Examination of Witnesses (Questions 11320
- 11339)
11320. Ms Jordan: I will then go on.
Would you put the next slide up, please.[24]
I would like to ask why we were not consulted in round one. This
is a code of practice on dissemination of information during major
infrastructure projects found on the Deputy Prime Minister's website.
It is for stage one consultation. You will see it follows the
lines, I have to tick—
11321. Mr Liddell-Grainger: Ms Jordan,
we are well aware of that. We have made representation very forcefully
to the Promoters about what has been done. We have made very clear
that this proposal has not been properly handled. This Committee
last week made it very clear to Mr Elvin and Mr Mould what the
situation was. We have gone through this very carefully. The consultation
has not been up to scratch. We did that with Mr Galloway who is
a Member of Parliament and with our Petitioners last week. Unless
you have got something new to add?
11322. Ms Jordan: Yes, I have. I think
the consultation that went on through round two and onwards has
been appalling.
11323. Mr Liddell-Grainger: We know.
11324. Ms Jordan: It has ticked all the
boxes. I want to specifically to talk about round one consultation.
This demonstrates what should be done in round one. I wish to
show to you we were deliberately excluded from round one consultation
I think simply because, had we done that, we would have been able
to say this is not the route of the line. Had we been able to
say this is not the route of the line, then they really have not
considered our evidence. Now we are at the 11th hour when we are
still told by the Promoters it is impossible, but I wish to show
you that I believe that we were deliberately excluded from that
process because this is the process that they followed and it
is quite true that you will see that they were supposed to talk
to people. In fact in a Cabinet paper, my paper 14, a report to
Tower Hamlets Council in October 2002, the local authority were
urging CLRL to immediately begin communicating the benefits of
Crossrail to local residents and businesses in advance of their
local public consultation on detailed impacts, something that
never happened, or even the local authority, which I find very
surprising, were asking in 2002.[25]
In 2003, they were writing to a resident of old St Patrick's school,
who was on the edge of what was originally the worksite of round
one, telling him in fact that they were waiting to go out on public
consultation but assuring him it would be a much smaller scale
of work.[26]
They would be driving in both directions from a site in Hanbury
Street, the routes would be used to deliver boxes and lines and
at the completion of the works, we will probably have a local
route for railway, communications and power cables and telling
us that ground conditions for the construction of tunnels east
of Hanbury were going to be very difficult. All of this they knew
since July 2003, and yet SsBA, you might say, had not an inkling
of this until we ran into a neighbour in January 2004. Nobody
knew anything about it. In September 2003 they were talking to
people in the east of the borough about route alignments and where
the portal would be and quite rightly, just as it said in the
consultation document of what they were surely doing, they were
negotiating and talking. I believe I heard earlier on they moved
that portal to a better place having discussed it with local people.
Yet we were going to have the only and the largest worksite in
our midst and not one word was asked from our community. In fact,
when the Department for Transport wrote back to the letters in
which I said we wanted to extend the period, they wrote back and
said that they understood our organisation was previously not
known to Crossrail, the Promoters, but that we would now be on
a database and informed of future things.[27]
It is true that we were informed of future things. I want to say
to them and exactly what I told Mr Stark when I wrote to him,
I found it difficult to believe we were not known because on 7
October, less than a week before, in fact, two weeks before the
consultation process that they so-called "took out",
I had the land registry people coming to my office asking for
details of which properties we owned.[28]
11325. When they were asked what it was for,
we were told that they were simply doing a local search and putting
data together. For them to tell me that they not know about us,
I find that very difficult to believe.
11326. I also find it difficult to believe because
we actually petitioned around this area because of our properties
in Brick Lane in 1991. We were one of the Petitioners putting
in an objection but, nevertheless, they told me that I and my
organisation had not heard about it because we were unknown to
them.
11327. When we did our own survey of round one
consultation we found that most people had not heard of them and
had not received leaflets. There was no consultation and yet the
round one consultation was through and the position of the line
had been decided, as had the work site.
11328. Can I have slide 21, please.[29]
This slide is very difficult. At the bottom it says, "Limit
of land subject to consultation". Because it says sheet number
13, and most of preliminary sheets say 13, I am assuming that
the very thin dotted line, which seems to be the lines of deviation,
were also the lines of consultation. Within that area there are
some 32 tenants of the SsBA, 47 residential properties of the
Spitalfields Housing Association and three properties in which
my office has an organisational basis, yet not one of those people
received a leaflet or knew anything about the round one consultation.
