Public Session

PUBLIC SESSION

MINUTES OF ORAL EVIDENCE

taken before

HIGH SPEED RAIL COMMITTEE

On the

HIGH SPEED RAIL (LONDON – WEST MIDLANDS) BILL

Tuesday 15 December 2015 (Afternoon)

In Committee Room 5

PRESENT:

Mr Robert Syms (Chair) Mr Henry Bellingham Sir Peter Bottomley Mr David Crausby Mr Mark Hendrik ______

IN ATTENDANCE

Mr Timothy Mould QC, Lead Counsel, Department for Transport Mr Richard Turney, Counsel Department for Transport

WITNESSES

Sir Keir Starmer QC MP Mr Robert Latham Ms Annabel Leventon and Ms Katherine Sykes Mr Richard Percival Mr Jeffrey Travers Ms Silvia Ranawake Mr Simon Neave Mr Keith Wallace Mr Martin Nelson and Ms Alice Gray Mr Anthony Hallgarten Mr John Emanuel Mr Gervais Williams Mr Richard Cotton and Ms Patricia Callaghan Mr David Roberts Ms Judith Hillman and Mr Conall Macfarlane ______

IN PUBLIC SESSION

INDEX

Subject Page

HS2 Euston Action Group Submissions by Sir Keir Starmer 4 Response from Mr Mould 14 Closing submissions by Sir Keir Starmer 18

Darwin Court Residents’ and Leaseholders’ Association Submissions by Ms Leventon 19 Response from Mr Turney 29 Closing submissions by Ms Sykes 33

Golamead Limited Submissions by Mr Percival 34 Response from Mr Turney 37 Closing submissions by Mr Percival 39

Jeffrey Travers Submissions by Mr Travers 40 Response from Mr Turney 47 Closing submissions by Mr Travers 48

Silvia Ranawake Submissions by Ms Ranawake 49

Simon Neave Submissions by Mr Neave 53 Response from Mr Turney 58

Kenneth and Margaret Fulford, and others Submissions by Mr Wallace 58

Jonathan Digby and Susanne Kaiser Submissions by Mr Digby 59 Response from Mr Mould 61

Martin Nelson and others Submissions by Ms Gray 63 Submissions by Mr Nelson 68 Response from Mr Mould 71

John Emanuel and Rosemary Emanuel Submissions by Mr Emanuel 73

Anthony Hallgarten et al Submissions by Mr Hallgarten 75 Response from Mr Mould 83

Gervais Williams and Miranda Glossop Submissions by Mr Williams 85 Response from Mr Strachan 92

Patricia Callaghan and others Submissions by Ms Callaghan and Mr Cotton 93 Response from Mr Strachan 96

David Roberts and others Submissions by Mr Roberts 97 Response from Mr Strachan 99

Friends of Regent’s Park and Primrose Hill Submissions by Ms Hillman and Mr Macfarlane 100 Response from Mr Strachan 106

(At 14.00)

1. CHAIR: Order, order. Welcome to the HS2 Select Committee for our afternoon session. On Monday we heard locus challenges to a number of AP4 petitioners from Lappetts Lane and King’s Lane in South Heath. AP4 massively benefits South Heath and the Chilterns. Any dis-benefits will be minor. Petitioners conceded that point principally. They are still bothered by the Bill scheme but we’ve already dealt with Bill Petitions. We will hear about, for instance, traffic changes caused by AP4 from other petitioners including Bucks County Council and Chiltern District Council. We’ve therefore decided that none of the petitioners should have locus. In January we will need persuading other AP4 petitioners whose locus has been challenged suffered a genuine adverse issue with AP4 that will not be more effectively dealt with through local authority and other representative body petitions.

2. We now go to Keir Starmer. Welcome.

HS2 Euston Action Group

3. SIR KEIR STARMER QC: Thank you very much, Chair. Can I just begin by thanking the Committee for excusing me last week and allowing me to present this week instead which is much appreciated by me and my family? Thank you very much. She’s out of hospital and on the mend. Thank you very much.

4. The Committee has heard from me twice already. This third set of submissions is in relation to compensation and technically it forms part of the HS2 Euston Action Group submissions. You had a script last week and some slides last week and as I’ve done before I will treat them as already forming part of the record. I’ll assume that the document itself is in the record therefore the detail is there and I don’t need to go through it slavishly here. What I would like to do is develop a number of arguments of a general nature about compensation technically on behalf of the HS2 Euston Action Group. But because they’re of a general nature, they do apply to other petitioners including some of the petitioners who are here before the Committee today. And discussions with those other petitioners, what I’ve suggested to them is, insofar as they want to adopt these submissions that they just indicate that to the Committee without repeating them so long as that is a course the Committee is content to adopt.

5. I am aware the Committee heard a great deal of detailed evidence over the last two or three weeks in relation to compensation. And again I won’t repeat that detail.

