Examination of Witnesses (Questions 5980
- 5999)
5980. MS JONES: They are certainly incorporated
in my amendments; that is correct.
5981. CHAIRMAN: Exactly. You have explained
them to us and I think we will have to await a response. Do you
happen to know what has been done by way of indemnities for other
underground railway works in London? You may not and it does not
matter. There is no reason why you should.
5982. MS JONES: No, my Lord.
5983. CHAIRMAN: Mr Mould, what has been
done, do you know? Do you want to call evidence?
5984. MR MOULD: I am not proposing to
call evidence unless something arises. I was just taking instructions
on that last point. The position is, for the Channel Tunnel Rail
Link Project a Deed in substantially the same terms as that which
is set out before you in our Information Paper was deployed successfully.
For the purposes of the Jubilee Line Extension, again the same
approach was taken as I understand it. There was a Settlement
Deed which was offered to and taken up by property owners. It
was in slightly different terms from that which we have here but,
I am told, largely similar, and now adopted by London Underground
Limited for other projects. I hope that answers your Lordship's
question?
5985. CHAIRMAN: I think Lord James was
interested in some other tunnellings.
5986. LORD JAMES OF BLACKHEATH: There
have been so many tunnels built over the last hundred years that
there must be a great deal of case precedent on this as to what
has happened in similar issues of seeking indemnities. I thought
it would be hugely helpful to know.
5987. MR MOULD: I am not aware of any
underground railway projects in London in which the Promoter has
given the kind of all-embracing indemnities to those whose properties
lie over or in the vicinity of the running tunnels.
5988. LORD JAMES OF BLACKHEATH: You have
cases like Blackwall, Rotherhithe, the Dartford Tunnel and the
Channel Tunnel land portion in this country as well. There are
a huge number of similar instances of major engineering projects
of this kind—there must have been debates on similar issues.
What happened with those?
5989. MR MOULD: There may well have been.
I am afraid my knowledge of the debates in Parliament going back
to the 1860s does not allow me to answer your question off the
top of my head.
5990. LORD JAMES OF BLACKHEATH: They
must be easily on the record. I am surprised we are not being
told.
5991. MR MOULD: The honest answer is
that I do not know. What I can say to you is, as I have said,
in relation to the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, the Jubilee Line
Extension and, since the Jubilee Line Extension, other projects
which London Underground have been involved in, in other words,
in the modern context where underground railways have been driven
through or under London, the approach we are proposing here has
been followed. Would you just allow me a moment to read this?
5992. The position until 1950 was that the tunnels
were generally built under highways and not under buildings. You
will appreciate the logic for that was that tended to avoid the
risk of having to engage in the sort of debate we are dealing
with now with regard to property owners; it was a cheaper way
of dealing with that.
5993. LORD JAMES OF BLACKHEATH: That
in itself is a tacit acceptance by the government of the day that
the risk existed?
5994. MR MOULD: It was cheaper apparently!
It was a land acquisition point, rather than a settlement damage
point.
5995. May I just take your Lordship back a moment.
What we are dealing with here is a legal issue essentially. If
your Lordships will bear in mind what the legal context is in
common law: if you undermine somebody's property and thus cause
them settlement damage you have to make it good; it is a form
of nuisance. That applies in principle just the same for those
who carry out public works as it does to those who carry out works
as a private developer. The difference with public works is that
it is well-established as a matter of law that, provided you carry
out the works with all due care and attention, provided that the
works are done within the embrace of your statutory powers, that
is a defence to a claim for nuisance. What happens in those circumstances
is that the affected landowners' rights to claim damages of common
law are converted effectively into a right to claim compensation
under the Land Compensation Code. We touched on this in Mr Smith's
presentation. That might take two routes.
5996. If your property lies over the running
tunnels, so you have some subsoil taken from you, then you would
have a right to claim for such losses as resulted from those works
and which caused harm to your retained land. If you have a column
of soil taken from beneath your property and, as a result of that,
your building above that column is damaged due to differential
settlement you can claim by way of land compensation the loss
of value and the cost of putting that right. For those who are
interested, that is under section 7 of the Compulsory Purchase
Act of 1965.
5997. If you do not lie over the running tunnels,
so you do not have any actual subsoil taken from you but, let
us take the example of the Deed, you lie within 30 metres on plan
of the line of the tunnels and, as a result of the differential
settlement caused by the digging of the tunnels, your property
is undermined and suffers damage due to structural movement or
whatever, then you would be able to claim compensation for the
loss of value in your property caused by those works under section
10 of the Compulsory Purchase Act 1965. That is the legal context
in which the Settlement Deed is being prepared.
5998. Put very simply: if we cause damage to
properties in Spitalfields by reason of burrowing railway tunnels
beneath those properties, we will be obliged under the law to
pay the costs of making good, of remedying that damage. That is
the simple proposition. What the Deed does is to establish a process
which puts that underlying legal liability onto a contractual
footing. It is designed to assist; it is designed to create a
process for assessment, to try and understand the degree to which
there is a risk of such damage occurring; in other words, the
degree to which there is a risk that we may have to pay out money
to remedy damage of that kind; and of course the process is designed
to avoid us causing such damage, and thus having to pay out money
for that purpose. It is a preventative rather than a remedial
approach.
5999. LORD JAMES OF BLACKHEATH: Mr Mould,
I think that part of it is clear enough, but I am not quite sure
that is where I have heard Ms Jones coming from. Let me see if
I can interpret what I think Ms Jones has said and see if this
will work on your same example.
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