House of Commons - Crossrail Bill

Select Committee on Crossrail Bill Minutes of Evidence

Examination of Witnesses (Questions 16600 - 16619)

16600. Mr Payne: Mr Winbourne, I want to go as quickly as possible through your papers in your bundle so you can explain their significance and the importance of each case. Mr Winbourne, let us go through them, please.
(Mr Winbourne) I am working through these bundles from the back, the oldest is at the back and what I intend to do is to very quickly describe the significance of each sheet. I know that you are sitting in the recess beyond the date when Parliament has risen and I am trying to leave it so it is at least possible this morning that the papers are there before you. They will simply state the significance of each sheet and then carry on quickly then we will go back to questions and answers, that is the arrangement. The first one at the back is the original Crossrail route which was canvassed back in the 1989-1991 Bill.[2] The point about it is that it has been changed and any calculations as to whether one route is superior to the other with regard to passenger usage and so on are completely out of date. This is the original route, they have taken off the north western section and they are changing it regularly.

16601. Chairman: Just before we proceed, can we list it as A1A4.
(Mr Winbourne) Next are two sheets which are at the back and front of one of my very first reports in February 1992 and that is the date of it.[3] Mr Dennis Hunt and I, an engineer whose name appears on that paper, had looked at alternative routes and I would like you to look at the back sheet which is the map.[4] The reason I am showing you that is that is the route which Crossrail say they had evaluated for you as you will see in a moment. It has been altered significantly but they have not bothered to give your Committee, the Government, the Mayor or anybody else evaluations of what has been altered. They are still playing around with the February 1992 alignment. Therefore, they are suggesting that they have evaluated fairly and cannot possible settle. The next thing is single sheet which is item number eight at the top.[5] The date is 15 September 1992 and it states that there was going to be a report to Westminster City Council, I have not brought all the papers, I have got a filing cabinet full of papers and I have selected very carefully here what to show you. I am simply wishing to draw to your attention their number one, the last couple of lines where it says that the route is, as far as practicable, within the existing Metropolitan and Circle Lines which of course would be obvious to you. The recommendation 2.1 that the joint Promoters of the Crossrail Bill, London Underground and British Rail, be asked to submit a formal response. I can tell you they did and I can tell you part of what came out of that. The next two sheets are not of particular significance, accept to say that in correspondence to the Corporation of London, because their plan was coming up as well, my office is in the City as you see at that time it was in Queen Victoria Street not far from where it is now, and the point is I got a bland and soft answer, they were not bothering with anything really.[6] That has been the way of the City Corporation all the way through. The next item is again two sheets but it is from something about three quarters of an inch thick which was the actual report which I got a copy of eight years later from Sir Michael Clapham by Halcrow, the engineers who advised on the original scheme.[7] They did a jolly good report which is dated January 1993 as you can see from the front sheet of that. The point about it is that they did a descent proper alternative evaluation which I have read carefully. They criticised certain things, of course they did, they said some things were better such as at Farrington and so on. What they never did was consult with me. They were not asked to come back and liaise and consult and say what do you think about this? It never happened in the entire time of the Bill. In other words we were kept away from it. I never got a copy of this report, Sir Michael Clapham did and he assumed I got one, he was leading the residents of Mayfair at the time, he is dead now unfortunately. He was former head of the CBI.

16602. Mr Payne: The next topic please, Norman?
(Mr Winbourne) The next page is a proper map of the Crossrail alternative route and what I have brought to your attention, and I can provide coloured copies of these in the recess if you so require but I have kept it simple as I said, if you look at the bottom left hand side you see "City compromised route" and if you look at the date in long hand on the right hand corner you see "March 1993".[8] There is no doubt that Crossrail have known about this ever since then and what it amounts to is that between Farrington and Barking and Moorgate/Liverpool Street and so on there is a middle route and that is what matters and that is the one that they are not going to evaluate for you unless there is serious significance. This shows the Liverpool Street Station somewhat to the north of where that is and it is at the northern margins of Liverpool Street and Moorgate where it is a lot cheaper and easier to put a station and it would reverse some of the flows in Liverpool Street Station and make it less crowded and the whole thing would work a lot better if it went on less valuable property and also that would take advantage of open spaces as part of the route.

