Public Session

PUBLIC SESSION

MINUTES OF ORAL EVIDENCE

taken before

HIGH SPEED RAIL COMMITTEE

On the

HIGH SPEED RAIL (LONDON – WEST MIDLANDS) BILL

Wednesday 11 March 2015 (Morning)

In Committee Room 5

PRESENT:

Mr Robert Syms (In the Chair) Mr Henry Bellingham Sir Peter Bottomley Ian Mearns

______

IN ATTENDANCE

Mr Timothy Mould QC, Lead Counsel, Department for Transport

Witnesses:

Mr David Wilson Ms Jane Price Mr Nachhatar Kalirai Mrs Paula Sage Mr Paul Pennifer Mr Robert Young ______

IN PUBLIC SESSION

INDEX

Subject Page

David Wilson

Submissions by Mr Wilson 3

Response by Mr Mould QC 18

Ms Jane Price, Mr Nash Kalirai and others

Submissions by Mr Kalirai 20

Response from Mr Mould 30

Paula Sage, Paul Pennifer and Robert Young Submissions from Mrs Sage 37 Submissions from Mr Pennifer 40 Submissions from Mr Young 43

(At 09.30)

1. CHAIR: Order, order. Welcome, good morning to the HS2 Select Committee. We are likely to be sitting until quarter to 12.00, maybe just before 12.00. We may today, because there’s three of us, will be here sitting at 1.00 and go through until 2.00 when we have a private session which shouldn’t be too long, just to have a chat with the Buckinghamshire MPs about our visits, post-election. Then we will go again, finish the rest of the petitioners off. So I am afraid it’s going to be a dash and a quick sandwich, Mr Mould, today. Got to get on with the business. We start today with Mr Wilson, and representing Renewell Limited. There we are, in London? Buckinghamshire?

Mr David Wilson

2. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Mr Wilson is at Windrush, Tilehouse Lane in Denham, about one kilometre from the central line of the route. If we just put up the next slide, P5369, you get a sense of the local area on plan. If you remember, off to the north-west, we have the tunnel construction site at West Hyde.

3. CHAIR: Do you want – carry on, Mr Wilson.

4. MR WILSON: Yes, okay. Good morning and thank you to everyone for listening to my petition. I feel in quite a good mood today, the sun is shining and I heard some really good news yesterday that the Heathrow spur is going to be – not going to be anymore; it’s going to be chopped. I heard the proposers say that it’s not a done-dea l for HS2 and also, this is the first time I’ve worn my business suit for 18 years and it still fits, so I’m feeling pretty chipper today.

5. CHAIR: Do you want me to adjourn now!

6. MR WILSON: Yes, sir! I am a business owner and joint owner-occupier of a three-bedroom semi-detached house on Tilehouse Lane and I’ve lived there, basically for the last 25 years with my partner and 18 year old daughter. We chose Tilehouse Lane to live in because it was semi-rural, quiet, peaceful, tranquil location which has become extremely important for the business. Since being made redundant 18 years ago – hence the business suit quip – I retrained in order to run a small healthcare business from our home in order to help people with their health and wellbeing in the local area.

I practice Chinese medicine, and acupuncture and teach Tai Chi and Qigong. The tranquillity and ease of access are important to my patients. This is because of the range of patients I help, people from all ages, from new born babies to frail people in their 90s, with a variety of health issues, ranging from physical through to mental and emotional problems. Interestingly in recent years, hopefully it’s not because of HS2, most cases present with an additional element of stress. So, hence the importance of the location, reasonable traffic flow, and ease of access. The areas of concern which will adversely and directly affect the business and therefore the future livelihood of your petitioner are shown in the next slide 2, please?

7. These are the main points in my petition that I want to go through today. Some of the things have changed since I have put in the petition, obviously. Costs of construction have been applied to these points, but no economic value seems to have been attributed. By this I mean, for example –

8. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: This is beyond our scope.

9. MR WILSON : What, beyond the scope? But surely the economic value of the –

10. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: I think it should be obvious – and I’m not going to stop you – it should be obvious to every petitioner that Parliament has passed the Bill at second reading, and we need to stick to the things which are specific to the people who are making the petition, rather than more general points. So if you can be very brief on this bit and get onto the things which are specific to you, that would be in keeping with what we are supposed to be doing, please?

11. MR WILSON: I will go through very quickly – I do think it’s very important to myself –

12. CHAIR: It is, but we can’t cancel the project. Our job is just to

13. MR WILSON: I am not suggesting you cancel the project, I understand that the Bill has been passed. I do understand that.

14. So by this I mean, for example, what is the value in monetary terms of, say, ancient woodland or wildlife, or the degradation of the area to the community? The thousands who use the HOAC recreational facility that would be displaced? What is the

value of time of people stuck in traffic, when patients are stuck in traffic, and the stress and ill-health ensuing from the proposed HS2 line. However due to the way that HS2 engaged with the petitioners it is sometimes difficult to assess all the consequences of the scheme. For example, I received an extra 100 pages of extra information to assimilate two working days before the hearing today; and also, I even I received a letter yesterday suggesting I look at further information. As a consequence, I still feel that I lack information about important aspects of the proposed scheme, and its construction that are likely to have adverse impacts on me. However, I will do my best and I would like to set the background and the concerns raised and then my proposed solutions.

15. Next slide please? As I said, we run a small wellness business from our property, helping many people from all walks of life, mostly within a radius of 20 miles of our property. I was hoping my family, who also have strong views on this project would be here today to put their views, but they’re at a university interview today; maybe it’s just as well. The business and home are located at the southern end of Tilehouse Lane; the northern end has been designated as a large construction site, a workers’ residential site, and the entrance to the tunnel under the M25 from the Colne Valley viaduct; and also the major focus for the works in the area. I have also noted there are not many small, one-person businesses who appear to have put in a petition, so I feel I may well be representing their interests as well. I can understand why, because the task is onerous, stressful, time-consuming, which means loss of earnings for time spent on this. With no resources, except oneself, especially in time and money for a business such as mine, where I exchange time for money. For example, I’m not selling on the internet, the business does not run itself and if I am not with a patient I do not get paid. Many small businesses will not have had the courage, know-how, resources or endurance to spend the last five years – and I believe it’s five years today – dealing with this incredibly stressful situation. It is difficult for me to spend the time in the evenings, weekends, to take out time for my business to go to meetings and lose income. For example, to be here today, I have to close my practice and again, earn nothing. But it’s important that the business survives, not only for me, my family, friends, the community and other business owners, but of course, for my patients, so I can continue to help them with the service they need when they are feeling unwell or vulnerable: in short, providing a valuable service for the local area.

16. In addition to this, I am approaching retirement age and would like to sell the business as a going concern towards my pension, and I am also concerned about the house, that the house has been devalued and the business put in jeopardy both now and in the future, because of the proposed works which are scheduled to happen over the next 10 years or so. The effects of this are devastating to me and my family, especially as I am nearing retirement. The business has already suffered because of the time taken out from running the business to review and understand the complexities of the HS2 proposition, and mitigate the immediate and future effects on the business, the property and my retirement plans.

17. So I have a passion to help and value everything around me, and I’m concerned about not only myself, but also our community, our ecology, and extending to everything along the line. The UK, the world, the planet, you cannot escape the fact that everything has an effect on everything and nothing is independent. We live in one community, one country, one world, in a closed system, and we cannot get something for nothing, and the true costs and effects of a project like HS2 must be calculated.

18. Next slide please? So this slide shows the area to our property where ancient woodlands will be destroyed forever; animals and wildlife displaced, including insects and bees and flora and fauna; and ordinary woodland destroyed. Not to mention, 10 years or so worth of construction traffic, pollution and eventually a viaduct – potentially now, a tunnel – with up to 36 trains per hour, destroying the peaceful tranquillity of the Colne Valley. I was quite amused yesterday – and I had a quick look at some of the things that were going on here – to say that you could hear the birdsong in between the trains. At 36 trains an hour, the birds will probably have about one and a half minutes to fly back after they’ve been scared away and have a little sing-song.

19. So, no economic value seems to have been placed on this: what is the economic value of an irreplaceable ancient woodland? What is the economic value of wildlife biodiversity, flora and fauna, peace and quiet and tranquillity? Classic economics does not take this into account; it treats the environment as an infinite resource which places on economic value. It treats the environment as an infinite sink where debris and unwanted materials can just be dumped, and an infinite resource where the environment resources may be used with no thought to the cost to us and future generations. However, we know that the planet is finite and that economic models should take this

into account. Fortunately, there are forward-thinking economists who are beginning to put forward economics in terms of the closed, finite systems, which do start to put financial figures on the environment, people’s health and wellbeing; and even suggest that never-ending growth is unsustainable. Of course, if you just stop and think about it, never-ending growth is not sustainable on a finite planet. A quote from Professor Boulding, President of the American Economic Association: ‘Anyone who believes that exponential growth can go on forever is either a mad man or an economist’. You may think that I’m going off the subject, but please bear with me on this; it will become relevant in the end.

20. Joseph Stiglitz, as social scientist, together with George Akerlof and Michael Spence won the Nobel Prize –

21. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: Can I interrupt once more? How many pages have you got?

22. MR WILSON : It’s going to take half an hour. Is that okay with yourself?

23. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: You say ‘In the end’, I’m just wondering when the end is going to come.

24. MR WILSON: It will become clear in the end how strongly I feel about this and how all the effects are going to affect the health and wellbeing of the people and the flora and fauna of the area, and the business; and there are very specific points that I’d like to raise. Is that okay?

25. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: I don’t have a choice, but if you have half an hour of reading, it’s easier often if we read it rather than hear you read it. But we haven’t got your script; please carry on.

26. MR WILSON: Okay. So I was just saying that these social scientists who won the Nobel Prize and it’s clear that the theories that most people are talking about over the last 20 years don’t work, which is why world economists were caught short in the crash of 2008. My view is, seeing as HS2 is a project of the future, using cutting-edge technology, then shouldn’t we be using up-to-date, cutting-edge economic models to work on this project? Therefore, we must implement the idea of the true cost; the true

cost of pricing is fraught with daunting, seemingly insurmountable problems for conventional economists. It’s a frightening, heretical concept. However, it is right, clear and totally non-political – i.e. it is evidence and fact-based – painting a true picture so that just decisions may be made to the benefit of everyone.

