Examination of Witnesses (Questions 12680
- 12699)
12680. The only thing I can think of, since
I did try and check this out with the British Cement Association
because it sounded so implausible, is the PR officer said "Ah,
gosh, that really stretches credibility. There is only one sort
of concrete that this might be true of and that is a specially
made one for airport runways which has to be very, very hard and
has to be ready very, very quickly but this is not for the generality
of building projects." So we have a concrete plant there
which we believe should not be there. I do have expert papers
on concrete hardening if you want me to send them to you at any
stage. That is important because of the distance. There are quite
a few plants rail-served not very far away. There are three at
King's Cross, for example. Crossrail initially said they were
not going to put in a temporary concrete batching plant when they
had to close this one down. They said they were going to put it
out to tender and other suppliers nearby such as the three at
King's Cross could obviously try to get this very lucrative and
important government contract. I thought that they were already
obliged to do under the rules on tendering for government contracts,
however, it turned out last week that they are going to put in
a temporary plant and Tarmac have done the design for it because
I got a copy of it from Tarmac, I rang Crossrail and they said,
"Oops, it's out, is it? I do not the detail but I just mention
it to you. Deals are being done.
12681. We are looking at three concrete plants.
We are looking at the old one we have got now, the temporary one
that is going to be squeezed in the top left-hand corner of the
drawing there, and which Tarmac's Area Operations Manager thinks
gives rise to considerable dangers with vehicle turning movements
because it is very small, and then we will get this much larger
plant which has a much bigger footprint than the current plant.
That will be slipped in, so to speak, under the false pretences
of concrete setting time and distance issues through to what I
take to be the slight misrepresentation of the London Plan, and
it will add considerably—and I am steering clear at this
point of the noise and pollution considerations—to the congestion
at that point where there will not, you remember, even be room
for an acoustic barrier against the freight trains.
12682. Just to give you an idea, leaving aside
for the moment pollution and the dangers to the children in the
school who are going to be right next door, of what noise problems
residents have here, the aggregates freight trains, which as you
know can only travel at night or in the small hours when the passenger
trains are not running, are the only freight trains that come
down our way as close to Paddington as that. There is a massive
great track to the west but most of it stops at Old Oak Common.
These trains come in the small hours and the noise they make peaks
at 100.8 decibels in the small hours, as measured by Crossrail's
own engineers for the Environmental Statement. That is like having
a pneumatic drill a metre from your ear. That measurement was
taken outside number 93 Westbourne Park Villas, which is a little
group of houses on the other side of the road that is virtually
sitting on the tracks.
12683. Other residents and I have been down—and
Tarmac have been quite open about their operations—and spent
the better part of a night observing that congested business there
with the old dilapidated plant that is still going and the freight
deliveries, and I can only say it is a terrifying sight. It is
jammed in against the Westbourne Park bus garage, which we have
not even mentioned yet, which will be tucked up there in a rather
clever plan that is going to go on two levels. It is very expensive
and because of all this other stuff going on in front of it they
are having to do this with piling, causing people to write letters
and exchange correspondence in the engineering press. It is going
to have The Westway as the roof as its upper tier and then underneath
will be the second lot. That is at the moment just a wrap really
and not enough space for the 150 buses they are going to have
to accommodate. That all has to squeeze in there with the concrete
plant.
12684. There have been fatal accidents already.
Buses are forever slipping their brakes backwards down that ramp.
A bus company employee was killed. You probably heard about the
fire at the Westbourne bus garage in January or saw the smoke
that lay over London for two days. Noxious smoke of course. A
young local teenager has been charged, I know, with torching those
places. The scariest one of all has not been reported and it happened
in November. A bus slipped its brakes again, slid down the ramp
and stopped that far from the fuel tanks belonging to the old
concrete plant. It was just held by the fence that just did not
give way. That would have been a real disaster.
12685. If Crossrail is delayed as we believe,
most people believe (everybody believes?) it will be, and certainly
our local MP believes it will not even begin until after the Olympics,
we shall be stuck with that very old concrete batching plant which
the Operations Manager knows he cannot keep going for that long.
It is just falling apart. It is already in breach of certain rules.
They can just about get away with it and they do what they can
to patch it up and bring it in line with modern standards. This
is a nonsense. Nobody is going to get out of this in a sensible
way. I know for a fact that the Metropolitan Police, the SO13
Anti-Terrorist Branch, have not been consulted on this and I also
know they have given a presentation at the King's Cross batching
plants to say how frightened they are having a cement mixer under
a flyover, next to a school, just down the road from Paddington
Green Police Station where terrorist suspects are held, and a
hop and a skip away from where pretty much all the suspects arrested
after the 21 July London bombings live. It is a big issue for
them and we do think that that one should be put into the pot
as well.