16603. The next point, please?
(Mr Winbourne) The other point is that it goes straight out onto the surface line, they have knocked down a viaduct, for taking spoiling out of by rail. You will see, because it goes around all the stations on the north side, there must be better opportunities to take the spoil in and out via rail somewhere along that route, King's Cross, Euston or wherever. The next is not to be read now, an article that was published at the end of 1993 by myself in the Estates Gazette, we worked very hard to condense it.[9] I would say that something like 70% of what is there will still remain valuable, possibly more, obviously the reason changes. The next is very important and it would appear to be out of sequence, it is the 1991 safeguarding direction which I drew to your attention when I was giving evidence in Mayfair.[10] I got it from the Department on 7 July 2001 by letter which is why I put it in on the date of order. What I wish to draw to your attention is towards the end of it in the guidance notes, if somebody can find that, that is about four pages in, on page 2 there are various things I have highlighted. I will not bore you with this. If you come to page 3 of the guidance notes, this is the particular thing that matters and this is the bit that is not generally published and I propose to read it: "The Department suggests that, in response to the appropriate question in the Additional Enquiry"—that is by solicitor's order letter—authorities respond along the following lines: the property is/is not within the limits of land subject to consultation for Crossrail"—those are the surface limits of course we are talking about there and then is says: "The property is/is not within 133 metres of an area of surface interest for Crossrail." I think I said 144 or something when I gave evidence before and I would like to correct that, please.[11] This is seriously significant because if you took that right across London you are looking at something like about a quarter of a mile across. The next item is simply a press extract from 29 July 2001 from the Sunday Telegraph and it refers to buildings which have been damaged by the Jubilee Line, contrary to the evidence that you have been given all the way through that it was pretty easy-going.[12] Of course, they mention Big Ben because they could not avoid it. For example, the article says some buildings have had more than six inches. This is the Jubilee Line and we are dealing with Crossrail, which is two and a half times as big in physical terms and exponentially much worse. So there is a clear-cut report in 2001 about the effect of tunnelling. The next is simply what I believe to be the Crossrail 2 options.[13] It is not terrible important except to show that it is King's Cross-Victoria-Central Line. That is almost not new. The fact is the original cross-London rail link is of 1980, it is a British Rail scheme, and it is Euston to Victoria, so what they have been doing all the time, I do not know. The fact is it is published matter and I have not got it with me but I can get copies in colour with handouts of real discussion documents signed by the head of British Rail at the time. The proposal was Victoria to Euston and what they have done of course is to reserve St Pancras Station for their Crossrail 2. So they are pretty good at grabbing thing from other people.

16604. The next, please.
(Mr Winbourne) The next thing is very important. I do not intend to go through every detail of it but it is a meeting note of December 2001.[14] I would like to draw to your attention first the heading which is not up on the VDU. It says "Apologies" and "Notes by distribution", and among those distribution people is Mr Keith Berryman who we have heard many times. Now this meeting note dealt with—and we will be dealing with these points in questions and answers so I do not want to go through them in detail now—all the differences between the northern interchange route and the other route and also what they call the Wigmore alignment but what I call, and I now use the correct title, the Cavendish Square option. That was what it was referred to as in correspondence and they changed the name to make it mysterious and divert attention from Cavendish Square, and I will show you why in a minute. Can I just say that anything I say is not addressed to your Committee of course or to the Government as a whole or to the previous Government as a whole. It is directed to the people who have not taken notice when they should have done. I hope that that is totally understood, Chairman, if I seem a bit strong in what I am saying.

16605. Chairman: "Terse" is probably the word for it.
(Mr Winbourne) Terse, well, precisely. The next thing is an article, one of two which were published under my name.[15] This is the short version which appeared in a magazine called Valuer, which is published by the Institute of Revenue Rating and Valuation, and it was a condensed version for Valuer which is estate surveyors and estate agents, of something that appeared in the Civil Engineering Surveyor which was much longer. If I can draw to your attention what likes look an aerial photograph in the middle. That was published in the press and therefore the people who published this magazine got hold of it. It is a European Space Agency satellite imaging of the damage caused by settlement across London by the Jubilee Line and that shows the central London sections. If you look towards the right of it about two-thirds of the way across, you will see a pretty large orangey-yellow patch. That is the Southwark area where I was involved in the case that I referred to when I gave evidence previously and the building was very badly damaged.

