Examination of Witnesses (Questions 11560
- 11579)
11560. Where, for example, you are the listed
building authority (let us put it simply like that), when you
see the model you have just seen, does that satisfy all the boxes
you have to tick to be comfortable in your support for Crossrail?
(Mr King) No. It is unfortunate because what
is outside might well be the answer. That and the document you
referred to earlier and took in evidence as our exhibit, I think,
clearly sets out the number of things we think can be resolved
by later discussion.
11561. We will look at that in due course.
(Mr King) The problem, I think, is highlighted
by the fact that the Promoter had not, until 12 June, found it
able to put the Paddington Station scheme its own Design Review
panel. This is a process where very useful information is adopted
following the discussions with government and London local authorities
for a mini-review process similar to that exercised by the Commission
for Architecture in the Built Environment to review a scheme.
The other stations have been reviewed and an expert panel is convened
for that purpose. That meeting took place on 12 June in relation
to Paddington. The minutes are not yet out, I think it is fair
to say, but it is certainly true to say that having attended the
meeting many of the people present, English Heritage and the GLA,
had less information than we did. Bizarrely, Network Rail and
London Underground were not invited to attend that meeting, which
they should have been, and furthermore everyone thought they were
there to discuss the hybrid Bill scheme, which the Committee has
had before it for some time—
11562. All right, Mr King. We will not be allowed
to go too far down that line, but let us have in a sentence what
it is you ask of the Promoter hereon in, so we can have it on
the record, and the Committee will understand your concern, please.
(Mr King) Chairman, I am conscious that when
I was here in February talking about matters affecting the W1
area of the City one of the things we asked your Committee to
consider would be for the Promoter to come forward with a realistic
programme which showed how the outstanding matters were to be
addressed and through that would involve the key players, such
as ourselves, other objectors and other agencies. I would merely
repeat that plea.
11563. Let us move on to the heading "concrete
batching plant". Let us start with the objective. What is
it that you are asking the Committee to do for you? If there is
a document you want, make sure you have it.
(Mr King) The concrete batching plant exists.
No one is trying to pretend otherwise.
11564. The Committee has seen it, so we know
about that.
(Mr King) What the Promoter is having to do
is move it twice. Firstly, and most worryingly, because this has
only become apparent in the last couple of days, the temporary
move will no longer give you a rail-served concrete batching plant,
yet the thing we are all trying to protect is rail-served batching
plants. The temporary scheme, as explained to us in diagrams and
words rather than reports (no one has had the decency to send
them to us), will only give you a lorry-served batching plant.
Given the area I have described, which it also needs to be said
is not only a major bus garage but it is on the fringe of the
line chosen by the Mayor to be a congestion-cordon zone in February
2007 when the congestion charge is extended to this part of the
world, we expect traffic issues in this area to become very intense.
What we appear to be faced with, then, if only for a temporary
period but nevertheless an important temporary period, is a lorry-served
facility, with aggregate in, concrete out, all by lorry. The road
which serves this site was constructed by the bus company for
the bus company's use in 1977 (it replaced a rather odd way of
getting to the site). Therefore, we are not confident, because
we have not seen the figures, that all these vehicle movements
alongside Crossrail construction traffic, alongside the extra
buses in the Harrow Road, alongside the congestion charge in the
Harrow Road, can all be met. If we thought this was the envelope
for normal traffic we would be happy to rely on our powers as
a highway authority later on, contained within the Bill, to resolve
this at a later stage. There must come a point with any site where
a breaking point is reached. For all we know, this is it, and
without the basis of even the most broad technical information
before us we find we are unwilling to trust that this is okay.
11565. So point one is you want the information,
do you, as to the vehicular movements anticipated for the interim
batching plant. Is that right?
(Mr King) That is correct.
11566. Via ES?
(Mr King) I do not think it would require an
ES approach. However, we have always suggested to the Promoter
that the Environmental Statement scoping for considering impacts
is a very good way, particularly in an area like this, to pick
up all the impacts there may be: on pedestrians, residential users—in
this case, people using the bus station, people using the adjacent
London Underground station.
11567. So that is point one. Point two, more
generally: what is it, by way of end game, that the Council wants
for the concrete batching plant?
(Mr King) As this is going to be moved with
new structures and new layouts we would like clarity on its capacity,
which we have seen by way of correspondence we have been close
to getting, but also its conditions to make sure that it fits
into the planning context within which the rest of the City has
to be managed today, and not that which pertained in 1982. In
1982 the document we would be relying on would have been the relatively
recently approved GLDP (Greater London Development Plan) 1976,
which said aggregate-served rail depots were a good idea, and
the 1978 draft of the Westminster District Plan. This is a very
venerable document but it is not one that we would want to govern
discussions today. The list of conditions on which we have been
in discussion over the last couple of days with the Promoter gives
us hope, particularly with what has been said today by counsel
for the Promoter in relation to enforceability, and give us the
confidence that this can be properly controlled.
11568. Have we reached a stage yet where a set
of conditions is agreed?
(Mr King) Not finally agreed, no.
11569. But they are under debate, are they?
(Mr King) Yes, they are.
11570. Perhaps, lastly, the more global approach
on this: how is it that the Council sees the planning regime being
achieved or initiated, enforced, permitted for this new batching
plant?
(Mr King) We hope that, along with the other
matters which have been contained in the document put before you
today, there is clarity as to the planning regime that will exist
for land to become non-operational railway land at the end of
this project, which affects quite an area of land. What we are
trying to look to, beyond Crossrail having constructed this facility
and having moved on, is that this is all capable of being properly
planned and managed in an area where land is scarce; where there
is demand for land for social housing, environmental needs as
well as the needs of small businesses; that there is enough land
left over to be properly managed. We think we would have that
if the current negotiations are fruitful, where we are also trying
to make sure that the hours of work of the batching plant are
not going to encroach on the railway.