27. Let me give you an example: this is only partially specific to HS2 but I think it is one that is easy to understand and the concepts can be related back to my case at the end of the presentation. This is a quote from Albert Einstein, on ecosystems: ‘If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would have only four years of life left: no more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man’. It has been calculated that the value of bees working pollination in North America alone is worth 19 billion. The economies of the world would grind to a halt without the support of the ecological life cycle and support systems. This does relate to what was said yesterday about farmland and things like that.

28. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: Mr Wilson, you are supposed to be talking about how you are affected, your business, your home, your life. If you can skip some of these other bits. It would not harm you and it would help us, please.

29. MR WILSON: Okay. So, next slide, please? So the viaduct will go over this lake, and you’ve seen this lake before. The noise of 36 trains will scare off any of the remaining birds and wildlife, and also destroy the pleasure of the chance of a peaceful walk in the area. I mean, I do send my patients here, when they come, they go here and they see these areas, and that’s one of the reasons why my business is established here. So not only for me, my family, friends, patients, but also for the local and not-so-loca l communities who come to this beautiful area for respite. There is no economic value placed on this.

30. CHAIR: Can I ask a question?

31. MR WILSON: Sure.

32. CHAIR: You talk patients – have I missed it – have you said what you do?

33. MR WILSON: Yes, I said at the beginning, I’m an acupuncturist and Chinese herbal medicine practitioner and I teach Tai Chi and Qigong?

34. MR BELLINGHAM: What do you teach again?

35. MR WILSON : Tai C hi and Q igong?

36. MR BELLINGHAM: Which is what, kickboxing is it, and that sort of thing?

37. MR WILSON: No, it’s a very slow martial art. It’s very slow.

38. MR MEARNS: It’s more a discipline isn’t it, in terms of physical –

39. MR WILSON: That’s right, it’s mind, body and –

40. MR MEARNS : Attenuation –

41. MR THORNTON: So you’re using the other guy’s strength against him?

42. MR WILSON: That’s correct. So as I was saying, I send my patients there, and depression can be lifted by connecting with nature, with the joy of walking in an ancient woodland, connecting with nature and listening to the song of a bird.

43. Next slide please? So, this is basically – you can see the Colne Valley, which is extremely valuable in that it’s the first major green space to the west of London, which is then surrounded by more residential, populated land. It is a breath of fresh air to all the residents in the west of London, and the location of our house is clearly shown there, and we run the business from our property at our house.

44. Next slide please? So the greyed-out area is what I’m going to look at in more detail; and this is what’s relevant to the petition. This is the area that will be most affected by the points raised in the petition. Next slide please? This is an OS map showing the location of our property, and the 10 construction sites in our area, and the roads that will be used by the construction traffic. With over 7,500 extra construction movements per day at peak times; over 5,000 of these will be HGVs. From London, the railway exits near compound 10, in the bottom-right of the picture; and re-enters at compound 1, which is towards the top-left, by the M25.

45. Next slide please? This is typical traffic according to Google; the M25 is marked and the A412 and the M40, and our house. Here we can see that the typical traffic congestion currently is already severe in peak times. This is what Google reckons is the

average traffic for this time on an average Monday at eight o’clock in the morning. You can see the areas of congestion in red. Next slide please? This is the actual traffic last week, which is actually a pretty good day, as the traffic is still moving at 12mph, which means it will take about 30 minutes to travel from Maple Cross roundabout to the Denham roundabout, a journey of just over five miles on the A412. More than 7,500 vehicle movements will merge with this already congested traffic; the situation in this area, probably achieving a tipping point, which will lead to severe and intolerable congestion and time taken to travel in this area. This amounts to a huge cost to people and business in wasted time in traffic jams, and no economic value appears to have been placed on this.

46. Next slide please? So this is actual traffic; I took a screenshot of Google on Monday 2 March. This actually isn’t too bad a day. Here one can see the traffic on the M25 moving about 20mph. I looked again a couple of days ago, on Monday 9th, it wa s moving at 15mph; and HS2 has based its traffic predictions on two surveys done in 2011 and 2013, which are out of date. The traffic over the last year has got significantly worse and one can only speculate as to the reasons why, but there has been a significant frequency in the number of days when the traffic is stop-start, at a walking pace, when demonstrated in the next slide, 12, please? This photo was taken on Tilehouse Lane, which is the lane where I live, which joins onto the A412 North Orbital, where the construction traffic will be flowing. It shows the traffic backed up, right along the lane, and the red arrow is pointing to a specific car. Up until last year – this has not really happened before; we don’t normally get traffic jams like this; it has definitely got worse over the last year – and in December it seemed to be periods of time when this was happening more often than not. So the red arrow singles out that specific car – next slid please – and this is 250 metres further along the road in the photograph taken 10 minutes or so later. The car is travelling at about 1mph, and it now has to wait here to get onto the solid traffic on the A412, which in itself can take several minutes. Next s lide p le ase? This shows the traffic going up our road, the red arrow indicates where our property is, and I believe that if this happens more frequently, then our business and patients would lose all the benefits of coming to see me, by the frustrations of being stuck and the traffic, the stress and the anxiety. I wonder how patients will get to their appointments on time, especially if this becomes the norm rather than the exception. Next slide please – again, this is just looking the other way up Tilehouse Lane, showing

the traffic backed up.

47. CHAIR: Doesn’t Tilehouse Lane stop being a through-road during construction?

48. MR WILSON: It does, yes.

49. CHAIR: So once they get into Tilehouse Lane, they won’t get any delays there.

50. MR WILSON: The problem is the delays – this traffic which would have come down Tilehouse Lane will have to go down the 412; the 412 is already blocked, so it will be even more log-jammed. So I don’t see how people are going to move if it gets more jammed than this.

51. Next slide please? This shows the traffic joining Tilehouse Lane – the Tilehouse Lane traffic joining the A412 at the junction – and as you can see, it’s pretty gridlocked. I am aware that that traffic is not only congested on the A412 but elsewhere, and as you can see from the maps, there are very few alternative routes and there’ll be knock-on effects, especially if the M25 is blocked, as it often is, and traffic spills off onto the local roads. How the emergency services are going to operate and how many more accidents will there be? How will children get to school on time? I don’t know. Sadly, there have been a couple of fatal accidents at this junction since we’ve moved here as well. Could these added frustrations of being stuck in traffic, lead to stress, psychological problems? What’s the economic cost of the epidemic of mental illness that’s now sweeping the UK?

52. Next slide please? This shows the patients’ locations that come to our clinic. So this is just a selection of patients that travel to our clinic. We have built the business up over the last 18 years, mainly by referral from happy patients. They like to come to our clinic not just because of the treatments they receive but also because of the location. This is because of the ease of access, off-road parking, the tranquillity and calmness of the area and the access to the Colne Valley Park and Denham village. In general, the roads are clear enough outside peak time, to make the journey efficient, easy and with not too many delays. However, as you have seen from previous slides, there are times when the traffic congestion becomes severe and this is happening more frequently over the last year. For example, from Ruislip to the east – so about four miles, just below our house there – and from Stoke Poges, south, southwest, is a journey of four miles.

Patients travelling at peak times have to allow an hour to get to the clinic when it’s normally a 10-20 minute journey. So it may take them 20 minutes, probably, at peak times, but it could also take an hour. At the moment, because of my reputation I don’t think I’m losing any patients because of this, but if this became the norm or, indeed, get worse by taking longer to travel and the total duration of the congestion being extended through the day, so that even when there were previously quiet times to travel, that it becomes congested, then I believe this would have an extreme adverse effect on the business. I’m also concerned that a tipping point will be reached, creating inevitable gridlock, day after day, reducing the viability of my business. On the days where there is no gridlock, intolerably slow moving traffic would make it impossible to run the business by conducting appointments to time.

53. Next slide please? This is a couple of HS2 slides that I stuck together. This basically shows the number of adverse transport effects in the surrounding area of my business. The 47 yellow squares represent the adverse events; the green bar is the separation between the two maps, because the one on the left is on a different scale to the one on the right. The shaded-out area is the beginning of the area that is expanded on the right hand side of the map. The main point I wanted to show here, that the promoter has said there are going to be 47 adverse transport effects in this area, and I believe this will have a disastrous effect not only on my business, my property value, but also the quality of life for myself and the whole community.

54. Next slide please? This shows how the construction traffic routes encircle the business and make it difficult for my patients to drive to my clinic; all the red lines are the construction traffic routes, and the red dots are patients’ locations. As already mentioned, major disruption would be caused by the large number of lorry movements, on the limited number of major routes, capable of being used by large, heavy goods vehicles, servicing the 10 HS2 work compounds. In particular, the A412, which is the road my patients have to use, will be badly affected. The number of lorry movements will cause further damage to the existing roads, requiring constant, continual maintenance and repair, leading to more single file traffic and delays and temporary traffic lights and increased congestion. Further disruption and congestion will occur as regular users of the A412, including my patients, trying to avoid the roads being used by construction traffic, causing hold-ups of all the smaller roads, as demonstrated in my

previous slides.

55. Next slide please? Again, this just shows – you’ve seen the slide before – the construction roads, the 10 construction compounds, and my patients will be attempting to fight their way into this area. I think it will render it less effective for patients to come to the clinic. On top of this, there will be temporary road closures. Temporary to me means a couple of days; temporary to the promoter means several years. This will cause further delays and I think it will make it substantially less viable for people to attend the clinic at specific appointment times. So, there are many figures that I have from HS2, and they sent me some more figures in terms of numbers of light goods vehicles and heavy goods vehicles, and I am sure that Bucks County Council will go through that in more detail.

56. I just want to say that I find the figures interesting between the draft Environment Statement in May 2013 and the Environment Statement of November 2013, a mere six months later, that the total number of traffic movements has increased by 266%, and the number of workers has increased by 120%, in just a period of six months. I hope they are not going to continue to increase by this much in the future.

57. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: If they did, it would bring us back to Kenneth Boulding’s exponential growth, which is of course is impossible, so don’t worry.