16606. Mr Payne : Next please.
(Mr Winbourne) The next is correspondence, letters—and I have not given you all the replies and things to keep it short—from the well-known solicitors Charles Russell, acting for the residents of Mayfair, and that repeated a great deal of what was said at that meeting in terms when they asked for the appointment of an independent referee, and this is 2002. It was brushed aside under the Government Code for major schemes. It was brushed aside by a silly answer from Crossrail and we were going to take it further but the then Chairman of the Association, Geoffrey Howard died and things rather went astray at that point. We lost him soon after we had lost Sir Michael Clapham. I draw your attention particularly to page 3 of that letter at the top.[16] It refers to the Cavendish Square option, which is the proper name of the Wigmore alignment and at the 12 December meeting "Mr Winbourne identified . . . " and so on. Okay? The reason for that being stressed now is because the use of that route properly evaluated, and that is not quite what we have got from Mr Schabas unfortunately, does not touch Mr Payne's property at all or that whole area. It goes under Edgware Road.

16607. Chairman: At what point are we going to get to Paddington?
(Mr Winbourne) We will get to that in a moment. I just want to through these exhibits because I think it is terribly important from a legal point of view, sir. The next one we do not need to spend any time on but it is an alternative route that goes between Heathrow and Gatwick and joins up Paddington and Victoria, and it was not on Mr Schabas's shopping list. The next one is a copy of a report that went in with the Petition by Bircham Dyson Bell. Then we come to three plans which you need to extend from your bundle. The first one is what they say is the northern alignment and it is in fact the same as the one in February 1992 that I told you about at the beginning. This is the northern alignment. This is a scaled down copy of a very large plan that was handed to Mr Maurice Applewhite by Mr Toren Smith over there in about last October/November. We have had copies of these, that is why I have copied them, and this purports to show the northern alignment. It is presumably what has been given to everybody, including your good selves and your Committee. It is rubbish because it is the original plan at the back that they are reproducing with the two possible routes, or something very much like it, it is not a compromise route that I told you about earlier. The next one is their evaluation of the Wigmore Street alignment, as they put it.[17] They did not come and ask me about it. They did not consult. They just did what they thought they would show you as the Wigmore Street alignment, which is wrong, and they showed Cavendish Square but only as a working area not as a station end. They call it a "working area". They do not mention Cavendish Square anywhere. They call it the Wigmore Street alignment. Cavendish Square is pivotal. I think they do this to divert attention. That is my impression. Moving on to the next plan. This is too small for you to read everything on it but it has the northern alignment and Wigmore alignment on it. I have spoken to your Clerk, Chairman, and if you wish to have larger, more legible, easier to read copies I could provide them during the recess. We do not need to go through all the details on them now. What I simply want to draw your attention to, if I may, is that the green line through the top part of the plan, which is the northern interchange route, and the orange or yellowy line, which is the Wigmore alternative, if they call it that, I call it the Cavendish Square option. The point about it is that you will see that it goes from Paddington, if I work from the west, down under Edgware Road. It does not go anywhere near Mr Payne's property at all—that is one of the reasons he brought me here—and then goes under Portman Square and then carries on. This is only an indicative outline and not meant to be an engineer's solution, you do understand, sir. Okay. It is for evaluation but they never evaluated it. They only evaluated what they thought they would.

16608. Mr Payne: Next please.
(Mr Winbourne) The next was put in before which is my Tube interchanges, but I would like to add two or three things that are not in the previous evidence. One of them is I have added in this time a little photocopied plan of the Paris Metro with some rings round some of the stations where they have the interchanges that I am talking about.[18] There is a little note I did in 2005 that we do not need to go through now. The other thing is partly through haste because we thought we were going to be on before Easter, well Maurice Applewhite was but the rest of us were not. The point is that there were three major interchanges overlooked and one variation, which is on the last page of that section, where it says Earl's Court.[19] It was not mentioned that this creates a direct route also from Heathrow to Gatwick on existing railways. If you have an interchange at Earl's Court you have got an interchange with the main Tube system. You can either go to Gatwick from Earl's Court via Wimbledon or Clapham Junction. The point is people have a choice of airports and it is not for people going between the two, although some may. It is mainly for the people of London to be able to easily get to all the airports by using the Tube system. There were two other points that got missed out. One of them is Aldgate, Fenchurch Street and Tower Hill/Tower Gateway are all very close together and could be linked by travelators and Cannon Street at the back is only 200 hundred metres apart. Thousands of people walk between the two now. It is not even an accredited interchange and it should be. The next item is my CV which you do not need me to go through, except that I happened to leave out the fact that I was responsible for drafting, with the Council solicitors, something called the LCC General Powers Act 1958 which is the forerunner of the section 37 of the Land Compensation Act 1973. That is of minor interest. Then there is—and I hope you got this but if you have not I have put it in—my critique of the written critique of the operation of the National Compensation Code, as they put forward because it was supposed to have been forwarded after I saw you before with Mayfair and of course it is equally relevant to Mr Payne. [20]I think that completes the bundle as far as I am concerned.

