Examination of Witnesses (Questions 21480
- 21499)
21480. If that is right, as a protection to
my client, we will be submitting to the Committee that it is only
right that we be allowed to retain the interest in the remaining
land. What we do not want to see is a position where we lose the
site, we are relocated, the station does not go ahead, and others
get to develop the site.
21481. Unless I can assist further, I thought
it would be helpful just so that you know, sir, where we are coming
from. I would like to call, please, if I can, Mr Danny Charlesworth.
Mr Daniel Charlesworth, sworn
Examined by Mr Jones
21482. Mr Jones: Mr Charlesworth, could
you just explain to the Committee, please, who you are and your
relationship with the company?
(Mr Charlesworth) I am Danny Charlesworth;
I am the owner of the actual site and I am Chairman of Alternative
Mail Parcels/ City Parcels. We are a mailing company delivering
parcels, mail, all sorts of catalogues and different things throughout
the UK.
21483. We have a bundle of exhibits. Can we
put up the first one.[13]
That shows the site there. The Committee will be familiar with
that. That shows Plumstead High Street and then running to the
side is Arsenal Way.
21484. Chairman: Could I just say this
is A247?
21485. Mr Jones: If we turn on to the
next picture there should be an aerial shot showing Gunnery Terrace
almost in the middle of the site.[14]
It is not very clear there.
(Mr Charlesworth) Yes.
21486. I think we can see on there the surfacing
area. Could you just explain, first of all, the number of staff
that are employed at the headquarters and what they do, just so
the Committee have a feeling of the turnover, also, of the business
and how the business has been developing?
(Mr Charlesworth) There are approximately 200
staff: about 40 in the offices, which is the front part of the
building, which has to be demolished, as you can see. That is
where the offices are located. Behind that is the warehouse where
we have approximately about 150 people at any one time packing
books, Yellow Pages and all sorts of different magazines, directories—
21487. Dod's, as well I saw there.
(Mr Charlesworth) Was it? I am not au fait
with every single magazine that goes out of there, but most certainly
there is lots and lots of material that goes out of there 24 hours
a day.
21488. Just to give a feel for it, because I
thought it would be largely machine packing, how is the nature
of the business, which is client-specific, dealt with? Is it just
on a big conveyer belt? Or how is it dealt with?
(Mr Charlesworth) No, it is dealt with by hand,
really. It is very time-sensitive magazines. We deal with ones
you will be familiar with: Law Society Gazette, Lawyer,
and money magazines—financial magazines—and we have
to distribute within six hours of receipt—of them actually
coming into our building. They have to be on the client's desk
within sort of six hours, so the actual location of the property—again,
through the Blackwall tunnel and into central London as quickly
as possible—is very important.
21489. You are prepared for having to move away,
but just to be clear about this: do you see that the relocation
is going to be an easy task? It is something you are prepared
to do but is it an easy task, do you envisage?
(Mr Charlesworth) No. I mean, to actually set
this business up and to do what we did in getting this particular
unit up and running took us over a year; it took us approximately
18 months. Therefore, when I was speaking to Crossrail I actually
told them about that and I said I would need a minimum of a year
to actually move this business out and relocate it and staff it
again—to which they agreed and they said "Fine".
So there is not a problem with that. I understand the need for
the actual railway station. A lot of the people who I employ are
local residents and come from that area, so I think probably their
need is greater than mine, but in the same respect I do understand
that they do need the station there.
21490. You are looking at about 60 square foot
of space, are you not, of property there?
(Mr Charlesworth) It would not be 60; I think
it would be about 60,000 actually. 60,000 square feet of space,
probably. About 35,000 of actual warehouse space and 25,000 and
so on for car park.
21491. Just so you can see how the business
operates, just on that photograph probably, I think we can see
some HGVs there.[15]
How does it work with the HGVs? Presumably, you have got them
coming in, delivering stuff. Explain to me who you have got coming
in.
(Mr Charlesworth) We have articulated
vehicles coming from all printers from all over the country, depending
on what they are bringing. We then sort and get ready for delivery
anything we can via our own network. Anything that we cannot deliver
via our network—which are, virtually, small vans, transit-size
vans—we broker out to bigger networks, like DHL, and even
back to Royal Mail as well. So we actually give back to the Royal
Mail for the final delivery in the areas where we cannot complete—like
the Scotlands, the Outer Hebrides, and Channel Islands, and such.
