Examination of Witnesses (Questions 12480
- 12499)
12480. MR MOULD: I am in a bit of difficulty
because I do not have Mr Payne's documents. I gather he delivered
them to your clerk rather than delivering copies to us, so I do
not know if Ms Price has got a spare one.
12481. CHAIRMAN: You have not got this?
12482. MR MOULD: No (same handed). My
Lord, having sped-read Mr Potel's statement, having been handed
a copy of it very kindly by Ms Price—
12483. CHAIRMAN: Mr Mould, have you not
had any of the material in Mr Payne's bundle?
12484. MR MOULD: No, I have not. I gather
what happened was that Mr Payne delivered to Ms Price, but did
not deliver any copies of his file to the Promoter's offices.
He appears to be under a misunderstanding as to what was required
of him, but the upshot is that I have not seen this before. I
have, as I say, had a quick look through the statement that he
has just mentioned of the gentleman who cannot be here this afternoon
and it does appear from a pretty quick read of it that the burden
of the argument set out in that evidence is to suggest that there
is a superior alternative to the Crossrail route as it passes
through Bayswater and into the West End, so we are again into
familiar territory, albeit in a different location. I also know
that we are expecting that your Petitioners tomorrow, the Crossrail
Coalition and the Mayfair Association, are going to raise the
same route, as I understand it, so I wonder whether there is room
for a little bit of case management there in terms of the Committee
hearing that which it is prepared to hear in relation to that
matter, perhaps deferring that topic at least until tomorrow's
business when I think it is likely to be raised by other Petitioners.
12485. CHAIRMAN: There is another difficulty
about this, Mr Payne. Your Petition is very unspecific and we
will have to think quite carefully about some of the issues because
I am not sure that we are empowered to deal with them, so let
us go ahead and see what it is that you want to raise.
12486. MR PAYNE: I was just going to
say that Mr Potel could appear tomorrow possibly with the residents
of Mayfair and thereby he can give his statement then. I think
he will be saying a similar thing to that which he would be saying
for me in any case.
12487. CHAIRMAN: Well, he may not be
saying it at all because we have got no powers to consider it.
12488. MR PAYNE: So you can decide later.
12489. CHAIRMAN: Anyway, you are not
going to pursue it and he cannot come today?
12490. MR PAYNE: No, he had to go, he
could not stay, so all we have got is his expert witness statement.
12491. CHAIRMAN: You had better do your
best on the face of your Petition and your bundle and we will
see how far we can get.
12492. MR PAYNE: I shall call Mr Norman
Winbourne as my expert witness. There is one other thing which
I have omitted to say, which is that I did have another possible
expert witness, Owen Luder, and he could not come today, but he
has given me a supplementary letter which I would like to add
to my bundle, if that is okay.
12493. CHAIRMAN: What do you want to
do about Mr Luder?
12494. MR PAYNE: He cannot appear, so
I would just like you to take a read of his letter and please
consider it.
12495. CHAIRMAN: I have had a read of
his letter. Fortunately the letter is short, but the qualifications
are colossal!
MR NORMAN
WINBOURNE, sworn Examined
by MR PAYNE
12496. MR PAYNE: Mr Winbourne, you have
done a long report and appendices which I would like to come to
later. Would you please, first of all, focus on Hyde Park Gardens
and Stanhope Terrace so that there is no suggestion, as before
in the last few days and in the Commons Select Committee, that
we are off the point.
(Mr Winbourne)
My Lords, if I can speak directly in response to what Mr Payne
has said, I would like to go through the exhibits and so on which
are Mr Payne's tabs up to 11 before he starts 1 and 2, and comment
on them, if I may. A lot of this is stuff that has come from Crossrail
and I draw attention to the fact. Perhaps I should say, first
of all, that I belong to four societies in valuations and so forth.
I am a very, very senior chartered surveyor. I first entered the
profession before the Second World War ended and worked for my
father for a while as a teenager until he died. He was a well-known
architect, surveyor and engineer. Unusually, and perhaps also
uniquely, I am also a Fellow of the Institute of Civil Engineering
Surveyors, and I do not know of any other valuer of any consequence
who is. I trust that that will be taken on board, and there is
a long CV which I will not bore the Committee with, but I would
ask you to bear that in mind, bearing in mind what you have just
said, my Lord Chairman, about Owen Luder. He and I have worked
on three or four matters previously and are working on one now.
The extract from the Building News magazine of 1953, Mr
Payne's tab 11, is an excellent descriptive matter of the buildings
as they were converted in 1953. Mr Payne occupies one flat, but
what we are looking at is a homogenous—
12497. CHAIRMAN: Sorry, which tab is
it?
(Mr Winbourne) Mr Payne's tab 11, at the beginning, it is
JPA11.[21]
It is most important with listed buildings—and this is a
Grade II listed building—that the listing extends to the
curtilage of the building. In fact, where you have a house and
garden it includes the garden. That is quite important because
in this case we have an example of an 1830 or so terrace, just
before Queen Victoria, I make this William IV or George IV, I
am not quite sure which, and it is built with the curtilages including
basements and everything else. Some of the basements have been
taken away which may be important structurally and I will come
to that later. This building was originally five Victorian houses,
as far as Mr Payne is concerned, but in fact you are looking at
a much longer terrace, well within the limits of deviation of
the scheme never mind the small size tunnel line that you are
shown on the maps which I find objectionable and I will deal with
later. It is all within the limits of deviaton of the scheme,
the entire terrace, and that is similar to others in the area.
This is not the only one under the same threat. We are dealing,
as far as he is concerned, with a group of vertically connected—
12498. LORD BROOKE OF ALVERTHORPE: Could
we have a map back up so we can see the lines?
(Mr Winbourne)
Can I just deal with those lines and come back to this in a moment?
Those lines are the centre lines of two eight metre tunnels and
not, as we are led to believe on this submission, something under
seven. Within the eight metres you have about a metre thick wall
of the tunnel, so it is about seven metres on the inside. What
you have on the outside of the eight metre tunnel is a band of
what is called compensation grouting, which is approximately five
metres, but it is not a uniform five metres because this is heavy
concrete injected under pressure probably over a period of—from
my experience of the Jubilee Line—anything up to two years
depending on what they are doing, a very long time. That means
that each tunnel effectively in construction terms is not under
seven metres, it is about eighteen. I am talking about the diameter
and not the circumference. Secondly, we have two of them and they
diverge at this point. You will notice that they widen out. Why?
It is because they are going towards what is called a shaft.
12499. LORD JAMES OF BLACKHEATH: Could
Mr Winbourne be given the marker to follow this, please? (Same
handed)
(Mr Winbourne)
All they are showing is the centre line of the tunnel on this
one. The tunnels are much wider, as I have explained, up to 18
metres and possibly even wider than that because the reason for
the compensation grouting is that it fills up the interstices
in the London Clay where there are gaps and so on or for that
matter any other kind of ground. Above the London Clay are terrace
levels and made ground in this case. What I want to go back to
is the description of the building itself, if I may. I think you
should have well in mind that it is not just the black bit they
show on the plans we are dealing with, we are dealing with a whole
block and, equally, the one on the other side and the same goes
right across Bayswater and the Hyde Park area. Can I just digress
for a moment? I am certainly not against Crossrail but on the
present route I would be recommending your Committee reject the
Bill altogether. The point is—
21 Committee Ref: A67, Conversion of fifteen houses
into flats: 24-38 Hyde Park Gardens, Architectural Building News,
1953 (SCN-20080507-016) Back
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