Examination of Witnesses (Questions 11540
- 11559)
11540. One final important point to note—and
this is really going to come up next week more with the residents
but you might as well know it now so that you can see the issue
as a totality—the proposed hours condition relates to the
hours of operation of the batching plant, which is properly a
matter for planning control. In order to get into the batching
plant, the freight train, the aggregates train has to go along
the sidings. The sidings are at the moment in a large part, and
will be railway operational land, and as such it is a fundamental
principle of rail freight that they are not subject to conditions.
Network Rail can operate rail freight trains at any time and with
any noise on operational land, and that is the principle that
we are seeking to establish through the conditions, so the batching
plant itself will be subject to planning conditions but the sidings
will not and it is important to understand that now so there is
no prospect of being misunderstood.
11541. Finally in respect of the conditions,
it is very important to bear in mind that under the Bill Westminster
will be the enforcement authority so they will have all the enforcement
powers they would normally have through the planning process,
so if they feel that the operator, whether it is Tarmac or somebody
else, is operating outside the conditions then it is up to them
to enforce it. I am sorry I have taken a bit of time over that
but I think it is useful to know what our position is at the beginning.
11542. That is all I intended to say in opening,
sir, unless there is anything else that would be helpful at this
point.
11543. Mr Liddell-Grainger: I do not
think so, Ms Lieven, that is extremely good. Obviously there will
always be concern about getting information out to petitioners.
You have accepted that it has not been as good as it might be
and we accept that as a Committee. To put it on the record, we
will monitor what petitioners say as we go through this. If there
are complaints that are legitimate of course we will take them
up. I would also make the point from the chair that if this is
a recurrent theme I will stop people.
11544. Ms Lieven: The reason I have emphasised
it, sir, is because it is slightly different here in as much as
there is an explanation as to why it has happened. If it is an
issue it will be a particular issue with PRACT this evening and
we will have to see what they say about it then.
11545. Mr Liddell-Grainger: Thank you
very much indeed. Mr Clarkson?
11546. Mr Clarkson: I will open equally
as briefly, if I may, to introduce my witnesses. There are two:
Mr King will deal with planning matters and Mr Murchie will deal
with the operational and transportation matters.
11547. We came before the Committee I think
31 days ago and dealt with the area of Westminster east of Paddington
and left over this area for today. We were hopeful of resolving
Paddington issues, and we introduced a wide-ranging concern last
time, and they were specific and generic. Some of them have been
addressed. I hope the Committee has a document in that form that
shows what they were, and I do not ask you to take it up now.
11548. Mr Liddell-Grainger: A130.[1]
11549. Mr Clarkson: I shall take that
up with Mr King in due course, but I do say that we are anxious
about receiving information. We accept the disarming plea in mitigation
by Ms Lieven this morning about the different scheme, and it was
done very openly and charmingly, but at the end of the day those
on this side of the room do face a moving target and have difficulty.
I do not say that lightly because the City of Westminster, as
a responsible local authority, are very anxious, as they support
the Bill, to move forward in support with the Promoters but there
is a great degree of concern that they are not getting the material
they should. For example, we share with the officers of the Promoters
this morning the discovery of the model for the first time in
the corridor. That disadvantages us and perhaps even more the
local residents and third parties to some extent.
11550. What we labour for you nevertheless are
the four issues that Ms Lieven has identified. Concrete batching
at New Yard: what we are anxious for is to be involved in the
planning process. It is outwith, we say, the works. It is a new,
in the longer term, concrete batching plant and in the normal
way we should supervise it in the context of policy and we should
enforce the conditions. Of course, that is to some extent also
part of the moving target process because there is going to be
an AP3 amendment there.
11551. Ditto, when it comes to the works at
the station. The Hammersmith and City Line is a particular area
of interest. We are anxious to have a subterranean link to the
Hammersmith and City Line. You have seen it yesterday and you
understand the issues. What we do not want is this convoluted
manoeuvre over the top of the bridge through the station and we
will look at that with Mr Murchie. The Heathrow link, I hope the
Committee will understand, is the absolute core of so many parties'
support for the Crossrail. Crossrail is there, as we understand
it, to relieve central London and to energise the links across
London. Very much involved in the core area of that is the Heathrow
to central London link, and we are anxious to have that from the
first day of operation.
11552. An area that is not the subject of AP3
is the Great Western Studios. I do not think the Committee went
inside them yesterday, but if you had you would have seen an energetic,
busy operation of a large number—I think it is 140—small
businesses all working away, and they have been for 12 years.
