Examination of Witnesses (Questions 18220
- 18239)
18220. Our allotments are a cushy option for
Crossrail being nice and flat and free of buildings. We believe
the Acton diveunder could be constructed without destroying the
Noel Road allotments if the Promoters were prepared to think a
little more creatively and go to a little bit more trouble in
considering alternatives. When we were first shown Crossrail's
plans they stated the project would need far more land than is
now threatened. Originally my son's local primary school was to
lose one third of its playing fields, three sports fields were
to be taken and another allotment site to the east. We then found
that the recent additional provisions have withdrawn the requests
for these areas. We ask that one more small area is withdrawn
from the list of lands required, and that is the Noel Road allotments.
18221. Mr Liddell-Grainger: Thank you.
Ms Lieven?
18222. Ms Lieven: Sir, I am not going
to ask any questions. I will call Mr Berryman, if I may.
Mr Keith Berryman, Sworn
Examined by Ms Lieven
18223. Mr Berryman, I have the plan up from
the Supplementary Environmental Statement.[23]
Can you explain why it is that we need the land at Acton Yard?
(Mr Berryman): Here is the site
of the proposed diveunder which will take Crossrail trains underneath
the entrance to the freight depot. The frequency of the Crossrail
trains and the length and type of trains which use this depot
would make operation of both these counter services incompatible
unless a diveunder is provided, and this is one of the major pieces
of infrastructure on the western part of the Crossrail route.
In order to build that, we need to have work sites nearby. We
are intending to use this area up here, and indeed the area that
the Petitioner pointed to, but the problem is that this diveunder
will have to be built around live railways, it involves big pieces
of plant and kit, and working in very short possession periods,
as you know this railway is electrified and is very busy so we
have short duration periods to get on to it, and we need to have
work space close enough to the diveunder to enable that to be
effectively managed. On the western end of the diveunder we intend
to use this piece of land which, as the Petitioner has pointed
out, is the existing railway land, but unfortunately, despite
quite a lot of effort to try and do so, we have not been able
to get away from the need to use this bit of land here as open
storage and assembly areas and so on for the equipment.
18224. So just to be clear on one point the
Petitioner made, would it be possible to simply swap and use the
replacement allotment site for our work site instead of the existing
allotment site?
(Mr Berryman): No, that
is too far away from the site to be used for the uses we have
in mind. That would be suitable for a storage area or as offices
and so on but, as the Petitioner has pointed out, there are plenty
of other areas around within the existing railway depot which
we can use for those purposes, so that site would be too far away
for the uses we anticipate to make for this site here.
18225. Going back to the allotment site, mention
was made by the Petitioner that we were only going to use the
southern part of the allotment site. Can you explain the position
on that, please?[24]
(Mr Berryman): Well, the Petitioner
is right, the northern part of the allotment site would probably
not be needed. The difficulty is that it is going to be very difficult
to get into that northern part once we start work here. There
will not be any access from Noel Road into the allotment site.
In fact, I understand that the pictures of the well-used and I
have to say very good and very nice allotments are mainly in the
southern part, in any event. Most of the ones towards the north
are less well-developed and less well-used. I am not trying to
suggest this is not a well-used site; we are aware it is a very
valuable and well-used site.
18226. And has Crossrail looked hard at whether
or not there are alternatives to using that site?
(Mr Berryman): We have.
We have spent a great deal of effort on this area generally. As
the Petitioner pointed out we have drawn back considerably from
what was in the original Bill as a result of AP3, and there is
another allotment area which has affected the Great Western allotment,
I think it is called from memory, in the middle, which we were
originally going to take quite a big piece of. We have managed
by dint of strenuous effort to reduce that to quite a small triangle
which we will be taking, and I think three allotments will be
affected, and that is the best we are able to do.
18227. Can we then move on to the other side
of this, which is what we are going to do to help the allotment
holders on the new site?
