Examination of Witnesses (Questions 17640
- 17659)
17640. Mr Mould: I wonder if we can put
up our document 30 please.[50]
Sir, Mr and Mrs Wheeler are the owners and occupiers of the house
about which there was some debate as to the accuracy of the drawings
and so forth and that property is to be found there, number 1
Baldock Street. You can see that it is located beneath one of
the proposed running tunnels of the railway line. I think you
have already been told about the depth of the sub-surface tunnels
at that point, so I need not repeat that again. Mr and Mrs Wheeler
have various concerns, but we understand that they are concerned
principally with settlement and the impacts of noise. I will hand
over to them.
17641. Chairman: Mr and Mrs Wheeler,
you have never been in front of a Committee like this before?
17642. Mrs Wheeler: No.
17643. Chairman: Do not worry; we are
as nervous as you are! The normal procedure is that one of you
takes the lead and we have a discourse, a chat, and proceed along.
We are fairly tolerant.
17644. Mrs Wheeler: We are the owners
of 1 Baldock Street and that is the house on the end of the terrace
and the Crossrail line, the westbound tunnel, goes directly underneath
our house from one back corner to the front opposite corner.
17645. The first thing that I wanted to talk
about was the consultation. It is a question I have asked Crossrail
before and never got a straight answer to, but when we saw Crossrail
on Monday, I asked the question again, "Are we the property
closest to the top of the tunnel?", and we got the straight
answer this time that we were with the tunnel only 11 metres underneath
us. As such, I cannot understand how we are so affected by their
plans that we were not told by them how we were affected by their
plans.
17646. The second round of consultation closed
on 27 October 2004 and a neighbour put a note through our door
on 22 October to tell us about Crossrail. She knew because her
house sale fell through because the prospective buyer discovered
on the search that the Crossrail tunnel was going to go underneath
her house, but at a deeper level, so that was the first she was
alerted of it and then she came and put a note through our door
when she got the map and saw that we would be even more affected.
17647. Chairman: Can you just remind
me of what the date was when this occurred, when your neighbour
put a note through your door?
17648. Mrs Wheeler: It was 22 October.
17649. Chairman: 2004?
17650. Mrs Wheeler: 2004, five days before
the second round of consultation ended. The day after the neighbour
dropped the note through the door, we got the Land Aspects land
referencing letter. I imagine you know the letter, well, it is
a form, wanting to know what your interest in the house is, who
the house belongs to, what floors you own, how many floors there
are in the house. Had I not been alerted just by one day by the
neighbour that our house was going to be affected at all by the
plans, this would have been the first I knew of Crossrail's plans.
When I say "the first I knew", we had had the general
leaflet put through the door, and perhaps we could have that up
on the screen please. "Info leaflet", it says. That
is as detailed as it got from Crossrail. That is the map that
appears in all their general literature that gets dropped through
people's doors and it says that Crossrail is this new, fast line
that is going to run from Shenfield to Maidenhead and it gives
that map.[51]
Yes, I will absolutely admit that we have had probably at least
one, maybe two, of those leaflets put through the door, but that
is as detailed as it gets to let us know that the tunnel is going
under our house, what you see there, Whitechapel to Stratford,
with what we later discovered is the portal symbol. I think we
must have looked at that leaflet and thought, "That's nice
for London", and put it in the paper recycling box.
17651. The next we know, as I say and I have
given the dates, is that on 22 October the neighbour lets us know.
Then on 23 October we get the Land Aspects land referencing letter.
This was still entirely new because we still did not know what
Crossrail meant to us because we did not get a detailed map from
the neighbour to say how we would be affected, just that we were
going to be affected, she knew. When we got the Land Aspects land
referencing form, I just thought, and it is a natural reaction,
"How nosy. Why should we tell anybody who owns the house,
how many floors we own." It is a sort of invasion of privacy.
Let's say, there had been no introduction, so why did these people
need to know our business, and I did not actually send the form
back until they sent a reminder some time later.
