Examination of Witnesses (Questions 17160
- 17179)
17160. Mr Saunderson: Can we just clarify
that any purchase would be on the basis of the planning permissions
granted on 10 Hayne Street before they were directed to refuse
by Crossrail.
17161. Ms Lieven: Any purchase will be
based, as is all compensation under the Compensation Code, on
open market value disregarding the impact of the scheme. So whether
Crossrail would ultimately make the site more valuable or less
valuable is not taken into account in the calculation of compensation.
17162. Mr Binley: Forgive me, that is
not the question Mr Saunderson asked. A site with planning permission
in my part of the world is sizeably more valuable than a site
without it. That might not be the case in London but it certainly
would be in Northamptonshire. I want to clarify that for him,
that because of the history we accept that it will be seen as
a site with planning permission because the process was not stopped
by Mr Saunderson but by legal edict.
17163. Ms Lieven: I will do my best to
answer. I should say Mr Mould is the compulsory purchase expert
and Mr Smith will stop me if I get this wrong. My understanding
is that in calculating the compensation one takes into account
what the planning permission would have been absent the scheme,
in this case absent Crossrail. Although at the relevant date—I
am trying to be very careful about this—there is no planning
permission on the site, that is not an issue, as an actual matter
of fact there is no planning permission, but the compensation
would take into account the fact that there would be an undoubted
expectation of planning permission if it was not for Crossrail.
17164. Chairman: There is built an arbitration
formula to appeal on that anyway.
17165. Ms Lieven: It is not arbitration,
sir, there is a right to appeal to the Lands Tribunal, to a wholly
independent tribunal.
17166. Mrs James: Forgive me if I have
got a little bit confused between the larger property and this
property, 10 Hayne Street. Was this the property that you originally
had the planning application for for the six storey building?
17167. Mr Saunderson: Yes.
17168. Ms Lieven: This was the site where
there was a freestanding planning permission on 10 Hayne Street
itself. There is every reason to assume that one would take that,
in fact one would take that, into account in calculating the compensation.
17169. Mr Saunderson: That is now a categoric
statement that it would be taken into account. It changed from
"every reason to take it into account" to "it would
be taken into account".
17170. Ms Lieven: I am sorry, I know
I am a lawyer and, however hard I try, I can never forget that
I am a lawyer.
17171. Chairman: Mr Saunderson, you are
going to have a chance to come back at a later point but you must
allow Ms Lieven to proceed.
17172. Ms Lieven: Lawyers never make
categoric statements because history shows that the strangest
things pop out of the woodwork. On the basis of the papers I have
seen it is clear that the planning permission in 1984 and renewed
in 1990—I may have got the dates slightly wrong—would
be taken into account in the calculation of compensation. Can
I proceed to call Mr Smith?
Mr Colin Smith, recalled
Examined by Ms Lieven
17173. Ms Lieven: Mr Smith, you are well
known to the Committee but can you just explain to Mr Saunderson
what your role is here and what your role was in the past that
is relevant to this particular petition.
(Mr Smith) At the moment
I am a consultant to Crossrail, but at the time of Mr Saunderson
firstly coming along and wanting to undertake a development here,
and through the original Crossrail Bill, my position then was
director of property for London Transport Property which was in
charge of all London Transport and London Underground property
matters, so ultimately I took the decisions there.
17174. Just to be clear on one point, when you
say you are a consultant to Crossrail what that means now is that
you are a consultant to the Cross London Rail Links Limited, which
is a company of which joint owners are Department for Transport
and Transport for London, is that right?
(Mr Smith) Yes.
17175. That is just so Crossrail in this becomes
defined very clearly. Can we move on to this site? In opening
I explained the safeguarding position and I do not think we need
to go through that again, but can you just explain, so far as
the Lindsey Street, Long Lane, Hayne Street block is concerned,
was it ever the case that SHL or Mr Saunderson owned the whole
of that block?
(Mr Smith) No. He owned a reverse L shape at
that site—I am sorry that plan is not too clear—along
Long Lane and up Hayne Street.[59]
The property elsewhere was owned by the City of London, London
Underground owned the raft over the railway to the north of the
site, and the Guardian Royal Exchange also had a property interest
in the north end of the site towards Charterhouse Square. It was
in multi ownership.
17176. Can we take out Mr Saunderson's chronology,
which I think appears at pages 32 and 32A, and go through, as
briefly as we can, what was going on here?[60]
Firstly in the period 1988-89 there is reference to a joint venture
with LRT. Can you explain what was happening at that stage?
(Mr Smith) Yes. In these years
this was prior to Crossrail beginning and Mr Saunderson came,
as many others did, adjoining London Underground ownership. He
had purchased the land and wished to explore development and my
department as it then was agreed to explore that jointly with
him. This was nothing to do with Crossrail, this was just to see
whether between the two of us there could be a development on
both London Underground land and Mr Saunderson's land, a normal
commercial arrangement.
17177. We will come back to the normal commercial
situation and the property crash a bit later. If we stay with
what happened with Crossrail and London Underground for the moment.
At the end of 1989, somewhere around here, the Crossrail project
starts to come forward, is that right?
(Mr Smith) That is correct,
yes.
17178. Can you explain what happened then in
relation to this site?
(Mr Smith) Obviously the
position changed as far as we were concerned because we could
no longer explore easily a joint development between the two of
us because Crossrail materially changed the nature of what needed
to be done there, it was a massive work, and, therefore, it created
a new situation entirely. I would accept that we did jointly pay
fees to look up the initial development for Crossrail but obviously
once Crossrail came along, and London Transport was about railways
rather than development, we had to concentrate and the priority
was Crossrail.
17179. When we come to the period after 1990,
the site was safeguarded in November 1990.
(Mr Smith) Yes.
59 Crossrail Ref: P120, Hardship Claim-Location of
10 Hayne Street(SCN-20061012-001) Back
60
Committee Ref: A192, Saunderson-Record of Involvement for LT/Crossrail
on Farringdon (SCN-20061012-030 to -033). Back
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