16609. Mr Winbourne, let us go through my exhibits now. Can we go from the front to the back instead of from the back to the front?
(Mr Winbourne) By all means.[21] Well, the only point that I would make is that of course your particular flat is the only thing that they have shown in black, not the rest of the block, and you are concerned with the entire block and it is in joint ownership of course, and that is in between the two turrets. To say it is nearer one—it gets hit by both so you are going to get two lots of shockwaves and you are going to get then compensation grouting from both tunnels which may even merge. The concrete might even merge and get connected. It is probably too far away to connect your foundations but I would not rule it out. Then you have got the entire block which is, of course, 1830s and so on, but we will come to that. The next item is your groundborne noise contours evidence.[22] I do not propose to comment on that one.

16610. Thank you. Next, please.
(Mr Winbourne) The next thing is the important one as far as I am concerned, which is the letter from Mr Toren Smith, in the corner there, with enclosures which came from Mott MacDonald.[23] That shows the entire block, of course, which is more sensible. There is a pretty ropey photocopy of the block, we have got some slightly better ones later.[24] The general description is correct. I am now on the third page. It says "Building response: maximum settlement 21mm".[25] Firstly, I do not believe it and, secondly, 21mm is nearly an inch in old money. That is a big crack if you get one: big. These are very old buildings of load bearing construction, we are not talking about frame buildings, we are talking about load bearing 1830s listed building construction, which is all along the route, not just here. Then it says, lower down, the building is in the negligible category. Whose description of negligible? It must be theirs, not mine. Then it says that the most critical configuration occurs when both tunnels have been constructed. I am not quite sure what they mean but what I think it might mean is the point I made that you are going to have two lots of shockwaves one after the other, probably six or nine months apart or something, the boring machine will go in one way and then come back in the other, and then you will have up to a year's of compensation grouting depending on what is required on both tunnels surrounding it. The most important piece now is their diagram, Section A-A details, which is the next page.[26] If you could bring up the top half on the screen. The two dimensions which matter—this is being economical with the truth—are the ones in the middle: 26.9 metres and 26.6 metres down to the line of the tunnels, which you appreciate is the centre point of the tunnels indicated by a little circle. That does not give you the impression of what the works really mean. These works are 18 metres across in each case, they are huge. They are only about 16 metres below the foundations—footings, not foundations—old-fashioned brick step footings, of these buildings. That is 16 metres or about 50 feet in old money. We will deal with that in more detail in a minute when we get to questions and answers.

16611. Next, please.
(Mr Winbourne) The next one is quite important.[27] Again, the quality of the photocopying could be better. I apologise for that, we should have lightened it on the machine. The buildings look much nicer than they would appear. In fact, they look very nice indeed. We are fortunate to have a critique from a major architectural magazine, the Architectural Building News 1953, telling everything about the buildings, how they were converted into flats and everything, with the assistance of the architects concerned, Clyde Young and Bernard Engle.[28] Bernard Engle is pretty well-known, I have met him on a couple of jobs, and he is still practising. We have got another one, have we not?

16612. There is one left.
(Mr Winbourne) I am not quite sure what your notes at the top mean, I will leave that to you, Mr Payne, if the Committee wants it.[29] I think these are not showing contours of sound, they are showing the tunnels, if I read it right. What they are showing, as usual, is the internal diameters of the tunnels. There is a vent shaft or something, I think it is an emergency intervention point that you can see the end of here, which is the one under Speaker's Corner.

16613. This one is at Victoria Gate.

(Mr Winbourne) You tell me, Mr Payne, there is a sketch somewhere which shows that it extends to Victoria Gate to the left, as it were, of the picture we are looking at.