17652. As a result of knowing that we were going
to be affected, I wanted to know how much we were going to be
affected. On 30 October, so this is still a very short number
of days later, within a week, I phoned the Crossrail helpline
number and asked how we would be affected. On 19 November, we
got a letter in the reply from Crossrail and perhaps we could
have that up on the screen please.[52]
It is the Crossrail letter, page one. Maybe people would like
to read it. This is our first direct communication from Crossrail.
This is the first personalised letter that we received. It begins,
"Thank you for your enquiry of 30 October", and that
was my telephone call, "regarding the effect on your property."
Then it goes on generally as to where the line is going to run,
and then, "I enclose a copy of the consultation drawing as
used in the round 2 consultation". I remember that drawing
and it is a map, but that was the first time we had it. That was
the first time we had a map to alert us to the fact that the dotted
line was going from one corner of our house to the other and that
the tunnel would be located at a depth of approximately 11 metres.
17653. Well, we were shocked, absolutely shocked.
I could not believe it, that the second round of consultation
had closed and not only that, but they did not seem to feel the
need to have let us know personally. They had known for all of
that time, the plans had been drawn up, but we were not alerted
at all. They had lots and lots of facts and figures about how
much consultation they had done and how many leaflets they had
distributed, which we have since read in answer to a point in
the Petition, and how many exhibitions they had at libraries.
They have just given us so much information and facts and figures
about what consultation they have done, but we on the ground have
a very different view of that. To think back to the first generalised
leaflet, we just thought, "Nice for London", and moved
on because we have other things to think about, other letters
to open, but it is up to us. Crossrail, in their literature, leave
it up to you to ask them, "How am I affected?", but
on that, if you think of that Tube map, Whitechapel to Stratford,
that is so vague that how are we supposed to deduce from that
that we are affected?
17654. Of course since then we have formed a
Residents' Association mainly because of Crossrail. Yes, that
was the spur. We were not the only people not to know about it
and in fact by that time, by the time we had formed it, we were
even telling people about the Crossrail plans, so other people
who will have the tunnel running underneath them were in exactly
the same position as us, so okay, Crossrail did not happen to
overlook us; they overlooked everyone.
17655. Mr Wheeler: That was the first
letter and we showed that to neighbours because some neighbours
did not even get the little, tiny leaflet and did not know, so
for us to receive this first, it was, as you can imagine, quite
a shock to suddenly realise that there is a major railway tunnel,
in fact two because the other one is only 11 metres away from
the house, going underneath our house, so it was quite a wake-up
call and of course you then try and find out more about what it
is and what it is about.
17656. Mr Binley: I understand your deep
concern, but I just wanted to say, though I am not sure it helps
you, that we have had many discussions about the quality of the
consultation and I am particularly interested because it has been
my business for a long time in marketing. I think that there ought
to be two levels of consultation in this respect and I am going
to ask about the second level because those people directly affected
ought specifically to be consulted in a different way from the
general consultation. I just want to put my mind at rest that
we have that point on board, Mr Chairman.
17657. Mr Wheeler: Obviously Crossrail
knew we were directly affected before we ever did, but up until
very recently we have not actually spoken to them directly and
it has only happened relatively recently to have, as you put it,
a direct link, otherwise it has just been that we have visited
libraries and other places to try and source information, so it
is only relatively recently that we have had that direct link.
17658. Mrs Wheeler: We waded through
information at the library, just huge A3 booklets which cover
the whole of London. Half the time you are trying to get to grips
with the way their classification goes and half the time you realise
you are looking at a leaflet that is for the completely wrong
area.
17659. Chairman: I think you will have
an opportunity, when Mr Mould responds to your presentation, to
raise some questions on the consultation side. Perhaps we can
move on to the other parts of your Petition.
50 Crossrail Ref: P126, H.A.M. and Wick Lane Sewers
Diversion, Locality of Petitioners (TOWHLB-29104-030). Back
51
Committee Ref: A195, Crossrail Info leaflet (TOWHLB-31205-003). Back
52
Committee Ref: A195, Correspondence from CLRL to Ms Barbara Clarke,
19 October 2004 (TOWHLB-31205-001). Back
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