Examination of Witnesses (Questions 3620
- 3639)
3620. MS COVE: Yes, I suppose the long
and short of it is that I do. I want a site-specific health impact
assessment for the Hanbury Street construction site.
3621. CHAIRMAN: Who is going to set that
up?
3622. MS COVE: I believe that Crossrail
have got some responsibility in this.
3623. CHAIRMAN: No, you see the difficulty
is that we have already been told that PAL, who were invited to
try and run the Liaison Panel, are suspect because they were invited
by Crossrail. We have got to get to the bottom of this. Either
we are going to have an organisation which is impartial and is
seen to be impartial and is accepted to be impartial, or we are
not. It appears so far that the attempts by Crossrail to provide
impartiality have simply rebounded upon them.
3624. MS COVE: The other way of doing
that is for Crossrail to say to the PCT, "We need one set-up
and we will fund you to do this work".
3625. CHAIRMAN: Then it will be said
that they are in their pocket.
3626. MS COVE: I do not think so if we
are dealing with health professionals who know the area and we
have got Dr Safir on that committee to actually act as the liaison
between the two. They are going to be the experts that know about
pollution. We have got the London Chest Hospital who have some
of the leading physicians in the country on chest ailments who
could be co-opted on to that. The Community Liaison Panel has
not got the wherewithal, the expertise, the knowledge and are
not even properly established (and I want to talk about that in
a minute); and there is no way I can foresee the Community Liaison
Panel in the foreseeable future actually being able to take on
a massive task like that.
3627. If we as the Community Liaison Panel said
to the primary care trust, "We need this work done",
they are going to say to us, "Who's going to pay?" The
answer is, "We don't know who's going to pay because we can't
afford to pay you". They should not be using their budget
specifically to do something like an assessment of the health
impact; and we believe that Crossrail should be asked to foot
the bill for setting up.
3628. LORD YOUNG OF NORWOOD GREEN: Of
course nobody expects all the expertise to reside on the Liaison
Panel, that I can understand, but you do not have to go down the
PCT route. You could surely go down the environmental health authority
route?
3629. MS COVE: We have about three or
four environmental health officers in the borough.
3630. LORD YOUNG OF NORWOOD GREEN: It
really does not matter, does it? The point is, you think there
is a problem that is not being addressed. I am going through the
construction code while I am listening to you at the same time
looking at all the precautions that have been laid down here in
terms of vehicle emissions, dust control and all the other things
which I share your concern about, of course. Nobody wants to add
to it. It is not the Liaison Panel's job to assess what the environmental
health authority has or has not. It is simply to say, "We
believe there is a possible impact and we want you to measure
that and assess that independently". That is their problem
about how many officers they have not got or whether they can
meet a timetable. Maybe I am being optimistic in that assessment,
but I am puzzled you have not tested that route, because it is
important. Time is marching on and whilst unfortunately we seem
to be in this impasse just because the Planning Aid group have
been funded by Crossrail, somehow that doubts their impartiality,
although they have been used in other circumstances perfectly
okay, it just seems to me you are losing an opportunity. I think
that is unfortunate. I share your concern, and if you want to
address your concerns you have surely got to start taking action.
One of the things to do would be to ask the environmental health
authority?
3631. MS COVE: I understand exactly what
you are saying and that may be a way forward on this particular
issue; but the Community Liaison Panel is in no fit state to be
able to do anything very much at the moment. I will explain that
to you, because it is not formulated; it is not properly constituted
for a variety of reasons and I will explain to you what has gone
on with regard to the setting up of the Community Liaison Panel.
We do believe there must be some willingness on behalf of Crossrail
to meet us halfway at least on this health impact assessment when
they tell us that this is a work in progress. Having seen this
document, which was produced in 2006, there appears to be nothing
further. Time is not just getting on for us in the local community,
time is getting on for Crossrail if this is meant to be a work
in progress. It is a two-way thing on this.
3632. Just before I move on to the Community
Liaison Panel, if I could just address the issue of the lorries
and it does have some impact on the health impact. We saw from
the transcript of proceedings, when Mr Drabble on behalf of the
council was presenting the council's petition, that again the
Committee had some concerns about the traffic impact on the local
schools, especially the three schools in Hanbury Street which
are directly on the lorry route. Certainly both the Thomas Buxton
Infant School and their Primary School as well as St Anne's, and
their entrance is just slightly off the route, but both of the
Thomas Buxton schools do not have separate entrances and exits.
Those are the ones across the road as you have seen. Originally
I understand the council wanted an hour of lorry stoppages at
each end of the day between 8.30 and 9.30 in the morning and in
the afternoon; and eventually it has been agreed that there will
be 30 minutes. Again, we know from stragglers that people do not
all get to school on time and they do not all come out on time
whatever; and we think a minimum of 45 minutes at least, but preferably
one hour, should be the stoppage at the end of the day.
3633. There is another issue which does not
appear to have been addressed either by the council or by Crossrail,
that the majority of the children going to both of the Thomas
Buxton schools live locally, and a substantial number of those
go home for lunch. Because St Anne's is slightly off the route
of the lorries, their entrance and exit, and they have a wider
catchments area, a lot of their children are collected and delivered
at the beginning and end of schooling by car, so there is always
a lot of traffic in that area. The children that go to the two
Thomas Buxton schools walk there because they all live locally.
One of the women's projects in Brick Lane cannot start any classes
they run until after 9.30 in the morning so that the mums can
go and deliver the children. They have to finish at 12 so that
they can go collect the children and 12.15 or 12.30 to take them
home for lunch; and they cannot start them again until after 2.30
when they have taken the children back to school. Nobody has addressed
the issue of stoppages of lorries at lunchtime when the children
are coming and going at that particular time. Nobody appears to
have addressed the issue of what is going to happen when the children
go out, as the classes do, to the local library, go swimming or
something like that. All of these children are going to have to
walk along that lorry route with those lorries.
3634. Whilst we welcome the fact that the number
of lorries has been reduced, it is still a substantial amount
of additional lorries along part of a street that is currently
closed off because, a few years ago, two children were killed
on that street. You can understand our concerns, and we would
like to raise that very much as an issue for the Committee to
consider.
3635. CHAIRMAN: Or for the panel to consider.
3636. MS COVE: Or for the panel to consider,
but we have been told that—I will come on to the panel—we
might be a useful participant, we are not an important part of
that panel. We have been told that we can perhaps use our knowledge
to tell Crossrail or the contractors when somebody may be getting
a delivery, when a shop may be getting a delivery, that is the
sort of remit that we have.
3637. CHAIRMAN: I thought you were independent.
3638. MS COVE: No, that is the sort of
think that Crossrail see the Community Panel as having a role.
They call us monitoring. We are certainly not a decision-making
body, we are a monitoring body where we can provide bits of information
and what effect we would have if we started providing that sort
of information to the contractors and say, "You've got to
stop your lorries at lunchtime because the children are going
home from school". The contractors are going to say, "We've
agreed to stop them in the morning and the afternoon, we can't
now suddenly change the—
3639. LORD YOUNG OF NORWOOD GREEN: Did
I get this wrong? Did I not understand that Crossrail were reaching
agreements with the specific schools because there are real concerns
to be addressed then. I would not expect a Community Liaison Panel
--- I want to know that each school has reached its individual
arrangements for the reason that you said. I happen to be the
governor of my local primary school and I agree with you, I watch
them straggle along for quite a long period of time, both coming
in and going out, but that should be the job, and I understand
it. I would welcome some confirmation because on our local visit
that is what we were told, there were going to be individual consultation
arrangements with each school. I would like some reassurance on
that because I think your point is very valid.
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