So we broker lots and lots of the work out—probably about
60 per cent goes back into different networks. So at different
times we can have up to 30 trailers in the yard. That was the
reason that the site was so important, because of the big car
park that we had.
21492. If you could just go to the very last
plan.[16]
Mr Mould very helpfully set the scene so that we can save some
time for the Committee as to the position, as it was in AP3, of
the shafts and the initial Promoter's proposal and how you dealt
with that, please, Mr Charlesworth.
(Mr Charlesworth) The initial
Promoter's proposal was to actually put the shaft—I think
you can see the green one located there—which fell into
the centre of the car park, or to the sort of right-hand side
of the car park. Not only did they want that, they said for the
actual works unit they wanted to take the whole car park. I had
no option but to object at the time because it would have really
stopped the business functioning. Obviously, I took legal advice
on that and went to see Bircham Dyson Bell, who advised me that
they would get engineers to look and see if we could actually
promote Crossrail into moving the shaft slightly and putting it
somewhere else so we could still operate and actually have a road
going inside of it, if you like, inside of the shaft. Quite happily,
we had Crossrail down in the region of six or seven times, with
30 people drinking untold coffee and eating, probably, about £3,000
of Rich Tea biscuits.
21493. We are not claiming for those!
(Mr Charlesworth) Not claming for those. We
had untold meetings with them to try and actually resolve it so
that we could still operate from the site and it would mean I
would not have to get rid of anybody or make anybody redundant
or move the site away. That was what we did. Obviously, after
countless meetings and probably six, nine months of me employing
engineers and Bircham Dyson Bell and other barristers to look
at it, they said to me at our final meeting: "That has all
sort of gone by the wayside; don't worry about that because there's
going to be a station on the property anyway". I felt slightly
aggrieved, to say the least.
21494. You reached the stage of, as I understand
it, agreeing in principle on a draft undertaking having been agreed—
(Mr Charlesworth) Yes.
21495. For the movement of the shaft.
(Mr Charlesworth) Yes, absolutely, I agreed.
21496. That was agreed with the Promoters, in
principle.
(Mr Charlesworth) Yes.
21497. Was it ever suggested to you by the Promoters
that you did not need to have employed these engineers and that
this was something that you had just done on your own? Has that
ever been suggested to you—that, somehow, you were frivolous?
(Mr Charlesworth) The original idea for Crossrail
was to take the whole car park, and it would have meant them digging
a hole and the vehicles turning round and falling into this hole.
So I did not really have any option but to do that.
21498. Unless there is anything you want to
ask on that history, you have heard Mr Mould indicating quite
rightly that not all of the site is actually required by Crossrail
on a permanent basis. The Committee can see from the plans that
the lid, or the front, of the building comes off where the station
is to be located but the rest of the site is to be used for construction
sites, not on a permanent basis. Would you have any objection
to any arrangement by way of lease, licence or whatever, should
the Promoters wish that, in order that they could have full access
to the remainder of your site for construction or any other purposes
related to the building of the Crossrail project?
(Mr Charlesworth) No. You know, in your summing-up,
what you said was that there is no guarantee that this is going
to actually happen. If it does not happen I would like to stay
where I am, and carry on employing the people I have got there,
and carry on the business as it is. It is a growing business;
we are in the mail market, the mail market has been de-regularised;
we have just won a £7 million contract from one of the biggest
banks in the country to give us work. This is going to cause us
all sorts of untold problems. The banks want their material delivered
into central London and into the Docklands within an hour of receipt.
So I am going to need to find something very close to where I
am, if not in central London, to carry on this business in the
proper way.
21499. Mr Charlesworth, if it does go ahead,
and if it gets so far as to the shell being erected, would you
still be prepared to grant a lease or licence in respect of the
remainder of the land to be used as a construction site, so that
you could retain it for whatever you wanted to do?
(Mr Charlesworth) Yes, I would.
13 Committee Ref: A247, HM Land Registry, Title Number:
TGL223162, Greenwich (GRCHLB-AP4-6-05-002). Back
14
Committee Ref: A247, Aerial view of 16 Gunnery Terrace, Greenwich
(GRCHLB-AP4-6-05-004). Back
15
Committee Ref: A247, View of the car park at 16 Gunnery Terrace,
Greenwich (GRCHLB-AP4-6-05-006). Back
16
Crossrail Supplementary Environmental Statement (SES4), Map SE5(i),
Woolwich Station, Amendment of Provisions-Original Scheme and
Context Plan (GRCHLB-AP4-6-05-013). Back
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