Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20280
- 20299)
20280. Mr George: If I could re-introduce
you to the Committee, you are Graham Smith and Planning Director
of English, Welsh and Scottish Railways Limited, is that right?
(Mr Smith) That is correct.
20281. You previously gave evidence on 11 July
2006, is that right?
(Mr Smith) I did.
20282. Today you are here to deal with AP3?
(Mr Smith) Yes.
20283. Can you summarise what it is that you
are seeking from the Committee.
(Mr Smith) It really is to ask the Committee,
should you require that of the Promoters, if EWS is to be permanently
displaced from its depot at Old Oak Common to provide EWS with
the nearby alternative site the Promoter itself has included in
AP3, namely North Pole Depot, to be suitably modified to meet
EWS's reasonable requirements.
20284. At the start of my opening, I flagged up a
concern on network capacity for the 2015 position, including the
situation with freight growth, and if the Crossrail trains were
to go into and out of Old Oak Common. Have you seen any modelling
showing the consequences of that?
(Mr Smith) We have not seen any modelling of
the consequences of that.
20285. Have you been further consulted about
the Access Option since you were last here?
(Mr Smith) There has been limited correspondence
on the Access Option, but we still await the details of the Option
and the quite considerable industry debate that will ensue.
20286. You heard how I put that matter in opening,
that we simply wanted the Committee to be updated on the matter.
Did I correctly state the position there?
(Mr Smith) You did.
20287. Turning then to Old Oak Common and North
Pole, could we, please, display tab 1, exhibit EWS 41.[19]
Could you explain the colouring to the Committee there, please?
(Mr Smith) Certainly. This tab
demonstrates the effect on our depot at Old Oak Common before
and after AP3. The orange area represents the land that Crossrail
was originally going to occupy permanently; the green and the
blue area represent the land that Crossrail is now also proposing
to take permanently. You see that the new proposal for the depot
at Old Oak Common would displace EWS entirely. The Promoter will,
as you see, be using significantly more land than was required
before. This does bring a small advantage to EWS because we understand
that were the proposal to go ahead, the Promoter would no longer
be requiring the site at West Drayton. We will see how that works
out depending on how AP3 is determined.
20288. But you were never very happy to be losing
what is called "the orange land", and if you were to
lose the green and blue land that makes the position considerably
more dire, is that right?
(Mr Smith) Yes, it will make the site unworkable
for our various activities at Old Oak Common.
20289. Now in opening today, Mr Elvin put up
a plan which showed the possibility of still accommodating a little
bit of the EWS activity on site. When did you first see that plan?
(Mr Smith) At 11 o' clock on 21 February.
20290. We will come back to that matter in a
moment. Could we please put up on the screen our tab 2, EWS 42.[20]
First of all, there is a description of the site and I am not
going to ask you to go through that, but so far as the importance
of the site, that is dealt with in that table, and could you summarise
why you regard this site as important?
(Mr Smith) I suppose I should
start by saying that this relates to the current and future use
of Old Oak Common but, given our work with the Promoters, in some
respects you could say this also applies to what we would be doing
at North Pole Depot. We have invested in the site recently, in
particular because of its access to a multiple number of main
lines in and around London, I will come on to that shortly. It
is used for stabling our charter rolling stock and it is all used
for the maintenance of locomotives. We store on the site, or keep
on the site, Network Rail's breakdown crane for use in the event
of incidents, and I would like to put on record here the sympathies
of EWS for the victims of the accident at Grayrigg; our thoughts
are with the families at this time. The crane, the rail grinding
train and other track maintenance vehicles are located on the
site we operate on behalf of Network Rail because they need access
to the lines in and around the London area to do their work. We
maintain, stable and marshal 150 passenger coaches owned by EWS
and our clients use the chartered train services. When I say "marshalling",
this is not like a marshalling yard where you expect freight trains
to be moving in and out every moment of the day, or like a passenger
station, these are places where trains are kept and maintained
and will move from the yard when they are needed for a particular
service. We also maintain fuel overhead and overhaul and stable
locomotives owned by EWS, and on the visit of the Committee to
the site last week they have seen one of our new class 66 locomotives
having its bogeys overhauled, which takes about three days. We
also stable, marshal and maintain wagons on the site, particularly
those used for maintaining the track on behalf of Network Rail
and we store the surplus rolling stock and materials used, so
there is a wide range of activities there much associated with
our passenger charter operation, but also very importantly to
do with the upkeep and maintenance of rescue services for the
network as a whole and also involving maintaining our own locomotives
in the London area. This is particularly important because as
part of the opening of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link and the provision
of Eurostar's new depot at Temple Mills we are about to lose the
facility we have at Temple Mills, that will reduce the locations
in London where we can maintain locomotives. Given the increasing
importance of the London area for the movement of rail freight,
particularly with the opening of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link
and the Mayor's strategy for increasing freight by rail into London,
having a location where we can maintain our locomotives for freight
services in the London area is very important.