6. Can I start with a number of core submissions? Back on 20 November 2014, the Select Committee received a presentation from the HS2 Action Alliance on compensation. That largely related to rural areas and the merits of the Property Bond scheme. We understand that the Committee is monitoring the operation of the current schemes and has not ruled out the possibility of direct implementation of a Property Bond scheme if improvements are not forthcoming. But it was the underlying aim that the Committee identified of the scheme that we wish at this early stage to highlight and the Committee identified the primary aim of the scheme as being to give, and I quote: ‘Residents the confidence to stay, ensuring continuity and coherence within their communities’. And that is particularly apt in Euston because, as the Committee will no doubt be aware, so far as compensation is concerned the real focus of concerns by communities, by businesses is on the period of construction and disruption. With some obvious exceptions, by and large after any period of construction it is accepted that there are unlikely to be ongoing needs for compensation and mitigation. In other words, that once the works are through the position in that part of North London, with some exceptions, will not lead to losses for these petitioners. But that does make that principle of giving people the confidence to stay with continuity and coherence within their communities the core principle from these petitioners’ point of view.

7. May I then outline the principles which were set out in our document which we say should underpin any compensation package? And they’re three short points. The first is that compensation should be assessed and paid under a scheme which is fair and proportionate and arrived at by a process which gives proper weight to the interests of all affected by the scheme. The second principle we submit should underpin any compensation package is that compensation should not only be grounded in property rights. It must reflect the wider rights which are undoubtedly affected by the HS2 scheme. And, as the Committee will have heard, long established communities will be destroyed; family and private life will be severely disrupted; and every conceivable type of pollution will affect the environment for many years. Now, to some extent, that principle I will develop when I get to the submissions I wish to make on the extent of the available schemes. And then, thirdly, probably as no surprise to the Committee, the

third principle which we say should underpin any compensation packages, there should be equity between those living in rural and urban areas. And what goes with that is that any disparate or different treatment must be objectively justified.

8. Now, those principles, by and large, are taken from the European Convention of Human Rights now incorporated into our law through the Human Rights Act. And there was an annex to the document submitted to the Committee last week which dealt with the position under the European Convention of Human Rights. Can I say this? That they also reflect common sense. And in our submission, they are also consistent with the broad principles outlined by the Secretary of State in his 2013 Consultation, which focussed on fairness, value for money, community cohesion, feasibility, efficiency and comprehensibility, functioning of housing market and the best balance between these criteria. And that is why, based on those underlying principles, these petitioners have always endorsed the proposal of the Fair Deal for London Alliance for an independent and impartial HS2 Compensation Commission, which should do two things. Firstly, draw up a fair compensation scheme and two, administer and determine applications for compensation.

9. There is one further core point which I think was touched on by petitioners last week, including Camden. And it arises directly as a result of AP3. And that is that the Secretary of State has failed to revisit the compensation to be offered to residents and businesses in light of the greater impact of AP3. All that’s been said so far is a statement by Robert Goodwill on 15 October this year outlining the AP3 provisions and depositing them. When he said: ‘By concentrating construction on certain locations at a time, disruption to the area as a whole at any one time will be reduced and easier to mitigate. Construction of the original Hybrid Bill proposal would have meant a far more intense period of disruption for the community. In the Euston area, as with all affected areas, we will continue to look for ways to reduce the level of disruption as part of the design development process’. Now, I touched on this last time I gave evidence to the Committee. And really make the same point, that so far as the communities are concerned and the businesses are concerned, the suggestion that prolonging the agony through AP3 is to their benefit is one that is not shared, to put it no higher than that. But, for today’s purposes, the significance is that there hasn’t been any revisiting of the compensation package to be offered as a result of the greater

impact of AP3. And that does have a real implication for the availability of various parts of the scheme.

10. And with that I’ll turn, if I may, to the different sort of disparity between the urban and rural schemes? And here I develop two arguments. The first is that the urban / rural disparity cannot be justified on its own terms. Then secondly, as a sort of and / or, that even if the disparity, in principle, could be justified for other infrastructure schemes, it cannot now be justified for Euston in light of the AP3 provisions facing, as it does, such prolonged damage, disruption and loss.

11. Taking the first of those arguments: whether the disparity can be justified on its own terms. In April of last year, the Government published its decision document in relation to compensation and acknowledged in that that for, as it said, for some respondents the differentiation between urban and rural areas, and the availability of Voluntary Purchase scheme, was considered to be unfair. And set out some examples of that. And then the decision document went on to say, by way of justifying the disparity, to say this: ‘Rural areas suffer more significant generalised property blight due to a combination of factors. By their nature, rural areas are comparatively tranquil and contain less infrastructure, therefore it is natural to expect that perceptions of the impact of HS2 will be greater in these areas’. And went on to say: ‘Moreover, fears and uncertainties are exacerbated in rural areas owing to a perceived threat to the nature of the community. It is also the case that HS2 stations will generally be further away from rural areas limiting the direct community benefits of the railway and leading to an impression that the cost of development outweighs the benefit. For all these reasons, we remain convinced that additional measures ought to be introduced for rural areas’.