There is a waiting list. They are an important contribution to
the local economy in an area of deprivation. All we seek is a
mechanism to make sure that those people, those businesses, are
treated properly if their building is to go. They are going to
come along and Petition in due course, and we do not labour that
too much; we just seek to set the overview before you.
11553. The last point I would make in opening
is that we resolved the generic issue of hours of work, and in
doing that we have worked with the Promoters on behalf of a number
of the councils who are concerned about it. Just may I make it
plain, for the record, that we are allowing some deliveries during
shoulder hours, as they are called—that is the hours leading
up to the work hours in the morning and after the closure in the
evening—but we make it quite plain that that should not
be looked upon as a precedent for other projects (I do not blame
the Promoters here) which have to be decided in due course over
the years on their own merits, because this is an issue that will
be clearly germane and will be fought in the future.
11554. Unless I can help the Committee, that
is all I have to say in opening and I will call Mr King.
Mr Graham King, recalled
Examined by Mr Clarkson
11555. Mr Clarkson: Mr King, you have
given evidence before to the Committee and I do not propose, therefore,
to introduce you. I think the Committee met you yesterday. Let
us deal with the issues that you introduce. They are the New Yard
issues, first of all. Can we deal with those? Bring in, would
you, very briefly, the socio-economic background of the area we
are looking at.
(Mr King) The background to Paddington New
Yard is unusual by Westminster standards because it is an area
of land which has been in railway use since the 1830s but the
railway has contracted in that use in the last 20 or so years
to the point where only the Marcon Top Mix sidings and the concrete
batching plant are in railway use. The large building which is
now Great Western Studios was originally the Great Western freight
depot and then became the missing goods depot for the whole of
British Rail. If you lost an umbrella in Perth it ended up there.
When that use came to an end the Crossrail safeguarding had already
taken effect, and, on a temporary licence from Network Rail, Great
Western Studios was set up. It is worth bearing in mind that in
the background other things had happened to the site: the creation
of Westway in the 1960s carving through the site at a high level
produces the A40M link into central London at that point, and
there has been a major set of, frankly, slum clearance housing
schemes carried out either side of the New Yard site in the 1950s
and 1960s. The Brunel Estate to the south was carried out in the
late-1960s, and the Warwick Estate to the north, which were the
tall tower blocks along the Harrow Road, was a scheme that took
about 25 years from the early-50s. Also at that time there was,
just to the north of the Paddington New Yard site, a major hospital,
confusingly another St Mary's Hospital—not the one you saw
by Paddington Station but St Mary's in Harrow Road—which
closed by the NHS in 1985 and has subsequently been redeveloped.
That starts to give you the flavour of the way this area has,
in part, changed from the early days of Crossrail safeguarding.
First of all, that site has been entirely, with one small exception,
redeveloped for housing—a mixture of social housing, market
housing and hospital accommodation for nurses working within the
NHS. There have also been major programmes more recently started
in the area to address the condition of some of the 1950 housing
estates, such as Warwick Estate. A £200 million housing project
has just got under way to repair the 25-storey tower block. There
has been some infill housing there in the past and because an
area like Westminster is under significant housing stress as regards
its role as a public landlord, a lot of the housing is now more
intensely used than at any time in the past, and by a larger number
of communities than you would expect to have been the case, certainly
in the days of Crossrail's initial safeguarding, 1991, and even,
perhaps, to the promotion of the Bill in more recent years. These
things have changed significantly. Other matters that impinge
upon the site that we think are different and to which we think
the Promoter has paid insufficient attention, despite having it
pointed out to them throughout this process, is that as part of
the Government's academy programme the City of Westminster has
facilitated the Department for Education and Skills to put two
academies into this area. One is a little way from the site, although
it is on the bus route back from the site yesterday, and the other
one is immediately adjoining Alfred Road and Harrow Road.
11556. Is it open?
(Mr King) No, it is under construction. The
main floors are built and it is due to be opened in 2007. Obviously,
that is the Government's academies programme. What this will do
is significantly improve opportunities for what has been a school
which has come close to failing, the North Westminster Community
School which is currently on three sites in the north of the City,
which we inherited from the London Education Authority and will
provide three extra academies to provide a higher standard and
broader range of education opportunity for the very diverse backgrounds.
It is worth pointing out that I do not make the diverse backgrounds
point lightly. To give you an indicator, probably far more subtle
and relevant than the Census, which has problems with the City
of Westminster, as it does with Kensington and Chelsea, with tracking
population movement: 140 languages other than English are spoken
by the children in Thames Valley schools. That, I think, is one
of the highest figures you will have been quoted and is one that
is partly the driver for that change, because those children are
local. That means there are 140 languages other than English spoken
as a first language where those children live, and those children,
at that school, live in the W2, W9, W10 and W11 postcodes.