20291. Chairman: Can I put on record
our gratitude for arrangements which were made last week for the
visit to site. Turning to the second paragraph on the importance
of the site, it is described as being of paramount importance
and one of the things I noticed during the visit was a "For
Sale" sign on or around the entrance to the site. If it is
of paramount importance why have a "For Sale" sign?
(Mr Smith) This is the brochure to which Mr
Elvin and Mr George referred earlier. We have been trying to establish
what is the commercial value of the site. We can only do that
by inviting expressions of interest from people who have worked
with us to develop the site, not just for industrial sheds but
for rail-connected activities. To do that, we spoke to our agents
who said you really have got to go through a formal marketing
exercise, there is no point ringing up a few of our friends, that
would not be much help in this process; you have to put up a board
and issue a brochure.
20292. It is as simple as that, you have to
put up a board. I would have thought for somebody buying this
type of facility, putting up a board would much more attract people
who want to invest for development purposes rather than purchasing
for railway purposes?
(Mr Smith) The answer to your
question is one which was shown by Mr Elvin earlier, of a rail
freight connected site. We are well aware that clearly we are
not free to dispose of the site. If we were free to dispose of
the site we would not be here today. We are not free to dispose
of it, but we do need a mechanism to try to understand what the
value of the site is. I suppose if Crossrail were not to go ahead
then, given the importance of that area for movement of rail freight,
to consider putting in some rail-connected rail freight facilities
to go alongside our existing activities might be a thing that
is worth thinking about, but this does rather seem to have been
misunderstood, probably our fault—we should have explained
it to you on the day or to Crossrail beforehand. It was essentially
an exercise to understand what the underlying value of the site
is.
20293. Mr George: In simple terms, Mr
Smith, under Rule 2 of the Compensation Code one way valuation
is what is the present market value of the site if there was not
Crossrail, that is if the site were to be disposed of on the open
market absent Crossrail. That is a basis for valuation and you
were trying to discover what that value was.
(Mr Smith) That is my understanding, although
I must reinforce the point that we would not anticipate disposing
of the site even if Crossrail were not to go ahead. We would see
the future of the site as similar to where we have used some of
our other facilities elsewhere in the country where we have worked
with developers to build rail-connected warehousing for the movement
of goods through inter-modal means. With the increasing amount
of imports coming into the UK through the Channel Tunnel and through
deep sea ports this is the way that freight is brought into major
conurbations. Old Oak Common may represent one way of being able
to access that market.
20294. Chairman: Therefore, you have
gone through the process of putting up boards. Do you have a marketing
strategy? Do you have a portfolio which expresses the use of the
site and the valuation of the site? Do you have one of those ready
for anybody that may approach and see the signs?
(Mr Smith) We do not—
20295. If you do, would you supply it?
(Mr Smith) I am afraid we do not have that.
We do have 17 expressions of interest, which you will see in the
future use of the site. for developing the site with us for rail
freight purposes. They do not at this stage have valuations. We
placed, during the site visit, for those who had the time, on
the wall of the briefing room the letters from the people who
were expressing interest, many of whom we have worked with before
in developing rail freight facilities, but that is as far as we
have got, in that people have said: "Yes, it is mainly a
site where we are likely to develop rail freight".
20296. Could we have a list?
(Mr Smith) Absolutely.
20297. Mr George: Because the site is
safeguarded at present. no one is very likely to be going to make
a major investment in the site at the present moment. Is that
right, Mr Smith?
(Mr Smith) That is correct.
20298. An elementary matter, but going back
to Temple Mills, you were saying you had lost that site for freight
for Eurotunnel. Do you recall that?
(Mr Smith) Yes, the site at Temple Mills—
20299. Not Eurotunnel, Eurorail.
(Mr Smith)—which was previously a freight
marshalling yard with a maintenance depot, as part of the building
of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link and the opening of the High Speed
One line, is now going to be the site where Eurostar trains are
maintained. We have recently been asked to move out of our traction
maintenance depot there to enable full use of the Temple Mills
site for Eurostar. So that was a maintenance depot that had been
built to offset the loss of the maintenance depot a little further
south on the Stratford Lands. So we are now without a maintenance
depot in East London, which means having a maintenance depot in
West London, and Old Oak Common becomes that much more important.
19 Committee Ref: A231, Effect on EWS' landholding
before and after AP3 (LINEWD-AP3-43-05-001). Back
20
Committee Ref: A231, Current and Future Use of Old Oak Common
(LINEWD-AP3-43-05-002). Back
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