In fact, when I asked for, or somebody did on my behalf, all the
copies of the sheets of the display boards which had gone up in
the round one consultation to get a better view of what was going
on—can you pull up slide 23, please—you will see on
this slide at the top it tells us that Crossrail will be the largest
civil engineering project in Europe, but the bottom paragraph
says, "Proposed temporary work sites—and I expect we
were one of those, although we were a ventilation shaft as well—would
be subject to further consultation with the local authorities
and residents as our plans develop", yet they seemed to have
pretty clear plans for these when they were writing to the gentleman
who lived near there.[30]
11329. When I looked at these panels, 123 information
sheets that were displayed during the round one consultation across
London, 116 of them were about the design of stations and shafts,
basically the physical design of those particular things, and
only seven of those sheets covered general topics. The topics
covered were about the Crossrail project itself, the service it
would bring in terms of trains, the journey times that it would
improve on, the relief of overcrowding it would manage, its regenerative
effects for London, its construction and the final one was about
the authorisation and the opportunity that I would be able to
come and talk to you today. Not one of these sheets included any
environmental information for the people of London and I tell
you that is wrong. That is something they should have done and
we will be pursuing this.
11330. Can you put up 24(a), please?[31]
There was a press release which Crossrail themselves put out about
a presentation of their tunnelling techniques to a conference
in 2003. Mr Torp-Peterson, a gentleman who I have come to know
very well and have a lot of respect for, was telling us that engineers
never see problems, they only see challenges and that their pre-planning
challenge has been to ensure that the scheme is technically feasible
and can be built on time and within a controlled budget.
11331. I am sure this is exactly what Mr Torp-Peterson
did along with his other engineers.
11332. Mr Liddell-Grainger: Ms Jordan,
I think we have got the idea.
11333. Ms Jordan: I have got one more
comment to make on this and then I will go into the detail. Having
told us that a great deal of work had already been undertaken
to devise a route of least resistance and one which minimises
disruption for London Crossrail engineer, and this is what we
were, we were not about the considered best-placed position in
terms of the overall environmental impacts and everything else,
we were simply a route of least resistance. In fact, he went on
to say that they had taken into account the existing tube networks.
11334. Mr Liddell-Grainger: Mr Jordan,
I am going to stop you. Can you please come to your point. We
have gone through all this and we have made it clear as a Committee
that you are just reiterating. If you continue with this I will
stop you.
11335. Ms Jordan: I am continuing because
I believe I want to bring these points out to you.
11336. Mr Liddell-Grainger: It has been
done. One of the things I said at the beginning is that we do
not take repetition. We have made the point.
11337. Ms Jordan: I have missed two of
the days, but I have sat here and attempted to listen to what
has been put and not one day has anybody told you that during
round one consultation no environmental impact studies were presented.
11338. Mr Liddell-Grainger: We cannot
change the past, it is gone, finished.
11339. Ms Jordan: That is true, but let
me continue. I believe the route should have been set when the
Bill went to the Second Reading in the House on 19 July, and the
Parliamentary Under-Secretary reported to you as a Committee that
the Secretary of State made it clear on several occasions that,
"He expects the Select Committee to be able to consider representations
about the objections to the route". These are my objections.
24 Committee Ref: A124, Code of Practice on dissemination
of information during major infrastructure projects, www.communities.gov.uk Back
25
Committee Ref: A124, Crossrail Update, Cabinet Paper, London
Borough of Tower Hamlets, October 2002 (TOWNHLB-32305A-016). Back
26
Committee Ref: A124, Correspondence from CLRL to Mr Spurring,
11 July 2003 (TOWHLB-32305A-017). Back
27
Committee Ref: A124, Correspondence from DfT to SsBA, 30 January
2004 (TOWHLB-32305A-019). Back
28
Committee Ref: A124, Correspondence from SsBA to DfT, 6 February
2004 (TOWHLB-32305A-021). Back
29
Committee Ref: A124, London Borough of Tower Hamlets-Crossrail
Safeguarding Directions Sheet No. 13 (TOWNHLB-32305A-024). Back
30
Committee Ref: A124, Crossrail-Construction (TOWNHLB-32305A-026). Back
31
Committee Ref: A124, Crossrail's tunnelling designs impress at
international conference, www.crossrail.co.uk (TOWHLB-32305A-027
and -028). Back
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