Examination of Witnesses (Questions 13080
- 13099)
13080. CHAIRMAN: Welcome back. Mr Elvin,
do you want to say anything first?
13081. MR ELVIN: I thought your Lordship
wanted us to deal with Woodseer and Hanbury Residents' Association
at 2.15pm.
13082. CHAIRMAN: If you would like to
do that, please do.
13083. MR ELVIN: If that is convenient
to the Committee. Ms Khela and Mr Carpenter are here. If your
Lordships recall, on Tuesday evening I suggested that in order
to speed matters up written material should be submitted to the
Committee if that is what the Petitioners requested. Written material
was submitted last night which we have now received and it is
necessary I think that I make some response. The swiftest way
of making the response is in Committee. May I ask for the letter
to be put up.[7]
13084. CHAIRMAN: We have got it.
13085. MR ELVIN: It is a letter of 7
May, my Lords.
13086. CHAIRMAN: I think you start on
page three, do you not?
13087. MR ELVIN: There are a number of
matters that I may need to deal with point by point if the Committee
would bear with me. So far as point one is concerned, which relates
to a letter from Transport for London in the bundle dated 24 April
this year relating to the possibility of the deletion of the Hanbury
Street shaft, you will recall I anticipated that letter when I
spoke to the Committee on 22 April. I mentioned it then and I
think the reference is day 21, paragraph 8524.
13088. The position so far as we can see from
that letter, you will see it in terms of conditionality throughout,
we have already given an undertaking, the Committee may recall,
to Tower Hamlets that we will continue to develop the proposals
for the shaft to see whether, in fact, the need for the shaft
can be removed altogether.
13089. CHAIRMAN: That I remember.
13090. MR ELVIN: An undertaking is on
the register to that effect and we are pursuing that. All the
TfL letter says is it confirms that that work is still ongoing.
Of course, if it should be the case that the regulator and the
emergency services are content with the deletion of the shaft,
then we will not build a shaft which requires the expenditure
of public money otherwise. The letter is incorrect in suggesting
that there are any new plans. Plans are referred to in the TfL
letter on the basis of if the safety case is then accepted. My
understanding of the position is that if matters move in the direction
that the TfL letter hopes will be the case, namely that the shaft
is no longer required, it is not proposed to remove the shaft
from the Bill, it would be rather too late in the day to do that,
we expect, but if necessary we will consider whether any further
undertakings are necessary. I suspect the undertaking to Tower
Hamlets already meets the requirements, but certainly there will
be no appetite to build a shaft which is unnecessary and spend
money which is unnecessary.
13091. CHAIRMAN: You just would not do
it.
13092. MR ELVIN: We just would not do
it. As I say, we have given that undertaking. For the record,
it is the undertaking to Tower Hamlets, number 394 in the register.
That is the first point.
13093. The second point relates to matters at
paragraph two about defects and health and Committee recommendations.
My Lords, we have made our submissions on those issues during
the course of the Spitalfields hearing. Your Lordships have received
the evidence and our submissions on those matters and no doubt
you will say whatever your Lordships consider to be appropriate
in due course in your report. I have nothing to add to anything
which has been said on that.
13094. Thirdly, an alleged anomaly with paragraph
three relating to the Strategic Environmental Assessment. My Lords,
the simple reason I did not mention it is because I dealt with
it in my written submissions when Mr Horton was making his submissions.
The strategic environmental assessment directive does not apply
to Crossrail because unlike the environmental impact assessment
directive, the strategic directive applies to the formulation
of plans and policies, not to the consent for projects. It is
one stage removed at policy formulation stage. SEA does not bite
on projects as such, which is why you have an environmental impact
assessment directive, because this is a project which is seeking
consent through the parliamentary process. A strategic environmental
assessment simply does not apply. It is paragraph 4496 in the
transcript for day 12 and it appears at paragraph 22 of my written
submissions to Mr Horton, but certainly you have my written submissions
on that point. No one is seeking to avoid an environmental impact
assessment, it is simply that SEA is the wrong form of assessment;
it is EIA that is required here and, as you know, subject to arguments
about alternatives, that has been done and everyone knows it has
been done.
