Select Committee on Crossrail Bill Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 18520 - 18539)

  18520. Ms Jones: I think it will be enough. What would be helpful is if we could just provide you with a list and if you can then decide, as you said you would, which you think should be looked at internally.

  18521. Chairman: Yes, but let me repeat that it is not all properties. It is the few listed important buildings that Mr Wheeler was referring to.

  18522. Ms Jones: Yes. On the settlement issues, if the Promoter had come to me two years ago and said, "I want to build a big tunnel under your house and there is no other way of doing it. First of all, no damage is going to be caused and actually, if any damage is caused, we will make it good and we will make it good without fuss or bother and without any stress to you. You will not be able to hear the trains, the rumbling or the noise of them as they go underneath you and we will make sure that that is the case", if the Promoter had come to me and said that, I would have said, "Fair enough. If that is the case and you cannot put it somewhere else, you have told me that basically I will not be affected by this project", and I would have said, "Fine, thank you". That is what I would have expected any decent and responsible entity building a railway line to have done.

  18523. However, I did not even know that the settlement deed existed until a lawyer told me that I could find it somewhere on the Crossrail website, but nobody had told me that there was a settlement deed. When I got the settlement deed and I found it, I looked at it and I thought, "But this doesn't go anywhere near protecting an individual". I wrote to Mr Mantey with my comments on it and I had a letter from Mr Mantey on 15 June 2006, saying, "We will come back to you towards the end of next week or early the following week". I have heard nothing from them at all. They have not engaged on the settlement deed and yet I know that they are negotiating at length, over periods of months if not years, with the big corporate institutions.

  18524. Now, this settlement deed, to me, does not protect the individual. I will go through it and very briefly I will tell you what it does and what I would like it to do. On noise and vibration, the Promoter has said to me on four different occasions, "Number one, you will not hear anything and you will not feel anything". On the next occasion, the Promoter said to me, "Well, it will be like the noise of a lorry rumbling at the end of the street". Crikey, what—24 hours a day! On the next occasion I was told it would be like a dishwasher going 24 hours a day in our front room, and on the next occasion someone from the Promoter said, "Don't worry, you'll get used to it". All I am asking for is: do as you would be done by. The Promoter is asking me to accept a situation where there will be no damage and I will not be able to hear anything, so I am asking for an undertaking to make absolutely certain that that is the case.

  18525. Would it be appropriate for me to go through the main points of the settlement deed? What I am quite happy to do is to go away from this meeting and in the next week or so sit down in a meeting with the Promoter and try and agree the terms of the deed which I think would protect the individual. That would give huge reassurance to the individual residents in this area. At the moment, under the terms of the settlement deed, you have to be a lawyer, in fact you have to be almost a construction or a property lawyer with some degree of experience to understand that settlement deed. It is very legal and it is semi-technical. Also, there is a wonderful place in it which basically, if you enter into the settlement deed, takes away the rights to take any action through any other means. Let me take you through the detail, it will take me five minutes, because what I would like to do is to just have your reassurance and understanding because, if that deed protects us properly, then I imagine quite a lot of the concerns of the individual residents would go away.

  18526. The first thing is that the Promoter says that it will make good damage arising by settlement. `Settlement' is a very defined term. It does not extend, for example, to engineering measures, such as dewatering, it does not extend to damage caused by vibration from the operating trains or indeed vibration from construction traffic. I do not know what else settlement or other damage could be caused by because I am not an engineer. I would say that if any damage is caused because of the project, and that is the construction of the tunnels or subsequently in the way in which the trains operate, then could you please make it good? We would also ask that that also extends to deterioration that is caused to the property because damage and deterioration are very different things.

  18527. We would also say that, if there is a dispute, at the moment, as I think Mr Berryman said, there is a disputes resolution clause, but that is very costly, so, if we were to say that damage has been caused by the tunnels and Crossrail were to say, "No, it has not", we would have to go off and appoint an engineer and actually a very experienced engineer in tunnel construction and that is hugely expensive and none of the individuals in this area can afford that. They certainly would not be able to afford litigation which is grossly expensive.

  18528. The settlement deed says that the Promoter will make good "material" damage. I do not care whether it is material or not. If it is damage, it is damage and I do not want to argue whether something is material. If it has been caused by the project, then please put it right.

  18529. The deed also goes on to say that the owner should obtain, I think it is, three competitive quotes for works. Well, if you have ever tried getting a builder to do anything on a small project, then it is very difficult and to get three competitive quotes, if not impossible.

  18530. I would like monitoring to take place on these properties at least two years before construction and you have already asked the Promoter, and it has been accepted, that they give an undertaking for seven years afterwards. It is quite important in order to avoid any disputes that the condition of those houses is recorded for at least two years before, otherwise you cannot properly assess the existing settlement trends.

  18531. All of this really goes to making sure that there can be as little room for dispute as possible and that the residents are put in a situation where, at no cost to them, any damage is made good and, more importantly, with no stress and no litigation pending over them. They are all individuals and they have busy lives to lead. They are worried about the impact of this and they are worried about the potential of having to litigate to make anything good.

  18532. We would ask in all cases that all Crossrail reports that they can provide, the defect survey, the condition survey, that we can have them assessed by our own experts and that the Promoter pays for that because people cannot afford expensive engineers. That is what I would say on the settlement deed.

  18533. In terms of noise and vibration, I would just ask that we have the same mitigation as the Committee asked for, and to which the Promoter agreed, for Christ Church. We would ask that the noise mitigation for these properties is set at 25 decibels.

  18534. There are various undertakings or requirements in the settlement deed which are listed out on a separate sheet, but the real crux of it is it is not as if we are holding the Promoter to ransom and saying, "You can only do this if you pay us such and such". All we are saying is, "Please give us an undertaking that backs up what you are telling us, that there will be no damage, that it will be made good and that we will not be able to hear anything".

  18535. Chairman: Is that it?

  18536. Ms Jones: Yes.

  18537. Chairman: Mr Elvin?

  18538. Mr Elvin: Firstly, there is nothing in this Petition which relates to AP3 and does not relate to matters which have already been dealt with exhaustively before the Committee during the summer. That said, let me say this: firstly, it is clear from the settlement paper, D12, paragraph 8.1, that the protective assurances and mitigation which are set out in the paper and which were dealt with, as I say, at some length in evidence before, are available whether or not the settlement deed is entered into.[15] It is not a precondition of getting mitigation and protection that you enter into the settlement deed, and you will see that from the last sentence of 8.1.


  18539. Secondly, so far as the deed is concerned, the deed is what the deed is; it has been negotiated at some length with those concerned in heritage matters, including English Heritage. It is legalistic because, by its nature, it has to be. It should be noted that the terms of the settlement deed, and I am looking at page 6, clause 15, are that the owners' reasonable costs, charges and expenses in terms of using their own engineers or using technical advice and the like are reimbursed under the deed.


15   Crossrail Information Paper D12-Ground Settlement, Preparation of Assessment and Report, Cases in risk category 3 or above, billdocuments.crossrail.co.uk (LINEWD-IPD12-019). Back


 
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