58. MR WILSON: Absolutely. You pre-empted me almost –

59. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: In that case, don’t say it.

60. MR WILSON: But I think there is a cost of people sitting in a traffic jam. So I think that that is relevant. So what is the cost of clogging up our roads for half an hour or more? Who foots the bill for the thousands of bills burning petrol, diesel –

61. MR BELLINGHAM: You are going general, again, if you don’t mind. Can you skip that bit?

62. CHAIR: You haven’t asked us to do anything yet. You’ve been going for half an hour: you have talked about impact, which you could have done in five minutes and you haven’t asked us to do anything, so we can weigh up how we can help.

63. MR WILSON: Okay. I suppose what I am asking you to help with is the fact that I believe it’s not just things that we put into the promoter’s documentation that should be taken into account. I believe strongly that there’s a huge element of stress, psychological frustration of people being stuck in traffic, which can lead to a burden on our NHS and again, this will increase the costs of the projects if these things are taken into consideration. So I understand what you’re saying and in my next slide, I will start to go through the solutions.

64. So I have gone through the scenario of mainly the heavy construction traffic, workers’ traffic, and construction impacts including the length of time and possible road closures shown on this slide, as it affects us and the community and in driving through the Colne Valley. Now I would like to quickly skip through the other issues as shown on this slide and finish with my proposals. So, next slide please?

65. MR BELLINGHAM: Is this the river?

66. MR WILSON: Sorry?

67. MR BELLINGHAM: Is this the River Colne?

68. MR WILSON: I just thought I would like a nice slide up when I was asking you for… so after yesterday, as I said, what put me in a good mood is that the HS2 spur is basically no longer an issue, and so I would respectfully ask for a tunnel excluding the Heathrow passive spur provision to be put under the whole of the Colne Valley. So, as I said, it was with much delight that I heard Dominic Grieve say that yesterday, that the link is off the cards. This means that there could be no compound in this area, which is what I would like to ask this Select Committee to consider. I have received the latest figures from HS2, Exhibit P5236, and ask that HS2 should be bound to come up with another costing of a straight-through tunnel, not surfacing at all in this area, so you can debate that proposal. There is a cost of it coming up just in front of the M25, and I think mentioned yesterday, people were talking about having the tunnel continuing until it came out at Wendover. I don’t know what the costs of that would be.

69. An up-to-date road traffic survey should be completed to give the current situation, not one that’s based on potentially out-of-date data from 2011 and 2013. In whatever scenario that’s finally agreed, I then ask that there are practical measures that

are put in place to ensure that there is a proper accountability on the part of the nominated undertaker, and that there are proper enforcement measures in place, which are independent enforced, with appropriate penalties for non-compliance. These penalties must be, ultimately, to stop work or be so severe as to ensure compliance. This is because increasingly, companies put the cost of financial penalties into their budget and they ignore the compliance, pay the penalty and carry on, because it can be more profitable to do so. It must be made so that this is not the case.

70. I am also concerned about the continual reference to the Code of Construction Practice. I do not believe that all the likely effects have been adequately described in the Environment Statement, and feel that mitigation measures also have not been adequately described, and there are no recognisable measures or penalties for any breaches. In many instances, we are referred to the draft codes of practice. The term, ‘Reasonable practicable’, is used throughout, but it’s not clear who decides what is reasonable practicable. I propose the community decides this in conjunction with an independent consultant, independently funded. I am concerned that reasonably practicable is open to interpretation and may prejudice the concerns of myself, the Colne Valley and the community. The Code of Practice must be finalised and agreed with all interested parties before the work is started.

71. Next slide please? The environmental concerns and the concerns relative to my practice, and patients getting to my practice, would be mitigated by a tunnel under the entire area. Because ecosystems are not fully captured in commercial markets, or adequately quantified in terms of comparable with economic services and manufactured capital, they are often given little weight in policy decisions. It is our chance to change that with HS2, not only on our little piece of the line, but for all sections of the line. The costs need to be taken into account to give a true picture of the alternatives that can be presented. I heard some pieces yesterday, how everything will be alright eventually, but talking about the farm that was going to be decimated; and it’s just one interesting fact, that it takes 1,000 years for the planet to make one inch of good top soil. Yesterday, people were talking about feeding the country and feeding ourselves, and the current projections are that within 60 years, a mere two generations, there will not be enough top soil left to grow the food to feed the planet: frightening, isn’t it? How is this accounted for.

72. CHAIR: I am afraid we can’t do anything about that at the moment, so can you get to the point?

73. MR WILSON: But surely, we can do something about –

74. SIR P ETER BOTTOMLEY: Mr Wilson, you’re supposed to be dealing with your petition points that affect you. You have now taken – you’re the only person we’ve had so far who has tried to go on through a script like this without sticking to the points that affect your particularly, in your location. Please, try to skip the general things. Please.

75. MR WILSON: Okay, next slide please? So, this is relevant to myself and my patients: pollution, health, including noise, vibration, exhaust fumes, dust and light pollution. This, again could be mitigated by a tunnel, depending on whether or not there needs to be a compound next to the M25 at the end of Tilehouse Lane. In any case, I believe a new monitoring site should be placed within the area, to achieve a new baseline before any work is agreed to start with, and then monitoring throughout; i.e. not using an existing monitoring sites which are not within the designated construction areas. The codes of practice must be finalised and agreed, again, with all interested parties.

76. Next slide please? So, economic and financial costs have already been borne by myself, my business, my family, and the future doesn’t look that bright. I felt that it is important to take out time from my business to try to get to grips with what is happening. I believe that the financial costs over the next decade will be horrendous for myself, unless adequate compensation is put in place. I ask that a system be put in place to compensate a small business owner – not just me, but for the many who have not been able to represent themselves before the committee for whatever reason. I envisage this could be difficult to quantify, and therefore ask for an independent consultant or consultants, to represent the businesses in the area, and come up with an agreeable solution for the parties affected, however far away from the line they are; not dictated by some arbitrary line of some arbitrary distance from the railway line.

77. Next slide, please? So, before my last slide, I’d like to say thank you everyone for your patience and attention to the matters raised, and just having a look at that slide, it is such a beautiful area. So, the last slide is a summary for the best solution and I’m just going to go through a final summary of my requests: I know this might be outside of the

remit to employ an economist who takes the true costs of the project I’m looking at, so effective decisions may be taken into account, number one. Number two, bury the line via a tunnel under the entire Colne Valley and if possible, keep it under the ground until it comes out at Wendover. Three, employ independent consultants to work with and represent the petitioners with respect to their concerns and interests in all areas, i.e. construction, environment, pollution. Four, draw a new baseline using current, up-to- date data. Five, measure new baselines in the area for air quality, noise, vibration, light pollution, with new monitoring facilities. Six, clarify the exact codes of practice, based on a new baseline so they are not open to broad interpretation, such as what is reasonably practicable. Seven, put in clear penalties that may be actioned immediately if any of the agreed codes are broken; the penalties need to be such that the contractor will have to take action or work should be stopped. Eight, the codes of practice must be finalised and agreed with all interested parties before any work is started. Nine, if HS2 is supposed to be for the good of everyone in the UK, then no one should be disadvantaged by it, no matter how far from the line. Therefore, I request, just an adequate compensation for loss in property value, loss in business revenues, and for losses in any other circumstances not only for myself but all those others who have not been able to present here before you.

78. I also ask that the following is taken into account to calculate the hidden costs of all the work done by people like myself, petitioners; people who have not petitioned but taken the time to study the proposition and help the petitioners; the costs of the 18 councils along the route, are using taxpayers’ money to set up departments and employ consultants to mitigate the effects of HS2. £1 billion has already been spent by HS2 and I believe that the costs of all the petitioners and interested parties, could potentially exceed this. This is a hidden cost and needs to be accounted for to find the true cost. I ask the Select Committee to ask for an economic re-evaluation, taking into account all the unaccounted for costs, and suggest that the extra £185 million for a tunnel, or whatever it is for a tunnel to go all the way to Wendover, would be well-justified when you take all the economic costs into consideration. I ask for these calculations to be made so that we can make an informed judgement. I believe that we need a strong dose of realism to save ourselves, our country, our world, and let’s put human beings back into the driver’s seat of economic projects like HS2. Thank you for your time.

79. CHAIR: Mr Mould, quite a lot was beyond our scope and some of the issues raised we already know the answers to. There was a request about moving a construction compound, and some concern about traffic. Could we concentrate on that please?

80. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Yes, first in relation to the construction compound, as I explained yesterday, our assessment is that whether one tunnels beneath the Colne Valley or whether one does – as proposed in the Bill at the moment, and puts the route on a viaduct and in cutting through the valley – one would need a very substantial construction site at West Hyde. Our assessment is that that construction site would need to endure for at least as long under the tunnel option as it would under the Bill scheme, and our current assessment is that the traffic that it would generate on the M25 and on the A412, would not be materially different under either option. So, those who support a tunnel, I’m afraid, at the moment, they face inevitably, a construction site with those effects at West Hyde in any event.

81. CHAIR: Can I ask about traffic surveys: clearly, there’s information based on current traffic patterns, and the economy recovering is going to change things. By the time the project actually comes to start, presumably you’ll be updating traffic forecasts as things go along, talking with Buckinghamshire County Council about how you will manage the situation on the basis of real-time information?

82. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Yes, we will. As part of that exercise, we will continue to keep under close review the traffic predictions, in terms of general growth and the additional HS2 traffic that I showed you yesterday on slides P5251 and indeed P5255. What our predictions show at the moment, as you recall, is that essentially, we are dealing with a continuing pattern of growth in traffic and there is, as the petitioners have made very clear to you, there is an existing pattern of congestion at peak times on these roads, with which they are obviously concerned. The traffic that HS2 will generate throughout the weekday, as we’ve shown on our slides, is relatively limited in number. You made the point yesterday that there should be opportunities to try to manage HS2 traffic so that it is timed to use the roads outside of the morning and the evening peak. I think you suggested to me that would be a factor that those discussions would cover. I am happy to repeat the answer: yes, that is something that would form part of those discussions. There’s a simple economic – if I can pick up on economics – reason for

that: no contractor for whom the cost of vehicles sitting in traffic and burning fuel and so forth, is a cost to his contract, no contractor wants to organise his contract so that he has lorries and other commercial vehicles associated with these projects sitting in traffic jams. So, that is a response to the kind of imperative that the petitioner raised a few moments ago.