(Mr Berryman): I think the
first point I ought to make is that the existing allotments, after
our work has finished, will revert to being allotments, there
is no question of any permanent occupation of that site, but our
temporary occupation will be for a number of years, so that is
the issue.
18228. Mrs James: I have to make this
point, but if this allotment was not conveniently there, what
would you do? If this was a built-on site and it was not there,
what would you have done in the circumstances?
(Mr Berryman): Well, it
is a hypothetical situation --
18229. If the allotment had been built on when
there was a previous plan to build on it you would have lost this
option. You just would not have had the option of moving in for
a couple of years and taking over the allotment.
(Mr Berryman): Yes. We would
have had to think of another way of doing it.
18230. I think it is the allotmenteers' problem.
It is hard cheese on the allotmenteers that they are there, but
"Oh well, they can be temporarily moved because it is convenient".
(Mr Berryman): I would not
put it quite like that. There are other locations on the project
where there are buildings close to the railway where we have had
to fundamentally alter the design. It has not been before this
Committee but --
18231. You have moved people out of buildings
and inconvenienced them for two years and asked them to move back
in?
(Mr Berryman): There are
several places like that, yes, but there are a number of places
where we have altered the design—I do not mean the design
of the detail but the whole design of the scheme, because of problems
like that.
18232. I do feel sorry for the allotmenteers.
(Mr Berryman): We are very
sympathetic to them and want to try to put them in a position
as best we can where they are as little affected as possible.
18233. Mr Binley: Can I ask two questions,
because this concerns me too. The first is, and I do not mean
this in any sense as a deprecatory remark, but have you ever had
an allotment?
(Mr Berryman): I have never
been in that fortunate position. I have spent most of my life
traipsing round the world --
18234. I am not trying to say that you must
have one but my second question leads on from that because my
father had what he called "40 pole of garden ground"
and he worked assiduously at it and he nurtured it, and the use
of an allotment is about how much work over a long number of years
has been put into it. Do you fully appreciate that?
(Mr Berryman): Yes, I think
we do. We understand that that is the issue and we understand
that that is a problem with moving an allotment; it is not like
moving a caravan or something like that.
18235. You cannot just have the same thing by
simply moving from one piece of land to the other. That is the
point I need to know you fully appreciate.
(Mr Berryman): We do understand
that point and what we are trying to do, as I will come on to
in a moment, is to make the transition as nearly adequate as we
can, but we recognise that it is never going to be ideal.
18236. Sir Peter Soulsby: Can you tell
me a little bit more about what you plan to put on the site? You
talk about storage and assembly.
(Mr Berryman): The dimension
between the rail and the edge of the allotments is just over 10m.
There will be a diaphragm retaining wall running along, and what
we need to do is to have the plant running up and down that 10m
strip and it needs to be assembled, it is made up of very large
elevations, and we need to assemble the reinforcement cages and
things like that to drop into the trenches for the diaphragm walls
when they are built. So it is a question of really assembling
very large pieces of kit and very large elements of the structure
to drop them in in the short periods of time which we have available
during the railway possessions.
18237. Mr Liddell-Grainger: So is it
30 feet from the existing line, or from the new site lines?
(Mr Berryman): I believe it is a bit over 30
feet, nearer 40, from the existing line to the edge of the allotments,
but the new line will go more or less in the same position as
the existing line.
18238. Sir Peter Soulsby: So you are
not saying it is impossible to do it without taking this land,
but very inconvenient?
(Mr Berryman): Extremely inconvenient, yes.
I would say it would perhaps require a fundamental re-think of
how we tackle this problem of the freight yard.
18239. Mr Liddell-Grainger: Would you
anticipate a danger to the people working with machines around
them?
(Mr Berryman): If they were
still there, yes, there certainly would be.
23 Crossrail Ref: P135, Supplementary Environmental
Statement, Acton Main line Station and Yard-Revised Scheme and
Impacts (SCN-20070125-018). Back
24
Committee Ref: A203, Aerial view of Parcels 156 and 157 owned
by the Great Western Allotment Association (SCN-20070125-020). Back
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