11557. What does that bring to the debate as
to the vulnerability of the residents, both socially and environmentally?
(Mr King) It turns to the fact that we have
been able to show, and government has acknowledged, that the Westbourne
Ward (and the ward structure is a little bit complicated in this
area but it bears to the main point) is one of the foremost deprived
wards in the City and has a degree of deprivation which is so
significant it attracts Neighbourhood Renewal Funding and it is
the focus of one of our four local area renewal partnerships (the
other three are next-door)—they are done on a ward basis,
because that is the way ODPM wanted that matter carried out. So
you have a focus for all of the public agencies in the area, as
to not only an emerging but an increasingly varied population
with different needs, different requirements, in an area which
adjoins what is, on the Promoter's case, a piece of land associated
with railway use which, for the most part, is obviously defunct
or, as you have heard, is, frankly, only intermittently used for
the existing Marcon Top Mix operation. That operation went in
there under a planning application in 1982 and, frankly, an awful
lot of things have changed at that time. It came at the back of
the completion of the bus garage which you saw tucked underneath
Westway, which was approved by the City Council in 1977 and is
one of the few remaining bus garages of its kind which was a major
London Transport project in the mid-70s to put new bus garages
in place. Changes in bus services across London actually led to
a lot of those being lost and being redeveloped: Norbiton and
Norwood and a few others have all gone; this one has remained,
we understand from London Buses, because, particularly now, it
has increased, post-congestion charge, the number of buses in
London. This is not a facility they can do without. That bears
to the point that quite properly the Promoter seems to have addressed
the matter of Paddington New Yard of taking away the bus standing
area, which you saw was the vacant area because of the time you
went there. If you go there of a night, and you have been shown
some of the Promoter's photographs, it is stacked full of buses
awaiting use in the morning. That operation is to be replaced
underneath Westway in a double-decker bus garage. It did come
to us, rather curiously, as a planning application, which we were
happy to approve and would have done if the Promoter had not withdrawn
the application very much at the last moment (and for reasons
we still do not fully understand) in December 2004. I think I
would extend that point to say that throughout this exercise—and
I have personally been dealing with this site since 1987—the
City Council has attempted to convince the Promoter in these issues,
and that has enabled the Promoter, by giving early advice on planning
briefs and documentation, of the range of issues that apply to
the site today and, in particular, how they have changed from
the past. All we have sought from the Promoter to do, and continue
to do on the matters that remain outstanding before us, is to
pay attention to those issues and act in a way that we would find
conducive to anyone else who was a developer or a promoter of
a scheme coming into an area where change is under way.
11558. We will pause, with that ringing in our
ears, and we will go, in due course, to the concrete batching
plant and the studios. Before we do, I would like the overview,
please, from you, as the Westminster planning evidence, as to
whether you are comfortable that you have enough information,
in a broader sense. Are you receiving enough information?
(Mr King) If I restrict my comments, firstly,
to the batching plant.
11559. Deal with it generally, first, and then
descend.
(Mr King) I will descend quickly, I can assure
you. Frankly, no. Given that the draft of our Petition was with
the Promoter in May 2005 and they saw the working drafts between
then and its completion in September 2005, given the planning
briefs we have produced in draft with them and the endless meetings
we have had, one is frankly compelled to come to the conclusion
that the traffic has been significantly one-way. We have been
giving information and not been receiving information in return—information
that is either accurate, that is thought-through or where it may
assist in detail that detail has not been sent to us. There is
obviously significant work the Promoter has which would address
our concerns and may lead us to the view we are wrong, but that
information has not been sent to us on a number of matters. We
have what the Bill submits and very little else. We do not have
the volumes of work which must exist somewhere to justify the
model we have just seen. We started to see sketches of what that
model might be during the course of the last ten days. I hope
no one has gone and built a model just on the basis of those sketches.
I have heard more about the model outside from other parties than
I have from the Promoter. We will get the information, obviously;
we intend to become a qualifying authority, we will go through
the various routes laid down by the Bill as it is enacted, and
I am sure this will come, but where those matters clash, as it
were, with powers that the Promoter is currently seeking we feel
we have to bring before you our unease and concern at the lack
of openness and the lack of direct engagement, despite a willingness
to discuss on our part and despite manufacturing systems and organisations
to make it easy for Crossrail to work with other parties. I am
at a loss to understand why the Promoter has not taken advantage
of any of those.
1 Committee Ref: A130, City of Westminster-Proof of
Evidence. Back
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