83. The other matters that he raised, concerning the effects of construction and the need to use best practicable means to address construction noise, the dust and air pollution arising from construction. Those are all matters that are dealt with in detail in the draft Code of Construction Practice which, amongst other things, provides for monitoring of air quality and noise and other matters. That Code of Construction Practice is, as we have said before, will be completed and finalised at the time when the Bill becomes law, if indeed it does, that is based upon best practice in large projects, both those that are promoted through Parliamentary powers and also those that are promoted under existing administrative arrangements for major project development.

84. CHAIR: Okay, thank you Mr Mould. F inal comment, Mr Wilson?

85. MR WILSON: I would just say, I implore you to think differently and weigh up the hidden costs and come to the right conclusions, basically. This project could be a cutting-edge project to show the way for the current and next generation of strategic thinkers and economists and seeing as HS2 is a project for the future, using cutting-edge technology, if it goes ahead, shouldn’t we be using up-to-date, economic models to work on this project. Thank you for your time.

86. MR BELLINGHAM: Can I just ask one final question? If you had one ask: obviously the ask you have got is to get this section into a tunnel but we are going to be hearing evidence from the councils; there is a lot of work going on around that particular alternative and we will be turning to that after the election, obviously. But if you had one ask, in terms of all the things you put to us, what would it be?

87. MR WI LSON : It wo uld be a tunnel.

88. MR BELLINGHAM: No, apart from that, because that is something which the councils and other experts will be addressing and so on. Is there any ask around more detailed matters, including these construction sites, etc. or traffic flows? Is there one

real priority that you’ve got, to conclude with?

89. MR WILSON: I think the priority, if the construction does go ahead, and there are construction sites, then I suppose the priority is that, if the project is for everybody in the country, then everybody that is disadvantaged should be adequately compensated, no matter how far they live from the line. So if, for example, my business folds because the patients can’t get to me, I should be compensated. If a small business down the road – I just feel that there should be adequate compensation for everybody.

90. CHAIR: Okay, thank you Mr Wilson. May we move on to Mr John P rice, who is representing Mr Kalirai? Sorry, is it Jane Price, rather than John Price?

Ms Jane Price, Mr Nash Kalirai and others

91. MS PRIC E: I ’ m Ja ne!

92. CHAIR: My apologies. Who is representing who? Right, thank you.

93. MR KALIRAI: If I could just explain, John Price unfortunately couldn’t be with us today. We did write to the clerk and also to Mr Walker to inform him of that a couple of weeks ago, and the change of name. If you don’t mind, may I take that off, because it’s misspelled horribly? You can call me Nash Kalirai.

94. CHAIR: Can we make a note of that? How do you spell it?

95. MR KALIRAI: N-A-S-H, Nash.

96. CHAIR: Right.

97. MR KALIRAI: Before I start, are all the phone calls over? Good morning, as I said, my name is Nash Kalirai and unfortunately John Price was unable to present this morning. Thank you for allowing us to present our petition here. I am one of the signatories on the petition and other signatories are John and David, who are represented here. So all three properties are represented here. We are all owner-occupiers of properties on Tilehouse Lane, and we have lived there for periods ranging from 10 years to 30-plus years. Since the announcement of HS2 we have been seeking information and understanding from HS2. Since 2011, we have been attending road shows, using their websites. Unfortunately, HS2 chose not to hold a road show in Denham, so we

travelled to other parts of Buckinghamshire, as far as Great Missenden and any other nearer road shows. We did find that HS2 staff at those locations were not equipped to deal with queries we raised, with regard to Denham, so we have found it difficult to actually get information. I myself have asked for, on several occasions both at the road shows and via phone calls to the helpline – for scale plans, of the scale that they were meant to be viewed at. HS2 have never, not on a single occasion, have provided any such plans. So we have found we have outstanding concerns and issues and as these were common to us, we have raised one petition rather than single petitions for all of us.

98. Our properties are located within the greenbelt, and we chose to move there for the glorious surroundings which I am sure you have seen; the recreational facilities; the tranquillity; the health benefits. We, and our children, make considerable use of the local roads, bridal ways, public rights of ways, towpaths, canals, shops, cafes etc. The exceptional length of the construction phase of HS2 as planned will deprive us of some of the use of these facilities and deprive us of hundreds of thousands of pounds in lost property values. We all have children who are either at university, about to start university or in the early stages of their careers. So, during the rather lengthy construction phase of HS2 around Denham, we may find ourselves where we have to sell our properties, to reflect our changing circumstances.

99. If we could move on to slide 1 please? These photographs show the section of Tilehouse Lane at the end, approaching the construction compound. We use this section of road for cycle rides, walks, access to the public rights of ways, and we often take friends and family up here. This particular section is on the way to a pub and restaurant called the Koi Carp. The lower two photographs show a path on the right-hand side. There’s a path that comes onto Tilehouse Lane, and in order to continue on the path, you have to walk along a section of the road and then back onto the path. This, from our point of view, seems a totally unsuitable road to be directing additional traffic, especially HGVs.

100. Slide 2? This slide we’ve created by joining up the various HS2 maps for the Denham area. The bottom right-hand side, I’ve placed a red circle which shows the location of our properties, and the green road I’ve drawn in is Tilehouse Lane, and it goes up to the construction compound. If you can just move the cursor back down, if you go down all the way to the junction, that’s the A412. If you could follow the A412

please and stop there. That road is Denham Green Lane, and that is used as a cut- through and I will go on to explain why we’re impacted and why we feel that the traffic considerations for our section of the road have not been taken into account. I think the other thing to highlight is any area of that map which is shaded in any colour is land that is required as part of the construction by HS2. So, it actually shows how enveloped and how dwarfed we are by the construction actually happening in an around us.

101. The other thing that’s on that plan at the moment is the HS2 spur, which I note there has been an announcement of that, but what was concerning us, if you follow the HS2 spur curve, where it would actually go off to Heathrow, it would actually come over our properties. So, if the HS2 spur is not going ahead, could we request that that spur is then removed from the drawing so that it doesn’t look as if it’s still in the proposition.

102. Slide 3, please? This is the same slide. At the top left hand side, we’ve just circled in the new access to the M25 that’s being created for the construction compound, and in our petition we’ve requested that all vehicular traffic which is associated with the construction uses that junction rather than the A412, which will impact us severely. As the previous petitioner showed in his photographs, there are on occasions, severe traffic issues on the A412. Using the figures in section 12 of the Community Forum Action Report for the Colne Valley, if you add up the figures in the table, they are dispersed throughout that table, but if you tot them up, the amount of traffic that is suggested would – the amounts of vehicle movements that would use the A412 amounts to 4,660 vehicles a day. Now that is just for these construction compounds. That section of the A412 is also being used for construction vehicles from the neighbouring area and if you factor those in, I think David came to a figure of about 7,500 vehicle movements a day. So that information is hard to get out, but it’s actually contained within table 12 and does need to be consolidated to get those numbers.

103. Slide 4, please? This is another HS2 map and what we’ve shown on here is, highlighted in red, the A412. Highlighted in green is the M25. The blue circle is that new M25 access that’s been proposed. This shows that for a large section, the A412 that HS2 is using is actually parallel with the M25 so it doesn’t seem unreasonable or impractical to use the M25 for all of that traffic instead of the A412 as the two are on parallel routes at that point, and there is access created.

104. The other thing that hasn’t been mentioned at all in any of the documents that I’ve seen is actually using the newly constructed railway tunnel or track to take the traffic off the road. The track starts at Old Oak Common, which is a massive junction. If the spoil was taken back there, they could actually use the rail network for movement, rather than use the roads. Within reason, the Grand Union Canal could be used or, off peak, the Chiltern Railway could be used. Off peak, Denham Station only has one train an hour, so there does appear to be capacity for using that.

105. Can we move on to slide 8 now, please? This is the plan of the construction compound. The area shown as ‘A’ is the new M25 access. Of particular note in the blue area is a road under section B, which is shown as temporary access to a quarry site. As you see from the quarry, it actually joins Tilehouse Lane. Tilehouse Lane is actually undergoing considerable construction at node C, where there’s an entirely new section of road being created, so it will be closed. Our concern is that the traffic from that quarry road, which is joining Tilehouse Lane, has to then come in the direction of our properties along the section of road that I showed you in the photographs right in the beginning.

106. What we suggest is that quarry traffic is actually diverted through the construction compound and on to the M25 access road, so there is no need to re-route any of those vehicles, whether they’re lorries, HGVs, whatever, on to Tilehouse Lane at all. On there are shown two bridleways.

107. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: Do we know the level of this lorry traffic?

108. MR KALIRAI: There are no figures on it but, as you can imagine, quarry traffic would be quite substantial vehicles. The two other areas on there, D and E, are two bridleways that are to be temporarily stopped up, and I’ll come back to that, because the word ‘te mpo rar ily’ has a different definition in HS2 literature than it does in general language usage. If our suggestions are adopted, then we see no need to actually stop those; they can continue. If they continue, then they are in use and there’s no need for maintenance of them when they’re not in use.

109. Slide 9, please. I’ll describe this in more detail, but what we’d like is for points A,

B and C to have automatic traffic monitoring systems installed. We explain a bit more further down in my presentation about how we suggest they are used, but they are accesses to the construction compound other than the M25 junction.

110. Slide 10, please. This is an extract from the Colne Valley Environmental Statement. 12.4.12 suggests that the construction proposed scheme is forecast to result in changes to daily traffic flows, due to work construction vehicles accessing work site and also temporary road closures. Then it goes on to say that these changes will lead to significant delays to vehicle users and congestion, and there’s a definition of ‘congestion’ within that document, which is the junction beyond or close to capacity. Particularly mentioned in that document is the A412 North Orbital Road with Denham Green Lane as a major adverse effect. One of the things we know is that, when we experience traffic delays at Denham Green Lane, the traffic goes up to Denham Green Lane and into Tilehouse Lane to avoid the A412.

