Public Session
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PUBLIC SESSION MINUTES OF ORAL EVIDENCE taken before HIGH SPEED RAIL COMMITTEE On the HIGH SPEED RAIL (LONDON – WEST MIDLANDS) BILL Tuesday 25 November 2014 (Morning) In Committee Room 5 PRESENT: Mr Robert Syms (Chair) Mr Michael Thornton Sir Peter Bottomley Mr Ian Mearns Mr Henry Billingham Ms Yasmin Qureshi Mr James Strachan (Counsel, DfT) _____________ IN ATTENDANCE Mr Tim Smart, International Director for High Speed Rail, CH2M Hill Mr John Warren, Water Orton Mr Peter Rafferty, Coleshill Town Council and Coleshill HS2 Action Group _____________ IN PUBLIC SESSION 1 INDEX Subject Page Number Water Orton Action Group Presentation by Mr Warren 5 Mr Smart, examined by Mr Strachan QC (DfT) 23 Mr Smart, cross-examined by Mr Warren 35 Coleshill Town Council and Coleshill HS2 Action Group Presentation by Mr Rafferty 42 Mr Smart, examined by Mr Strachan QC (DfT) 61 Mr Smart, cross-examined by Mr Rafferty 68 2 (at 09.30) 1. CHAIR: We welcome Petitioner John Warren from Water Orton this morning. He’s going to kick off, and then we’ll move to Peter Rafferty of Coleshill. Are you happy, Mr Warren, the promoter should just give a brief overview of your position? Mr Strachan? 2. MR STRACHAN QC (DfT): Good morning, sir. Mr Warren’s acting for both the action group and the parish council. The area affected by Water Orton will no doubt be familiar to the Committee, but the parish boundaries are on P1041. If I could just refer to the petition from the parish council, which is R73, subparagraph 2—well it’s the next page 2, sorry. You will see that the parish council’s main cause for concern was expressed at paragraph 6.4, the proximity of the north cord of the delta junction to the Water Orton Primary School, and there was concern about the proximity of the line to the primary school and the playing fields both during construction and during operation, and they were concerned about that effect. 3. The Committee will be aware that as a result of assurances given to Warwickshire County Council, the promoter is planning to assist with the relocation of the school itself. So far as I’m aware, that particular main concern of the parish council would have been resolved by that assurance to Warwickshire County Council. 4. The petitioner is still concerned about the effects on Water Orton itself, and the petitioner, and I’m trying to take things as shortly as possible, but in short, the petitioner has proposed some alternative options for the design of the railway in this location. The main one is a suggestion that the north cord be put to the north of Water Orton rather than to the south, in between Water Orton and Curdworth, and that is an option which has been looked at by the promoter, and rejected on a number of grounds, including cost, but also in relation to the complexities of the creation of the junction that would then be created to the north. We will come onto that in more detail. 5. There are two other options the petitioner has put forward. Option 2 is also involving the north cord to the north of the village, but taking the Birmingham Spur, and I can show that, if one looks at P01043, and I’m afraid it’s the nature of these things, north has shifted so it’s now to the left-hand side of the page, Water Orton’s in 3 the centre, Birmingham’s to the bottom of the page. The north cord that you can see running to the south of Water Orton, the Birmingham Spur is beyond that to the south. In Option 2 of the petitioner’s proposal they take the north cord in between Curdworth and Water Orton, and they move the Birmingham Spur so that it passes to the east of Water Orton. And the promoter has attempted to model what was being proposed, and that’s shown on P1050. The effect is that if one designed that at the required design speed it would actually require a curve taking the Birmingham Spur actually through Water Orton, so that’s not a viable proposal, and the only way to get the Birmingham Spur in that location would be at the lower design speed, 170 kph, but on an elevated viaduct, and that is also not considered to be viable for reasons we will consider. 6. And Option 3, the petitioner is proposing the use of the existing railway that passes through Water Orton, and you can see that on P1052. The idea would be to use the existing railway and to link it into HS2 to the north-east of Water Orton. Again, that’s been looked at and we can look at that in more detail, and the objectives on viable. 7. So those are the main three options that the petitioner wants to present. The petitioner also raises concern about noise, which they wish to address, and construction traffic as well. I hope that’s a sufficient summary. Water Orton Action Group 8. CHAIR: Mr Warren, you have no witnesses but you’re going to give us a presentation. 9. MR WARREN: That is correct. 10. CHAIR: Right, carry on. 11. MR WARREN: Thank you. Can we have A2251, please? Good morning, and I’ll start by thanking you for listening to this petition this morning. My name’s John Warren, I’m representing both the Water Orton Action Group and the parish 4 council. We’ve worked very closely together for the last three years, in fact some of the council members have been on the action group. We’re putting in a joint petition in effect of which I’m going to give you a slideshow this morning. 12. If we could skip 2 and onto 3 now, please. As has already been said, the petition is in three parts. We have for the last three years been working with HS2, trying to mitigate the effects of this line on Water Orton, and we’ve put in a number of proposals to HS2, which you’ve just seen. And I want to talk about that in a bit more detail as we go through. The second one is construction traffic through the traffic. As you will see, the state of play at the moment is absolutely unacceptable what the HS2 are trying to do with construction traffic. And number 3, I want to talk about the ES document concerning noise contours, and the noise effects that this may have on Water Orton village. 13. If I can go on to 4. There’s a little bit of history there. We formed in 2010, and generally in 2011 we met with Alison Munro, and Professor McNaughton, who was the chief engineer at the time, and presented our proposals to them way back then. HS2 have known about these proposals for a very long time, and Professor NcNaughton, who was the chief engineer, wrote to me and said, and I quote, ‘As I said at the time, you have clearly put considerable thought and effort into developing your ideas. It’s exactly the quality of idea which I hope that we will see during the coming months of consultation. I assure you that if I see what appears to be a major reason not to investigate, I will tell you and discuss if there are any alternatives we could assess instead.’ 14. So that gave us some hope really that Professor McNaughton thought it was a reasonably good idea, especially option 1. But unfortunately what happened was we did not hear anything from – there hasn’t been any letter come. I believe he’s now left HS2; am I correct in saying that? 15. MR STRACHAN QC (DfT): The Committee heard from Professor McNaughton earlier in the process and he’s still with HS2. 16. MR WARREN: He’s still with HS2? I heard he’d left, but the action group did not hear anything from Professor McNaughton unfortunately. And then if we can move 5 on to Slide 5. The mitigation proposals were all rejected. In Option 1, HS2, as far as we’re concerned, use the actual wrong route over the sewage farm to the north of Water Orton. It wasn’t the route that they proposed; they brought it nearer to our village. They rejected it mainly on cost, but I’ll go onto cost later. We’ve got a variety of costs from HS2 which baffles me. And they said that there was a Grade 4 listed building at Dunton Hall, which would be endangered by these proposals, but I will talk about that later as well. They stated that the same number of people would be affected on the north side of the village, which actually is not true. We have counted the number of houses. Our proposal takes the line much further away from the houses in the village anyway. 17. The next slide, number 6, please. We are very disappointed in North Warwickshire. We appear to have been left out of any mitigation that’s gone on with this line. You can see there all of the mitigation that’s been passed down the route, including a tunnel from Bromford towards Birmingham. But North Warwickshire have got no mitigation whatsoever from HS2. We can’t understand this. 18. With the exception of Euston, if you take the Coleshill junction area, which is Water Orton/Coleshill area, then that is the most complex part of this high speed rail line.