance,
has been finished, that over site development site will be so
expensive that nobody locally will be able to afford it, whatever
the Tower Hamlets Council say they want to do with that site,
except market forces or we will get more office development and
more luxury homes in the area. That is not what we need in Spitalfields.
That is the point I am trying to make here.
30 Committee Ref: A113, Hanbury Street Shaft, Alignment
Options-Option D (TOWHLB-32805-032). Back
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