111. Slide 11, please. In another extract from that document, they talk about temporary c los ure.

112. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: Temporary long-term closure?

113. MR KALIRAI: Yes, the word ‘te mpo rar y’ is five and a half years. We think of ‘te mpo rar y’ as a utility company coming and digging up the road, and doing repairs. If it was two days, then we’d think we’d find a way around it, but five and a half years does seem to be stretching the definition of ‘te mpo rar y’. It’s causing us concern, but it’s actually highly misleading to people who read that out of context. There’s also the closure of Tilehouse Lane, which requires a 5.2-kilometre diversion.

114. They also do confess that the construction proposed scheme will result in substantial traffic flows. These will cause significant increases in traffic-related severance as well. Despite the statements about not having significant impact, their own documents are saying that there will be significant impact.

115. Can I have slide 5, please? In response to our petition, the PRD, the promoter’s response was to cut and paste sections of the draft construction code of practice and send it to us.

116. One of the issues we have with that is that it does mention things like phone access, logging calls and so on, but the draft code, as it stands, works in a way that’s actually represented here. If on the left-hand side we have an issue reported to the contractor via the mechanism set up, there’s a certain impact to that, which is where the red line starts off. However, the person who actually takes that call is unlikely to have any authority to do anything about it. That issue will then be passed on within the organisation; it will be passed on within the contractor, sent on to a relevant person. There might be some assessment. It might actually end up as an agenda item for a meeting. At some point, at some significant delay, somebody might actually do something about it. Meanwhile, the impact to us has increased, as shown by that graph. One of the suggestions we have is actually to prevent is getting in this situation.

117. Also, the PRD completely failed to mention the impact on the school journeys. We all have daughters who travel to school and have travelled to school using bus county transport. The school that’s allocated to our properties is 11 miles away, and it would actually significantly impact children travelling to school from our location, because the secondary schools are quite a distance away. We had suggested that the traffic movements are timed to avoid any disruption to school journeys, whether that’s going in the morning or coming home in the afternoon.

118. Slide 6, please. The other concern is that the people working on HS2 will actually be incentivised to deliver their particular section of the project. This has been my experience of having come across construction companies in the past. What we’re showing here is, on the le ft-hand side, at the start of a project, when we raise issues, there is going to be a certain probability that somebody will actually do something about it. As the project progresses – and we’re talking here of a period of eight years, 10 years. We don’t actually know, but it’s a major period of time. What will happen is, as time passes and we raise issues, the response to those will actually become less and less. As we progress, they will be ignored. We don’t expect any action to taken. One of the remedies we want to put in place is to stop that situation happening.

119. MR MEARNS: Can I make as a suggestion that I’ve actually been in situations where people have reported things to the relevant organisation and not have a response? There have been other times when people have reported things to me, on a constituency basis, and by the time that I’ve actually got in touch with the relevant body, whether it

be the local authority or the health, they’ve actually gone and sorted the problem anyway. The constituent thinks I’m like God, because it’s been sorted within 20 minutes, even though I wouldn’t have had time to report the issue in the first place.

120. The drafts that you’ve made up there are a possible outcome, but they don’t seem to me based on any scientific analysis of the way in which this set of outcomes is likely to happen. It’s an assumption on your behalf that that’s what will happen but, from my perspective, there is a whole range of ways in which you can report things.

121. If for instance you weren’t satisfied with the outcome from an initial report, and you didn’t think the action had been taken so that your first draft comes into play, you could actually take on board the offices of a local area councillor or a local MP, who can get in touch with the organisation on your behalf. I tend to find from experience even private contractors don’t like Members of Parliament ringing them up, because it doesn’t seem to go well for their public relations generally. It’s a potential set of outcomes that are entirely feasible but, also at the same time, could be likely, could be unlikely. We really don’t know.

122. MR KALIRAI: I take on board what you say and that is a valid point. A couple of things I would say in response to that are that the draft code of construction practice is not a scientific document either. It talks about best practice. It talks about practicable, reasonable. It’s not scientific.

123. The other thing I would say is that I have actually had some experience, myself, of dealing with the construction industry. I’ve also had experience of contacting my MP, who was here yesterday, Dominic Grieve. What I can tell you is that my previous graph is still valid, in that there is a time lag and, during that time lag, that issue is still impacting on us. I do appreciate that, but what I’m saying is that there is a time lag.

124. MR MEARNS: The previous slide though, the curve that goes up, it may well be that the incident that you’ve reported might have been a one-off that might not occur again. Through these hearings, we’ve heard time and time again the promoter saying, look, if an issue’s brought to their attention and it is bad PR in a locality, they will address the issue if at all practically possible. At the same time, they’ve also said that it is possible that an individual contractor or an operative of the contractor might actually do something on a one-off basis. Now, if an issue happens on a one-off basis that curve

ceases to come into being.

125. MR KALIRAI: Absolutely no question of that. I would like to draw your attention to something that Dominic Grieve said yesterday, where he’d actually asked for sound figures repeatedly and they’d not been provided. That has been our experience of interacting with HS2, not one of proactive response.

126. MR MEARNS: It’s something that we’ve had reported to us on repeated occasions and something that HS2 has promised to get better in the future.

127. MR KALIRAI: For the time being, my curve still is valid then.

128. CHAIR: We hope the curve will be improving. Carry on.

129. MR KALIRAI: I do wish to improve it. Could we move to slide 7? Now, what we’d like to see is this kind of thing, where an issue is reported and we’d like to see some kind of automatic action, so the impact on the residents doesn’t prolong; it is actioned straight away. O ne of those is – if we could just move back to slide 9, please – for example, these are areas where we said we’d like to have automatic traffic monitoring. The technology for this exists at the moment, so we’re not talking in terms of science fiction here; this is all perfectly possible. What we’d like to see is, for example at those points, automatic monitoring of traffic so that we know if there are vehicles that are registered with HS2 construction that are using those roads when they shouldn’t do. We can also know how many unregistered vehicles are using those access points, so we can actually track if there’s any abuse of the system.

130. What we’d like to do, what we’re requesting, is that all that information is available on a website and it’s set to automatic triggers so that, if agreed limits are exceeded, there’s an automatic trigger and some action is taken, without it becoming a statistic or an agenda item, or waiting for the person responsible to come back off his holiday, all of that sort of thing. That’s what we’re trying to implement, what we’re asking to be implemented to make life easier for us all round.

131. Also what we’d like to see is some mechanism to actually give HS2 an incentive to carry those out. For example, if noise, dust, pollution, whatever limits are exceeded, there is a given time for remedial action and the next trigger is shutdown of works.

Now, our intention is not to shut the works down but, you can bet your bottom dollar, if HS2 is given the incentive to do things that way, they will actually make sure that they don’t exceed those limits and we don’t end up in a situation where we suffer from prolonged nuisances to our locality.

132. Slide 9, please. This shows the extent of the non-tunnelled area in the Colne Valley. Part of our petition wanted to add our voice to those asking for a tunnel to be continued all the way through.

133. Can I have slide 2, please? Just going back to the location of our properties and how we are enveloped by this massive construction compound, the petitioner’s response document, in terms of loss of value on our properties, suggests property values may be compensated through the need to sell scheme. The problem with that scheme, having looked at it, is that it requires a tremendous amount of evidence to be gathered, rather like appearing here today. It’s actually quite an onerous job and it requires evidence of compelling reasons to sell your property.

134. Now, we may not have compelling reasons. It just might be a change of life circumstances. We might need to sell our properties to enable our children to get on the property ladder or whatever. I think what we’re asking for here is some mechanism so that we don’t have to go through that process, given the impact that this is going to have on us. If you can just place the cursor on here again –

135. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: Put your finger where you’re pointing to.

136. MR KALIRAI: Okay. That junction there is Denham Green Lane and, as I showed earlier, HS2 actually recognises that there will be severe impact to traffic along there. What tends to happen is, when there’s traffic coming south and on the A412, it gets to that point and then it comes along Denham Green Lane and along Tilehouse Lane. Where there are increased vehicle movements that is going to impact us, and we feel that the whole scheme is impacting on our property values and it has actually deprived us of hundreds of thousands pounds’ worth of value on our properties.

137. What we’d like to ask the Committee is to ensure that HS2 will purchase our properties at an unblighted price, without the pain, anxiety and suffering of the need to sell scheme qualifications. I think we’ve been through enough anxiety and sleepless

nights already. Thank you.

138. CHAIR: Thank you. We are monitoring need to sell and, because it’s not based on geography or distance, there has to be some logic, otherwise somebody in Bristol might be claiming Government ought to buy their home, because HS2 has an impact on them. The bar is rather lower than the exceptional hardship scheme. In the summer, we’ll have a report back to see whether or not the scheme is doing what we would like it to do. We will nudge and push the Government if it is not doing that, so we are aware and on the case.

139. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: What it also means is that, if you don’t apply, we can’t judge that the scheme isn’t working. Somebody who wanted to apply would need to apply, not say to us it’s too difficult. It is a compelling reason to sell, the need to sell scheme, in addition to what they had originally proposed. Although it’s difficult to apply, if someone has a compelling reason to sell, they need to apply. We can’t do anything for them.

140. MR KALIRAI: I understand what you’re saying. Due to the period of construction, our children might need to sell in the event of our deaths.

141. CHAIR: That would be compelling.

142. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: It’s rather an extreme case.

143. MR KALIRAI: There are all sorts of cases and you can’t bring them up, but it’s actually the period of construction. When you say we need to apply before we’re actually assessed, we might be five years down the road when we do that.

144. CHAIR: O ur assessment is that it puts reasons in the guidance and then it says, ‘any other reason’. Essentially it wants people to make an argument for why their property ought to be – and the proximity of HS2, the impact and a variety of others – some family reason – are actually what they’re searching for. Change of circumstance, divorce, moving, kids going to university, all these things ought to be taken into account.

145. MR KALIRAI: That’s not brought out in the documentation. Perhaps maybe that could be added to that.

146. CHAIR: The key thing is how the independent people who run the scheme actually interpret it. That’s really what we have to have a look at when we get to the summer.