11571. So I have it clear: are you comfortable
that it is dealt with via the Secretary of State having some sort
of overview, via AP3, as I believe it sets conditions, or do you
want some other mechanism?
(Mr King) We would be entirely happy if this
approach did not have to wait on an AP3 and came through the planning
system in the normal way and can be dealt with alongside everything
else. Therefore, we can fulfil our role, insofar as we carry on
with this site when the Promoter moves away, with proper planning
of the area. However, when we see AP3 (obviously we have not seen
that yet) we trust we will be able to be satisfied that AP3 and
the conditions will give us all the points we need.
11572. I can perhaps shorten it now we have
got it clear. Your position, after hearing Ms Lieven's opening,
is that you would be happier if it was left with you as the planning
authority, but you want to keep your powder dry on that pending
AP3. Is that right?
(Mr King) That is right. If I may, by extension,
say one point. A matter which is also in the document put before
you today, which we think may come back as AP3, is that the turnaround
facility that is remaining on the site for Crossrail has been
there for a little while. It was not in the original scheme, certainly
prior to the last couple of years. The decision, we understand,
which has been announced by the Minister for moving the depot
from Mountford Road Common, we have been told verbally, makes
no difference on the need to move the facility, but it is a matter
we would like to see investigated further because we do wonder
if this land continues to me to be blighted by railway use (I
say that in the context of the other pressures bearing on this
land) because if it can be removed and all the other uses controlled
and planned in an appropriate fashion we think this site has an
opportunity to offer improvements to people's ways of life and
ways of working in the area rather than just some passive sidings,
which may or may not be needed.
11573. Let us move on to the other New Yard
heading, and that is the studios.
(Mr King) Great Western Studios has been a
remarkable success story from the idea of a couple of people who,
I believe, are appearing before you to give evidence.
11574. They are going to come along. We need
not go into too much detail of the specific operations because
they are Petitioners.
(Mr King) I would only suggest that from the
local authority's point of view they have managed to create something
which has not only attracted the interest of ourselves but our
active involvement, the involvement of the adjacent borough, the
Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea; it has attracted legitimate
support for regeneration funding for the creation of new accommodation
for the operation known as Westbourne Studios, which is just in
the Royal Borough (that was funded by Single Regeneration Budget
programme, five, in the area); it has also come to the attention
of the Mayor through the London Development Agency who has, because
of the activity at Great Western Studios, nominated this as a
place for the creative industry as a cluster. It is because the
artists and the artist studios may well give rise to people painting
pictures there—and some of them do—and sculpture—and
some of them do.
11575. They are producing?
(Mr King) They produce and manufacture and
are involved in what is, in inner West London, a very significant
industrial base which is known generally, these days, in the jargon,
as a creative industry. They happen to exist in this property,
which came about as a windfall, and they are on short-term contracts,
as would be expected. Because the site has been so developed—we
all knew that demolition was likely one day—the question
is how, given the economic development strategy of the City of
Westminster, published in 2005, which fits alongside perfectly
the ambitions of the Mayor in the London Plan and his activities
in the London Development Agency, such a use should not just be
entirely snuffed out by the Promoter, which is what they seemingly
currently—
11576. What does Westminster ask the Promoters
to do via the Committee?
(Mr King) We accept the case that the National
Compensation Code does not address people with the types of contracts
Great Western Studios have. We, however, think that the Promoter
and the Promoter's agencies (which, of course, include Transport
for London, a branch of the Mayor's family, as is the LDA) to
work with the local authority and Great Western Studios in identifying
what other property, perhaps, in the gift or the ownership of
people who are promoting this Bill or closely connected to this
Bill, could replicate some form of re-provision of the studios,
given their importance as a local economic activity and their
link to regional and metropolitan policy on the important matter
about employment and about the creative industry's contribution
to the GDP of London and the United Kingdom.
11577. Has there been any offer of like-for-like
premises from the estate of any of the Promoter's proponents or
their friends?
(Mr King) Nobody directly associated with the
project has responded positively to this matter since we raised
it.
11578. Are you being unrealistic in hoping for
some sort of premises of this style in the locality?
(Mr King) No. There are some properties in
the locality, which we had pointed out to people, which do exist,
some of which may be implicated in various ways by Crossrail,
even if they are not currently owned by a Crossrail partner, as
it were. We think those opportunities remain. Where your coach
parked yesterday in Westbourne Park Villas is right opposite one
of them, for example, and 36 Porchester Road is equal to Network
Rail's property Enterprise House, which under additional provision
coming to you later, we understand, in relation to 4 to 80 Bishop's
Bridge Road, you will have to revisit that site anyway because
the whole basement will be taken over for Crossrail. There are
five floors and mixed use property above, which could prove a
very satisfactory location, at least to be examined. We are happy
to be proved wrong on these points, but before abandoning policies
which have been developed through public consultation and listening
to all the advice bearing on local authorities, we would at least
like the benefit of a proper technical discussion and reports
being issued to meet the points that we have continued to raise
with the Promoter.
11579. The last area I am going to ask you to
deal with is to take up document A130, please. What we will do
is very quickly take the Committee through the areas of contention.
I will lead it and ask the question so we can race through, to
some extent. On the first two, "Operational Railways—Heathrow
Link" and "impact at Paddington" we are going to
hear from Mr Murchie.
(Mr King) That is correct.
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