16614. That is right.

(Mr Winbourne) There is a ventilation entrance at Victoria Gate. So you have got a lot of mucking up of Hyde Park. You have got a £200 million emergency intervention point here and you have got the two running tunnels significantly underneath Mr Payne's and his friends and colleagues' properties.

16615. If I may just interrupt on that. My little calculation at the top is really I paced out the distance between my deep lower basement flat and the Central Line in the Bayswater Road, and it is 80 metres. So I am 80 metres away from the Central Line. I can hear some noise, and again it is daytime noise, it does not run in the evenings, but obviously Crossrail is going to run all night. According to my expert witness here, I am only 16 metres away from Crossrail with all their predictions, so I feel that it has cast some doubt on the noise chart which says it is going to be 25, 27, 35, 40 or whatever. I think there should be a bit more consideration of the figures. Thank you. Are we moving on now to the questions and answers, Mr Winbourne?

(Mr Winbourne) I have got to find them. Wait a minute.

16616. Previously, you gave mainly compensation evidence for the Residents' Society of Mayfair & St James and the Grosvenor Residents, which I shall call "the Society", but would your evidence apply to all areas?

(Mr Winbourne) Yes, for people in your area, Covent Garden, Soho, Spitalfields, rich or poor, the physical facts are much the same; only the property values vary, people do not.

16617. You kept mainly to compulsory purchase law and compensation, why was that?

(Mr Winbourne) So as not to clash with Michael Schabas' evidence and for hearing time constraints.

16618. You explained the out-of-date compensation and spoke of 1845 Acts, but it would still be a lot of money, is that right? Even though we do not get a fair answer there have to be physical effects to claim, you said.

(Mr Winbourne) Yes. You would get paid out only for structural repairs and identifiable physical damage and costs and interest for your own set of 80 flats, maybe 20% down on capital values, and you would then have to fight that, but still running into millions, and that would be repeated widely across London.

16619. Mr Mould: Sir, forgive me for interrupting the presentation but the Committee will be aware that we have prepared a note setting out, we hope in relatively straightforward terms, the compensation entitlement that individual petitioners can expect depending on their circumstances. In order to short circuit this, I am very happy to send that note with an appropriate covering letter to Mr Payne explaining what we would expect his entitlement under the code to be.

2 Committee Ref: A184, Information on proposed CrossRail (joint development by London Underground Limited and Network SouthEast) (WESTCC-35905-095). Back

3 Committee Ref: A184, CrossRail Bill-Petitions and Objections, Winbourne Martin French, February 1992 (WESTCC-35905-093). Back

4 Committee Ref: A184, Central Area Route Plan, Winbourne Martin French, February 1992 (WESTCC-35905-094). Back

5 Committee Ref: A184, Consideration of Alternative Route, City of Westminster, 15 September 1992 (WESTCC-35905-092). Back

6 Committee Ref: A184, Correspondence from Winbourne Martin French to Corporation of London, CrossRail Safeguarding-Alternative Route, 29 October 1992 (WESTCC-35905-090). Back

7 Committee Ref: A184, Technical Note 85, Alternative Alignment, Halcrow Report, January 1993 (WESTCC-35905-088). Back

8 Committee Ref: A184, Central Area Route Plan, Winbourne Martin French, February 1992 (WESTCC-35905-094). Back

9 Committee Ref: A184, Crosslink-Making the Connection, Estates Gazette, 6 November 1993 (WESTCC-35905-084). Back

10 Committee Ref: A184, Department of Transport, Guidance and Explanatory Notes for Local Planning Authorities to accompany Safeguarding Directions for the CrossRail Project-Westbourne Park to Mile End Section, 7 July 2001 (WESTCC-35905-079). Back

11 Committee Ref: A184, Department of Transport, Guidance and Explanatory Notes for Local Planning Authorities to accompany Safeguarding Directions for the CrossRail Project-Westbourne Park to Mile End Section, 7 July 2001 (WESTCC-35905-081). Back

12 Committee Ref: A184, Historic Buildings subsiding because of Tube tunnelling, The Sunday Telegraph, 29 July 2001 (WESTCC-35905-073). Back

13 Committee Ref: A184, Crossrail II Options (WESTCC-35905-072). Back