147. MR KALIRAI: If you could, because the way it’s worded at the moment comes across as rather hostile.

148. CHAIR: Can we start off firstly with the Heathrow spur? As I understand the situation at the moment, because of Old Oak Common, it’s possible to construct a wa lk-across from Crossrail to HS2, in which somebody can get to Heathrow probably in 10 or 12 minutes and three or four stops.

149. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Certainly the proposal is that there should be a convenient interchange at Old Oak Common, yes.

150. CHAIR: Therefore, that diminishes the argument for spending a billion or two for a link with HS2.

151. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Yes, I think the judgment is that the strategic case for the spur in Phase 2, which was the position in the command paper in 2012, which set the strategy, that that position has been under constant review. The announcement yesterday reflects the judgment that the strategic case for a spur, in P hase 1 or Phase 2, is no longer considered to be made out.

152. CHAIR: So it’s not ever going to happen, but it will stay in the Bill as a passive provision.

153. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Yes, because it may be in future years that that judgment will change.

154. CHAIR: Does a passive provision in the Bill mean that, if it gets anywhere near these homes, they could serve a blight notice? Effectively, if you have a passive provision, you could argue that property would still be blighted.

155. MR MOULD QC (DfT): The passive provision in the Bill is limited to some very minor walling works, provision for turnouts at two places along the railway line. That passive provision is contained well within the Bill limits for the P hase 1 railway. It

follows that the only persons who are in a position to serve a blight notice in relation to those elements are people whose land will be required in any event for the construction of the Phase 1 railway. These are very detailed works, well within Bill limits for Phase 1 in any event.

156. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: If I were to think about buying a house outside the Bill limits, would the possibility of the Heathrow spur show up on a search?

157. MR MOULD QC (DfT): On the local land searches?

158. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: If you’d like to take advice and, at some stage, provide the answer, it would be helpful.

159. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Insofar as it would, what you would be told now, I daresay, is that the Government have said that they do not intend to create a spur at Heathrow.

160. SIR PETER BO TTOMLEY: That I understand. What I’m looking for is would a diligent lawyer advising me say to me, ‘There is this passive provision in the Bill.’ At some stage, I’d like to know the clear answer to that.

161. CHAIR: C lea r ly we look to the Bill and, at the moment, the plan is to leave a passive provision, but if a passive provision is never going to be built is going to blight people, then there is an argument for not having a passive provision.

162. MR MOULD QC (DfT): I understand the point entirely and I will find out what our position on that is. I think I know the answer to the previous question, placing myself momentarily in the position of being a diligent lawyer, but perhaps I needn’t spell that out.

163. CHAIR: Probably need to sell would be something that may help these properties.

164. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Need to sell is available and, certainly in principle, these proprietors, if they satisfy the criteria with which the Committee is very familiar, then that is the element of the compensation package that is available to them, yes.

165. CHAIR: Right, can we run through the issues raised, very quickly, please?

166. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Yes. I’ve put up the construction map for the West Hyde work site. You’ll see that we are proposing some changes to the work site, as part of our additional provision 2. The reasons for that appear from the blue shaded boxes. In particular, we’ve pulled back the temporary stockpile areas to the southern side of the work site in order to avoid affecting the quarry.

167. Now, the quarry is a quarry that has planning permission. As part of the planning permission, the consented vehicle numbers were 296 vehicles a day; that is to say 148 in and 148 out. We have anticipated the need to accommodate those vehicles. If I can just show you with the cursor, the quarry is broadly located in the area where the cursor is now. In order to enable the quarry to be accessible to vehicles, we have assumed that, on a phased basis, the quarry vehicles will be able to pass along the routes within the work site, there being pointed out with the cursor. It would be phased because of the need to allow the quarry movements and the work site to coexist with each other, but quarry vehicles would emerge on the public highway at the point which is being shown now, which corresponds to point C on the petitioner’s plan, as you saw earlier.

168. The short point, the short answer, is that the HS2 scheme does not result in vehicles serving that quarry passing along the area of Tilehouse Lane within which the petitioners’ present properties are located. Those vehicles would access the public highway at that point on to the A412, which you see where the cursor is showing now.

169. The next point was to do with the suggestion that the M25 temporary slip should accommodate all HS2 construction traffic, including light vehicles and cars. I made clear yesterday that the Highways Agency does not support – they oppose – the use of those temporary slips for anything other than heavy construction traffic. The corollary to that is that all HS2 main-haul traffic serving that site will be directed on to the M25 through those slips, so all the main-haul lorries and the main construction lorries on that s ite.

170. The vehicles that will be using the A412, as I said yesterday, are limited to heavy vehicles accessing the satellite construction sites in the area and light vehicles and cars. The numbers that I have shown you on a number of occasions now, those are the product of that basic arrangement of traffic.

171. The petitioner is quite right: in the environmental statement, we assessed there as

being adverse impacts, including some major adverse impacts, along the road system in this area. The reason for that is that the criterion for assessment of traffic impacts in the environmental statement is that, where we predict the risk of congestion or increasing queuing at road junctions, at any time of the day, as a result of the introduction of HS2 traffic, then that is classed as an adverse effect. Depending on the level of congestion that is predicted, it’s graded as to whether it’s minor, moderate or major.

172. That is consistent with the actual numbers that I have shown you and what that tells us is, as you know and as you’ve made clear to me, there is a detailed negotiation to be had, under the auspices of the Bill and under our traffic management plan arrangements, with the local highway authorities and at the community level through the local environmental management plans with the community representatives, such as par is h councils and town councils, to refine the arrangements for the management of traffic, including the time of day, where appropriate, that HS2 traffic should operate. I’ve already made the point that, broadly speaking, the contractors will be quite happy to do that, because they are as keen as everybody else is to seek to maintain free flow of traffic, so far as it’s possible to do so.

173. In terms of the automatic monitoring of transport activity, traffic levels and so on, as the code of construction practice makes clear and as we’ve said to the Committee already, we would expect the nominated undertaker and the contractors to take advantage of automatic monitoring. We’ve already mentioned that HS2 construction vehicles we would expect to benefit from electronic directional –

174. CHAIR: They will be tagged.

175. MR MOULD QC (DfT): They’ll be tagged; they’ll be ticketed. The code provides for monitoring of air quality. It provides for monitoring of noise. These matters will be subject to control by the regulatory bodies and, in particular with noise and air quality, they’ll be subject to control on the part of the environmental health officers of the highway authority. If I say more about this now than I’ve just said, I’m going over ground that the Committee is very familiar with.

176. SIR PETER BO TTOMLEY: Nash Kalirai raised the question about, in effect, the untagged vehicles. Will they be noticed? He also raised the question of whether the information about the numbers could be publicly available in near real time.

177. MR MOULD QC (DfT): That’s a matter that is best dealt with through the consultative arrangements that I have just mentioned to you. If it’s felt useful, at a local level, for periodic publication of activity and so forth, then that is something that could be raised through the planning arrangements that I just mentioned.

178. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: Perhaps by the end of our work, not today but in a year or so’s time, the issue that he has raised for the Denham people, the Tilehouse Lane people, actually applies probably to neighbours of other construction sites. If the information is going to be available not only to the contractor and to the people supervising them, the question is whether it should be available to local people as well. I’m not asking for individual registration plates, but the volume of traffic and where it’s going is something which, if it is available, might be publicly available, if that can be noted.

179. MR MOULD QC (DfT): I don’t see any problem with that in principle, at all. I would imagine, I would expect, matters of that kind to be addressed through the traffic management plans.

180. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: That’s going more general than the specific point I was trying to make. I think it’s been noted by someone in the room. Nash Kalirai also raised the question of whether alternative transport methods could be used, like the tunnel, like the Canal.

181. MR MOULD QC (DfT): We have explained to the Committee that our current assessment of traffic movements, in particular road movements, is based upon making as much use as we reasonably can of the shifting of materials along the trace. We cannot, I’m afraid, with the best will in the world, get all of the heavy traffic off the roads and on to the railway line, because of programming issues, because of blockers. When one is building tunnels, as you can imagine, it is extremely challenging to have to mo ve ma ter ia ls a lo ng tunnels as they’re being constructed.

182. The figures that we’ve given you are our current estimation of the residual traffic upon the road, allowing for the use of the trace where possible to do it. I do emphasise the numbers that are on the local road network, the A412 and other roads in the immediate locality of Denham, the HS2 contribution is relatively limited.

183. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: I know, but we heard from Mr Wilson and we’ve seen from the present petitioners that the road network is at saturation for significant periods of time.

184. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Indeed so and I’ve acknowledged that. I’ve said, in answer to Mr Syms’ question, that is something that the promoter and the responsible authorities will need to consider in terms of the timing of journeys.

185. CHAIR: Apart from discussing with Buckinghamshire County Council about traffic and all the other issues, presumably school transport would be an issue which the county council would have a great interest in.

186. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Yes, that would be something that I’m sure would be at the forefront of discussions with the bodies that I’ve mentioned. I know it’s frustrating to petitioners not to have an answer, ‘There will be this; there will be that,’ but this is because of the stage we are in the planning of the project. I am ultimately limited to saying that these are the arrangements that we are committed to. These are the matters that we’re committed to negotiating with the local authorities.

187. I re-emphasise the point because Denham petitioners haven’t been in the room when we’ve mentioned this. Under schedule 16 to the Bill, we have to seek the approval of the local highway authority for significant movements of heavy goods vehicles on roads in their area. They are entitled to impose upon us prescribed lorry routes and to impose conditions upon the use of those routes. Where they think it is justified, on the basis of the evidence, for example, they could impose conditions as to the time of use of those routes.

188. CHAIR: I would also make a general point that, up and down the route, various Members of Parliament, including the Department of Transport, have suggested that, if the project is coming through, there ought to be various bypasses and road improvement. It would seem to me that there would be a role for the Department to be saying that clearly the road network has difficulties. Given the timescale, it may well be possible to make other arrangements as well to improve things.

189. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Can I just make one other point that was raised and that was in relation to the graphs that we saw? Obviously the project will seek to get as

close to the third of the graphs as it can. I was going to make one point in relation to that. The code of construction practice will be contractually binding upon the main contractor. It will be contractually binding on the subcontractors. We’ve explained to the Committee that the main contractor in this case will be responsible for the actions and the omissions of the subcontractors. If provisions of the code of construction practice are breached – we hope that they won’t be but, being realistic, if they are breached here – at any particular time or any particular place, then that will be a breach of the contract and there will be consequences in relation to that. I’ve mentioned to you that, based on experience, penalties will be imposed if there are certain levels of breach of contract in relation to exigencies in that way. There will be teeth to this.

190. CHAIR: Clearly this is, if it goes through, P hase 1, and there might be P hase 2 and Phase Three eventually. To take your point, which I thought was quite a valid point, about the beginning of a project and the end of a project, the thing is that there will be an awful lot of work for contractors if it goes all the way to Edinburgh or Glasgow or wherever. Therefore, it may well be that they will be on their best behaviour for Phase 1, going through Denham.

191. MR MOULD QC (DfT): On HS1, the nominated undertaker knew that he couldn’t actually operate the railway until he had signed off all the requirements that had been imposed through assurances under the code of construction practice, and so forth. If you can’t actually operate the thing that you’ve just built, it does actually concentrate the mind a little bit, because obviously your revenue stream doesn’t start until you’ve actually started to run trains and take fares from passengers. It’s just a though as to the practical reality.

192. CHAIR: Brief final comments?

193. MR KALIRAI: I’m a little bit concerned about what Timothy said there about the Highways Agency restricting the amount of traffic on the M25. Obviously the Highways Agency is a much bigger beast to take on than us three poor residents, so I think what my concern is that traffic will be closely monitored and regulated, and any surplus will be sent the other way. I would like to have assurance son that, in terms of the overall traffic levels.

194. I take your point about the construction going forward and therefore the

contractors would be on best behaviour but, in terms of construction industry practice, they do tend to use practical completion as a mechanism for basically getting the most of the money they need out of a project. At that point, there can be a large number of issues outstanding, but the contractor has taken his money and moved on. That is a concern, but I would just request that that’s borne in mind when the code of construction practice is further developed and we can actually introduce mechanisms for behaviour on the part of the contractors.

195. CHAIR: The project does have to consult people like the Highways Agency, the Environment Agency and all these other people. In the event of there being a difference, I presume the Secretary of State would be the person who would sort things out. As this is some years off, I’m perfectly sure there would be still further debate and the opportunity to have further debate. My experience of the M25 is that sometimes that gets jammed up quite a lot in London. Clearly it should have been eight lanes rather than four. I leave you with that controversial thought. Thank you very much indeed.

196. MR KALIRAI: Thank you very much.

Paula Sage, Paul Pennifer and Robert Young

197. MRS SAGE: Could I have the second batch of the slides that were listed, please? That is A974(1). Thank you. That’s me. A974(2), please. My husband, Paul Sage, is a joint signatory to this petition, together with two residents in our road, Mr and Mrs Pennifer, and Mr and Mrs Young. We will be dealing with these different issues in short presentations and the sections will be presented in the order listed.

198. A974(3), please. This is where we live. This photograph was taken outside our front gate. The view is down the hill towards where the viaduct will cross and that will be 810 metres from the house. This is a private unadopted road, with the surface in poor condition. There is no organisation that takes responsibility for the repair and maintenance of this road. The owners are unknown. If the promoter can find out the owner, I’d be very grateful if they could let me know, because I’ve been trying for years. The road deteriorates across-wise particularly, because there are gas and water pipes running underneath.

199. This road, as we’ve heard from the previous petitioner, is to be used for traffic

diversion when Tilehouse Lane is closed for the construction of the viaduct. Now, the previous petitioner quoted that Tilehouse Lane would be shut for five years. On Thursday, when I met the representative of HS2 who came to Denham, I was told it would be up to 18 months, so we have a bit of a difference in timeframes there. Maybe that could do with some investigation.

200. I’ll tell you just a little about us in a few sentences. We’ve lived here for 35 years and we’ve recently retired. We’re now able to increase the time for country walks and cycling, the sort of thing we’ve always planned to do. Many of our walks and cycling take place in the Colne Valley Park.

201. A974(4), please. Inside that circle is the area local to us, which we use more often. This area, as we’ve heard, will sadly be devastated, the environment destroyed for people and wildlife. This is throughout the construction period and when the drains are running. I will briefly show you a few of the areas we visit. I’m very mindful that you have seen quite a number of views of Denham, but maybe you haven’t seen the angles we’ve taken.

202. A974(5), please. This is the famous Old Shire Lane. As you know and have heard from other petitioners, it’s an ancient bridleway, footpath, public right of way, thought by some to be a sunken lane worn down over many, many hundreds of year. Some of this will be lost, as you’ve heard, and the history with it. The most important factor though is the viaduct will run alongside it, so it would not be an appropriate lane to go for a walk. If you look in the top left-hand corner, that field, going from, let’s say, across diagonally is where the train will run on the viaduct.

203. A974(6), please, the Grand Union Canal. We walk along here, a tranquil walk past canal boats, many varieties of water birds. The viaduct would cross this, so it no longer would be an appealing place for a walk.

204. A974(7), please. This is Broadwater Lake, nature reserve, site of special scientific interest, the largest expanse of water in the Colne Valley, again a wide range of nationally important water birds and a major breeding habitat. The construction activity and noise, and the noise of the train, would result in the area losing attractiveness for birds and for us to walk.

205. A974(8), please. This is a photo of a festival held in Denham Country Park, obviously summertime. This part of the Colne Valley is the nearest thing to a municipal park that the residents of Denham have available in our semi-rural location. It too has a range of important wildlife and flora. We visit this area regularly, along with 112,000 other people who come there each year because, as you’ve already heard, it’s the first large area that’s easily accessible countryside to the west of London. There would be construction activity close by this park; it would then become a less suitable destination for country leisure time.

206. A974(9), please. This is again a photograph you’ve seen before, an impression of the two-and-a-quarter-mile viaduct. There is some artistic licence in the foreground. There would not be sailing boats there, in that there would be a bit of a risk of the sailing boats colliding with the piers. This would in fact be a noisy eyesore for us and for future generations.

207. I would now like to turn to the promoter’s response, A974(10), please. As points one to seven are generic statements under these headings and on traffic management, we will not be making comment.

208. A974(11), please. Point eight is a generic statement. Under point nine, we dispute the statements made in the promoter’s response. There would certainly be a significant community effect for Denham and visual blight in the area previously seen circled on the map. Fundamentally important parts will be destroyed. The promoter observes there will still be lots more land remaining for the park to retain its function. This is our local part of the Colne Valley Park. We are just two of the 7,100 people in Denham who would lose this space for recreation, with an adverse effect on quality of life.

209. Moving on to point 10 on noise, the generic answer under this is inaccurate for the area under consideration during and after construction. Other qualified people will be addressing noise in future hearings of the Select Committee. However, we wish to point out that our house is about 800 metres from the Chiltern line. We can clearly here the trains and train horns from our property. As high-speed trains make more noise, there will undoubtedly be noise blight, if we were to try to continue our walks.

210. A974(12), please. Points 11 up to and including 15 will no doubt be commented

on by appropriate experts at future hearings of the Select Committee. Under point 16, we are of the opposite opinion expressed by the promoter. We believe people and the environment would benefit from a tunnel instead of a viaduct.

211. A974(13), please. This is the viaduct carrying the A40 across the Colne Valley. The HS2 viaduct could look like this in time. As previously shown, there will be detrimental impacts on ourselves and loss of amenity for us during the construction of HS2 and afterwards, when the train is operational.

212. In conclusion of this section, the promoter’s response does not alleviate our concerns in the petition. To reduce the impacts on our way of life, we request HS2 railway is placed in a tunnel between the two portals.

213. A974(14), please. Continuing with the promoter’s response under the hydrology section – this is the last slide from me – points one to four are largely generic. They have no specific reference to potential drinking water risks for Denham, as raised in the petition. Again, the promoter’s response does not alleviate our concerns raised in the petition. However, we made an enquiry to Affinity Water. Affinity Water confirmed in the letter that drinking water for Denham would not be affected, as our water is sourced elsewhere. I believe Affinity Water has sent the letter to the Select Committee and to the promoter. I can supply a copy afterwards, if necessary. Affinity Water confirmed there is potential for impact on TH177, water source, which is under the proposed viaduct. This serves other areas.

214. Furthermore, Affinity Water confirmed that they are working with the promoter to identify the issues and risks to the water supply network and water sources posed by the construction and running of the proposed HS2 route. Therefore, it is disappointing that the promoter was unable to answer specific enquiries about the serious issue of perceived potential disruption to water supplies for Denham, as outlined in the petition. My presentation is complete. Thank you for your time.

215. CHAIR: Thank you, Mr Pennifer.

216. MR PENNIFER: As you can see, I’m Paul Pennifer. I want to talk to you about the effect HS2 is going to have on the River Misbourne, which runs through Denham. I live just up the road from Paula. My wife Margaret and I, who’ve lived in our house

for 28 years now, will be about 800 metres from the route of HS2.

217. Could I have my first slide, please? This is not the River Misbourne. When I was a lad, my friends and I had a penchant for going on a cruise. However, we didn’t have any money, so what we did was to get on our bikes and to cycle down to Silvertown, one of the most inappropriately named places on earth at that time. We would catch the Woolwich free ferry and go across the river to Woolwich. As kids, we didn’t really take much notice of all that white foamy stuff that you can see in this picture, and we held our noses because there was a bit of a stench coming up from the river. The reason for embarking on this story is that the Thames, which is just outside here, has miraculously transformed since that time.

218. The reason it’s transformed is that the heavy industry that operated along the banks of the Thames in Silvertown was regulated and statute came into play to stop them discharging effluent into the Thames and killing the river. At that time, the Thames was biologically dead. To put it into a Monty Python way, it was a blue… Can you help me here?

219. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: It was an inactive parrot.

220. MR PENNIFER: Yes, it was a deceased parrot. I believe that the River Misbourne is similarly at risk from High Speed 2, not in the same kind of way, but I’ll go on to explain. A word or two about the Misbourne.

221. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: Shall we change the picture?

