Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20360
- 20379)
20360. Presumably there are other options that
are looked at because, at the moment, all that is available to
you is Old Oak Common which is not electrified. TfL and whoever
the successful bidder is for the franchise must be looking at
other options because you do not have an electrified facility?
(Mr Smith) There are both
electric and diesel trains as part of the North London franchise;
and Old Oak Common is not electrified and can therefore maintain
the diesel trains that are used on the North London franchise.
20361. Mr Smith, you are very good at avoiding
my questions. The point is, and I am sure the Committee has it,
that whoever is going to be bidding for the maintenance is going
to have to be able to offer maintenance for electrification as
well as diesel?
(Mr Smith) No, not necessarily.
There could be multiple suppliers. I do not know who those other
suppliers would be, but there could be multiple suppliers.
20362. I think that will do for my purposes.
In terms of future usage, you have told the Committee that publishing
the sales particulars, which we have seen, is nothing other than
an elaborate attempt to gain a valuation for the Lands Tribunal;
in fact, in a sense, it is a sham. You have gone out to the market,
you have told the market you are selling the site but you have
no intention of selling the site. Is that right?
(Mr Smith) We have no means
of selling the site at the moment because it has been safeguarded
by the Promoters.
20363. I am asking about your intentions?
(Mr Smith) Our intentions
are to establish interests in developing the Old Oak Common site
for the purposes of valuing that site. If Crossrail fails to proceed
and there are developers who see the opportunity for a rail freight
facility at Old Oak to add to our existing facilities that may
be something worth pursuing.
20364. You said to the Committee earlier, if
you were free to dispose of the site you would not be here today.
What did you mean by that?
(Mr Smith) Presumably that
would mean the site was not safeguarded; that there was no proposal
to build Cross Rail.
20365. You would dispose of it?
(Mr Smith) No.
20366. What do you mean by, "If I were
free to dispose of the site, I wouldn't be here today"?
(Mr Smith) It means the
site is safeguarded and, therefore, I am not free to dispose of
the site, which is why I am here trying to defend the fact that
the site is in active rail use at the moment and will be in more
active rail use in the future.
20367. I am going to press you one more time.
Here we are, the Committee has seen the sale signs; you tell us
that Lambert Smith Hampton have been going out into the market
effectively on a sham. We have got at least one of a number of
commercially produced drawings of a rail freight terminal with
no maintenance or charter train facilities. That is all a sham
as well. Yet you told the Committee an hour ago that if you were
free to dispose of the site you would not be here today. In other
words, if there were no safeguards which prevented your disposing
of the site, you would have disposed of it. That is the clear
implication, Mr Smith, is it not?
(Mr Smith) That is not a
clear implication. I did not say I would dispose of the site.
20368. Is it not true, Mr Smith, that EWS sees
the value of Old Oak Common in reality as a development opportunity,
not as something which is in the public interest for the expansion
of the freight business in terms of the rail business? It is seen
as a development opportunity.
(Mr Smith) I shall restrict
myself to parliamentary language: that is absolutely untrue.
20369. Did you sign off on the sales particulars?
Did you give authorisation for the site to be marketed?
(Mr Smith) I did.
20370. It would not produce any market value,
would it, for the purposes of compensation; because to get a market
value for the purposes of compensation you would actually have
to have a transaction; and there is never going to be a transaction
on your approach, is there?
(Mr Smith) I am not an expert
in how one obtains valuations for compensation. I believe that
testing the market to understand the degree of interest in developing
rail freight facilities is the beginning of establishing the kind
of figures that are needed for a discussion.
20371. Why did you not just carry out an expression
of interest campaign as opposed to putting it on the market for
sale? You can do that, you know. You can say, "We're looking
for expressions of interest. We've had it in mind to do X, Y and
Z". You do not actually have to put it up for sale.
(Mr Smith) It was our view
that we had to make sure that all the potential developers of
the site with us had awareness of what was going on. They, as
well as we, are well aware that the site is safeguarded indeed
blighted by Cross Rail, but Crossrail is not guaranteed to go
ahead and, therefore, essentially all we had from our 17 interests
was an expression of interest, a demonstration of the credibility
of the individuals or companies concerned, and a willingness to
discuss it further when the time was right.
20372. Mr Smith, I find it difficult to believe
you have to put the site on the market for sale to understand
that it has potential for a rail freight depot or industrial use.
It is already allocated in the UDP of Hammersmith for industrial
purposes, is it not?
(Mr Smith) I believe so.
20373. You could get planners and valuers to
look at the site based on illustrative plans to come up with a
view as to whether it could be developed as such, could you not,
without selling or putting the site up for sale?
(Mr Smith) We believe that
by pursuing the line that we did we would be able to get a far
better test of the market interest in developing the site for
further rail use.
20374. Mr Smith, I am not questioning you on
your belief. I am questioning you on the alternative hypothesis
I have just put to you, that you could get a decent view as to
the marketability and developability of the site by putting together
some proposals and getting valuers to examine them and see whether
they would produce a reasonable scheme?
(Mr Smith) It sounds a very
interesting way of progressing and we may well explore that as
well.
20375. You have not done it?
(Mr Smith) We have consulted
with our agents. We do not need to do things twice. We have done
what we have done and, as a result, we had 17 expressions of interest;
and as a result of those 17 expressions of interest we are able
to fulfil the need to provide the information necessary for discussion
with your clients.
20376. Going down the hypothesis that you follow,
have you actually identified, if it is right you were not proposing
to sell the site when you actually put the whole site up for sale,
how much of it you were not going to sell, and how much you were
going to retain for your own purposes?
(Mr Smith) No, we have not.
20377. So this critical site which we see as
being crucial to your operations, you have not even gone that
far to identify what element was crucial to you?
(Mr Smith) We have done
exactly what we have said. We have had expressions of interest.
We have asked for an artist's impression of what could be done
there to demonstrate how we could develop the site for rail connected,
possibly rail freight, use. That is as far as we have got at the
moment.
20378. Was a model of the site produced with
a proposed development on it?
(Mr Smith) There was no
model produced of the site.
20379. We thought we saw photographs of it on
an earlier site visit. Are you sure there was not a model?
(Mr Smith) I do not understand
you.
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