12686. I am not sure that you want to hear a
lecture from me about how awful concrete batching plants are for
children's health because I think you can probably work that one
out for yourselves. I am sure you all know David Lammy, the Culture
Minister, had a massive campaign in his constituency on this subject.
Let me know if you want to hear about it but you can see that
it is a major issue. In addition, by the way, all this is going
to pinch a playing field from the new school which is nearly finished.
So you have a school with a concrete plant alongside it. Okay,
with conditions to be an all-singing all-dancing modern one but
still noxious and all the other objections. And guess what is
just one mile down the road, with a rail head? Old Oak Common.
Old Oak Common is an extensive site. The turn-back facility is
small obviously. The concrete batching plant is bigger but guess
what else is down the road at Old Oak Common? EWS, the freight
movers, the biggest of the freight companies, which is the one
whose wagons wake us up and shake our houses to bits in the middle
of the night. They are being moved as of next year to North Pole
depot which is on this side and Old Oak Common is the big patch
of land above it. We do not seem to have a picture of that, unfortunately,
but it is only a mile down the way. I see absolutely no reason
why, bearing in mind that it will be positively dangerous and
very difficult for us all to avoid a disaster if Crossrail is
delayed and this old plant has to stay on, I see no reason why
it should not be considered as an over-site development down there
where I am quite sure there will be less of a conflict in planning
terms because it is not a residential area, it is a large area
of railway land and there is an adjacent brown field site which
the Minister mentioned in his statement last week.
12687. I am sure it will cost something. I know
that Tarmac can get around to some extent the problem of bringing
lorries by road. It is not very far. We will still get it. It
will not be much advantage to us because it will have to come
on The Westway, the A40, but at least that is better than having
great big concrete mixer lorries—I am having the same problems—going
through the little streets in Alfred Road between the school and
the block of flats, I would have thought because it is a main
road. Also I know that there are technical ways of dealing with
having to have large shipments of cement on the road. They do
have much bigger cement mixers on the Continent and we can get
hold of those. We do not have to have 100 little ones, if you
see what I mean. I have gone on a little bit about that. The residents
really do feel very strongly about it. If we could get clearer
that whole congested area it would be safer for everybody.
12688. It would match up to what our local authority,
Westminster, made very clear. There has been huge change of use
in that site which once upon a long time ago, yes, was an old
railway yard with freight sidings but which for long years now
have been artists' studios and small businesses. Now that land
is needed for the very fast-growing population of young children
with the nursery and the Westminster Academy, which is going to
be three new schools in that estate, and there is a tremendous
pressure for residential amenity in the form of green space. To
lose a playing field on a school site like that which is very
tight indeed --- I do not like the idea that the London Plan somehow
trumps national policy on children, exercise and obesity, for
example, but it seems perhaps it does. There is your concrete
batching plant, I hope, transferred down to Old Oak Common.
12689. Perhaps if you have not seen it, it would
be alright if I read you a brief statement under the heading "Sustainable
Distribution Fund" from the Transport Minister last week.[100]
This was a separate statement from the one about making the depot
at Old Oak Common. Here is my favourite word "sustainable"
again.
12690. Sir Peter Soulsby: If you would
like to put it on the overhead projector.
12691. Lady Bright: Whenever anybody
suggests changing anything everybody always says it costs too
much and is the money available in this statement? Is it readable?
12692. Sir Peter Soulsby: I do not think
you need read it out. We note it is the Minister of State making
the statement on the Sustainable Distribution Fund.
12693. Lady Bright: Obviously the important
thing about it is that it is a fund set up to deal with precisely
what we are talking about to secure the benefits of reduced pollution
and congestion on the railways, and we are talking freight here,
sustainable distribution. It seems to me that it really is all
there.
12694. Sir Peter Soulsby: I think we
understand the point entirely but thank you.
12695. Lady Bright: I do not know if
anybody wants to come back on this.
12696. Sir Peter Soulsby: Thank you very
much Lady Bright. Ms Lieven?
12697. Ms Lieven: I do not know if that
is all of Lady Bright's points or she was just concentrating on
the concrete batching plant.
12698. Lady Bright: I wanted to take
them first but I am sorry I am not good at procedure.
12699. Sir Peter Soulsby: In which case
we will wait and take the remainder of your points, Lady Bright,
and then we will come to Ms Lieven.
100 House of Commons Hansard, Written Ministerial
Statement, Columns 75-76WS, 15 June 2006, www.publications.parliament.uk Back
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