13095. Can I then turn to the assertions of
my factually incorrect statement, paragraph one relating to the
Heron Tower. Can I be absolutely correct, I did refer to the Heron
Tower. It is fair to say, that was an ill-considered and off-the-cuff
remark made I think after the fifth appearance of the Woodseer
and Hanbury Residents' Association on 21 March. It is right to
say that the statement I made to this Committee—and, indeed,
I will back that up in a moment—is correct. Heron Tower
was a glint in the eye at the time, it was not a specific reason
as such. The more generic reason was that there were a series
of tall buildings with deep-piled basements. The Heron Tower is
the current example of it. It was a proposal at the time, but
it was the general issue. I quite accept that the statement I
made to the Commons should be corrected and I correct it now,
but the statement I made to this Committee, both on Tuesday recalling
my statement on I think day 12, was factually correct.
13096. My Lords, indeed, I propose for the record,
if your Lordships will bear with me, to call Mr Berryman very
briefly just to explain for the record why Alignment B was rejected
in 2001. I know your Lordships have ruled against it as a question
of principle, but I think we should have on the record, if your
Lordships will bear with me, Mr Berryman simply reiterating the
explanation for why it was ruled out. Would your Lordships bear
with me on that point?
13097. CHAIRMAN: Yes.
13098. MR ELVIN: My Lord, can I call
Mr Berryman in that case.
MR BERRYMAN,
recalled Examined by MR
ELVIN
13099. MR ELVIN: This is the plan your
Lordships have already seen.[8]
Mr Berryman, can I ask you to state in concise terms why Alignment
B was ruled out as it was in the 2001 report?
(Mr Berryman) The first thing I would say very
briefly about this 2001 report: this was a report which was done
before the Crossrail company was set up. It represents the transition
between the 1992 scheme and the scheme which is currently before
the House. It was done in February; the report was in May 2001.
The Deputy Prime Minister gave authority for the project to proceed,
actually it was on my birthday on 1 May, so this precedes the
authority for the project to proceed. The three alignments that
were considered in this report, Alignment A, B and C effectively
represented the options which we thought might be available at
the time. Option C was ruled out because it did not allow for
a station at Whitechapel, so that was dismissed from the beginning.
Option A is very close to the alignment that we finally selected,
although it is not exactly the same. You can see there that little
white space is the Hanbury Street site and our tunnels now go
on each side of that site, (indicating) so there has been a slight
realignment from this very preliminary study. The reasons Option
B was not selected were two-fold. First of all, as Mr Elvin has
mentioned, there are a number of piled buildings around here and
in a moment I will show you another drawing which makes that clearer.
The main reason for rejecting it was the difficulty, I would say
impossibility of providing a station at Whitechapel underneath
the Whitechapel Road. When you are building an Underground station
of these dimensions, as I have mentioned several times before,
you need to have escape stairs and ventilation structures at both
ends of the station. It is much better if you can make those ventilation
structures between the tracks because clearly you can ventilate
from both tunnels with one shaft. There is no way that you can
build a station underneath a highway. The only example of that
which we have got on Crossrail is at Eastbourne Terrace with Paddington
Station and that can only be done because the highways is offset
from the centre line of the station and there are two roads there,
as I think you will recall. We could not identify a site for a
station, whereas at this site here we were able to readily identify
sites for shafts at that end of the station and this end. Initially
we were going to have a shaft there but later we identified a
suitable site here, realign the station slightly to fit in with
that and that is the reason why Option A was selected. Could I
have the other drawing, please.
7 Committee Ref: A69, Woodseer and Hanbury Residents'
Association Hearing Submission (SCN-20080508-005 to -008) Back
8
Committee Ref: A28, CrossRail Eastern Portal-Bow Triangle Option,
CrossRail Tunnel Alignments between Liverpool Street and Bow Triangle
(SCN-200805098-009) Back
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