222. MR PENNIFER: Thank you, sir. This is a picture of the Misbourne as it flows through higher Denham. It’s a pretty river, but it’s not just a pretty face. The River Misbourne is a very rare beast. It’s a chalk stream. There are only 210 chalk streams that exist in the whole world; the River Misbourne is one of them. It’s very special. It’s very special to everybody in Denham, as you would imagine. It flows straight through our village.

223. The source of the Misbourne is in the Chiltern Hills, aquifers within the Chiltern Hills, which are the water source for both the Misbourne and the water supply of the area. It’s because of the source that the Misbourne has such special qualities. The water

from the Misbourne is filtered through the chalk of the C hiltern Hills and, as a result, the Misbourne has very good clarity and it has a very good chemical quality as well.

224. Can I have my next slide, please? As a result, the Misbourne is a very healthy place for the natural habitat. This is a brown trout and the brown trout is an unusual fish in English waters, but it happily survives in the Misbourne, as do other somewhat more exotic and probably less known creatures, such as the fine-lined pea mussel and a range of mayflies, which are, I’m told, very unusual.

225. I’ll go on to the next slide, please. The abundant insect life, which is found along the Misbourne, provides a good food supply for the population of the river. The well vegetated banks provide shelter for the fish and invertebrates that are found in abundance in the Misbourne. To reiterate, the Misbourne is a rare chalk stream and it has a pretty unique ecology. It deserves to be protected and it deserves to be preserved, not just for us but for future generations.

226. The next slide, please. Inevitably, the course of High Speed 2 collides with the River Misbourne. My big concern is that, where it tunnels in the area of Amersham, then it runs right through the water table that supplies the Misbourne. If there is an interruption to that water supply, it will be disastrous for both the Misbourne itself and for local water supplies.

227. The HS2 response to my petition is, in the main, as Paula has said, generic in its terms, but it does quote the environmental study. This is the action that I would like to put before the Select Committee to be taken. The environmental study has been criticised by local experts as being inadequate, and the lesson from the clean-up of the Thames, going back to that, is that unless the promoter in this instance is forced to take appropriate protective action, then that may not take place. Now I know the Environment Agency has a role here, and an important role, but I – my proposal is that they should be helped in fulfilling their responsibility by local expertise. So either the Chiltern Society who have done a lot of work on this, or the Chilterns Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

228. CHAIR: Okay, thank you.

229. MR BELLINGHAM: Can I just ask you, the Misbourne goes into – does it go

into the Thames directly, or?

230. MR PENNIFER: It goes into – no, it goes into the Colne.

231. MR BELLINGHAM: The Colne, is it? So it goes into the Colne.

232. MR PENNIFER: Yes, it goes into the Colne.

233. MR BELLINGHAM: And where does it go into the Colne again? It goes into the Colne…

234. MR PENNIFER: It goes into the Colne at Denham.

235. MR BELLINGHAM: And the Colne obviously goes into the Thames, at some point?

236. MR PENNIFER: Eventually.

237. MR BELLINGHAM: Yes.

238. CHAIR: Okay.

239. MR PENNIFER: That wasn’t a connection I was trying to make, but…

240. CHAIR: No. Mr Young.

241. MR YOUNG: Good morning everybody. Monica and Robert Young. Can’t really see that.

242. CHAIR: You won’t be able to move that. You might swap places, if it will make it easier.

243. MR MEARNS : You may want swap your name tags over as well. Otherwise your fan mail from the TV exposure will go to the wrong person, okay.

244. MR YOUNG: Alright. That’s us. Next slide, please. We have lived in the Colne Valley for nearly 40 years, and we’ve also owned a house in the Southern, the Loire Valley, for 10 years, and the scope of our presentation really concerns itself more with the impact, the construction the viaduct will have on day to day lives of residents, commuters and business people, in the Colne Valley, rather than on ecological matters

which, no doubt, are covered by other petitioners. The house in the Loire Valley is important to this presentation. Next slide please. Because we visit frequently: we’ve made 100 visits in ten years. We’ve been very aware of the High Speed rail construction, and we’ve seen the countryside devastation, the road closures, the re- routing, the mountains of building materials, convoys of construction traffic and workers trucks and all of that, and the delays and the mess on the roads. Unlike most people, we actually have seen it. Next slide please. If I may I’d like to take you just through a few pictures of what railway construction looks like. There’s only about eight of them. This is a place called St Gervais. It’s one site; it’s absolutely massive, about half a mile across and, at one time, it was housing dozens and dozens of workers cabins, hundreds of cars, mountains of materials. But the railway is nearing completion now, so it’s a lot tidier than it was. Next slide please.

245. That’s the same place, but in the opposite direction showing power stations and power pilings going in on the railway line. Next slide please. This is at a place called Monts. There’s a viaduct going in at Monts. Monts is where the Duke of Windsor married Wallis Simpson, as a matter of interest. The staircase on the left of the first picture helps demonstrate the scale. It is truly enormous. I would say it’s sort of 100 metres wide at the base of that viaduct. And next slide please. This shows the completed viaduct at Monts. It shows the devastation that, in my view, that a viaduct will cause. It hasn’t yet been treated by the French equivalent of the A40 graffiti artists that Paula Sage was showing a few minutes ago. Next slide please. And this shows the viaduct coming off the side of the valley. Difficult to judge the enormity of the scale, except by the staircase in the top right hand corner. It is enormous. Pleasing geometric shapes to an architect, perhaps, but ugly in a natural valley. Next slide please.

246. Site at Sorigny showing the large construction site and workers cabins. Next slide please. And also at Sorigny showing the vastness of the construction site and the new railway going through. Next slide please. If I could park those pictures for the moment. But I hope the French pictures – I hope they sort of demonstrate to people something that might be difficult to sort of see without having that sort of experience. In our opinion, the decision to build the viaduct across the Colne Valley has been based on a simplistic cost-difficulty approach, and that the real issues of disruptions to peoples’ lives hasn’t been taken into account. In fact we suggest that the disruption to

the Colne Valley residents, commuters, business people is probably too difficult to cost and quantify, and therefore simply choosing a viaduct or a tunnel, based upon construction cost, is a flawed argument.

247. I’ve read the Promoter’s response to our petition, and it provides no comfort. In fact, I think it is meaningless. I quote that, ‘Ensuring adverse impacts are minimised as far as practicable’ is of little comfort to somebody who cannot get to work. Furthermore, Promoter’s response concerning the evolutionary nature of mitigation measures and Codes of Construction Practices provides no assurances either. We’ve also studied the Promoter’s exhibit list and associated documents of a viaduct versus a tunnel construction. 40 sections covering 54 pages and, despite all the science, there is nothing in that that quantifies the impact the construction of a viaduct will have on the users of Colne Valley. And the last point, the Channel Tunnel. For people like my wife and I, who have used the Channel Tunnel some 200 times, a tunnel which is over 30 miles long, all the negativity concerning difficulty, flexibility and costs of a Colne Valley Tunnel doesn’t sit comfortably. I’ve read somewhere in the documents that only another £200 million is required for a tunnel, which seems to me peanuts in the overall scheme of things. Next slide please.

248. We tried superimposing our French experience, and we had to say that it was impossible to imagine our French experience across the Colne Valley. We think there will be massive environmental and traffic congestion issues, and that these congestion problems will be exacerbated by the A412 in the Colne Valley being an alternative route to a congested M25.

249. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: This is different to that massive great viaduct that the French built across the east – south of Dordogne?

250. MR YOUNG: This is not that, yes. Well I haven’t seen that. Well we haven’t seen that one. We’re aware of it. They have a lot more space to do this. Next slide please. A map of the M25 around London, and the Colne Valley is shown in the yellow rectangle. Interestingly, just a point that when we came back from France a week ago the M26 to the M25 was closed. The M25 was closed in two other places and, when we eventually – significantly late – got round to our neck of the woods, the A40 or the M40 was also closed, and there was also an accident on the A412 and we got home much,

much later than we had anticipated. The traffic jams through and around the Colne Valley were horrendous that evening, and this is not an uncommon situation. In fact, the traffic anywhere in the vicinity of the M25 can be extremely volatile. The point of the map is to illustrate the closeness of the Colne Valley, shown in the yellow rectangle, to an extremely busy section of the M25, and that part of the M25 obviously is a major link between motorways M1, M40, M4, M3 and also connects to Heathrow, to Stansted and Gatwick not far away. The fact is that when the M25 jams, as it does frequently, and it’s likely to get worse over the years, the A412 road through Colne Valley is the only realistic alternative route. It was, after all, a forerunner to the M25, being called the North Orbital Road. Furthermore, Moorhall Road, which connects to the A412, is a vital link route to places like Harefield and Harrow and Northwood and Ruislip. Next slide please.

251. This is just a slide showing typical traffic congestion on the A412 at Denham. It happens frequently in both directions, and sometimes I have sat just a mile and a quarter away on the A40 and it has taken me an hour to get home, and that is before we consider imposing a viaduct construction on the Colne Valley. Denham residents want the Colne Valley section of HS2 placed in a tunnel, because the impact of a viaduct on the day to day lives of thousands of people has not been, and probably cannot be, assessed. Additionally, there is obvious environmental damage the viaduct will cause to the Colne Valley. Next slide please. So to quote Einstein, ‘Everything counted doesn’t necessarily count, and everything that counts can’t necessarily be counted.’ That’s the end of my presentation, thank you.

252. CHAIR: So you’ve been going to France and then going out looking at high speed rail when you were there.

253. MR YOUNG: I’m sorr y?

254. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: You can use the high speed rail to your home in France?

255. MR YOUNG: We only have a house in France because the routes in France allow us to do it.

256. CHAIR: The people in Hillingdon also made the point their traffic is bad in and

around Ickenham because people in Buckingham and Hertfordshire coming in as well. So it seems to be a general problem in all that part that is…

257. MR YOUNG: Yes, we think it is.

258. CHAIR: Okay, Mr Mould.

259. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Thank you. I want to call Mr Miller briefly. Just to deal with the River Misbourne. I don’t know if you want to do that now or…

260. CHAIR: I think we’ll adjourn and then we’ll come back at 1.00 p.m. then that will give us the treat of Mr Miller at 1.00 p.m.

261. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Something to look forward to.

262. CHAIR: Okay, alright. Order, order.