12. Our submission is that justification simply doesn’t pass the objective justification test. And there are really three reasons for that. First, the proposition that the Euston area will benefit economically from the new railway in a way that rural areas will not is not evident. Euston area is already a high value area, close to Central London, with excellent transport links. The reality is that most residents and businesses in the area will not see the completion of the scheme and the area will continue to be blighted until the scheme is completed.

13. The second limb of the argument that effectively those living in the Euston are

more used to noise we say misconstrues the situation both in Euston and indeed further afield. We’re dealing here with relatively quiet residential areas. And it’s not the noise from the railway, many years down the line, that is the great cause for concern. It’s the noise and disruption from the construction works. And therefore we say that part of the argument doesn’t stack up.

14. And, finally, the idea that those living in urban areas are generally more used to construction works falls apart in this case where we have an unprecedented lengthy scale of works going on, as the Committee knows only too well, in Euston, to 2033 and possibly beyond.

15. More fundamentally we submit that any distinction between the urban and rural situation falls away when the position that the petitioners now find themselves in is clear. Namely, that they will essentially be facing a generation’s worth of disruption and interference and pollution and noise. In other words, if that distinction may in principle hold for short infrastructure projects, it certainly doesn’t hold for this prolonged project.

16. And therefore I turn to what might be called specific asks of the petitioners. In other words, what it is they say needs to change to bring about a fair and proportionate scheme for people petitioning and living in the Euston area. Firstly, there’s an overarching point that the scope of any scheme should be decided on a basis of direct or indirect impact of the construction works rather than arbitrary distances from the line. And, members of the Committee who were on the visit will have stood in the houses of some of the individuals who are going to be affected and seen the, affected with the grandstand view of some of the works. And because of the arbitrary distance from the line they are unlikely to benefit from the compensation scheme when it is pretty obvious that the works are going to be considerable impact on their lives. The impact in an urban area such as Euston will not necessarily depend on the distance of the property from the works. It depends where the properties are, what they’re subjected to, and how well they are or are not shielded by other properties. The preferred option of the petitioners is the Property Bond scheme which would be an alternative to the Express Purchase, Voluntary Purchase and Home Owner Payment schemes. And the Select Committee has, as I’ve said, heard evidence about this scheme and reserve the possibility of directing that it be implemented if improvements to the current scheme in

rural areas are not made.

17. The petitioners do understand that the Committee is concerned about the overall cost of compensation but we do submit that there are some fundamental principles and core issues that need to be addressed. And we would put it in this way, as a set of asks. First, that anybody who’s forced to move because HS2 makes their home uninhabitable should be entitled to full compensation, including home loss and disturbance payments. That is effectively an Express Purchase scheme. Secondly, anyone who wants to move but is unable to sell because of HS2 should be compensated. They should be entitled –

18. MR BELLINGHAM: On the first category, is it not fair to say that those people in that particular group would get compensation?

19. SIR KEIR STARMER QC: In Euston, as I understand it, they get compensation only if their home is to be destroyed altogether, not if they’re forced to move for some other reason. It is perfectly true, and I accept, and this is within brackets: if your home is to be destroyed, then there is no question that you do get that compensation. And we don’t quarrel with that as a principle. But, there is then those that are forced to move and those that want to move and we suggest they should be dealt with in a slightly different way. Those that are forced to move should effectively be able to take advantage of the Express Purchase scheme as others are able to in rural areas. In other words, if you’re forced to move, it really doesn’t matter where you’re living in terms of the loss that you suffer. And any suggestion of urban / rural distinction breaks down completely. So far as those who want to move but are unable to sell, there we say they should be compensated although we accept that would be without any add-ons such as home loss or disturbance payments. In other words, for those that want to move, they should, in our submission, be put in no worse position than they would have been if it had not been for HS2. And there it is worth just standing back and thinking about the individuals concerned in Euston and in the Borough of Camden because inevitably if works go on for 18 years. And the start point for some of these schemes for Camden is 2010, as the Committee knows, in terms of when people are effectively on notice, so you’ve got a period of 23 plus years, you’ve got a generation, there will be many individuals who in a period as long as that, do want to move. Maybe their children have grown up and left, they want to move to a different type of premises. And for them not to have any scheme applicable to them that takes into account because of HS2

is we say not fair and not proportionate.

20. These outcomes could be achieved by a modified Need to Sell scheme, so long as it addresses the problems of: compelling reason to sell; the no prior knowledge rule; the efforts to sell; and the 15% rule; and so long as it is consistent with the desire of pretty well all of the communities and businesses that they don’t want their communities to break up. In other words, not pushing for incentives for people to leave and move, rather for compensation for losses incurred.

21. And that leads me on to the modifications that we say would need to be made to the Need to Sell scheme. And I start with the ‘prior knowledge’ rule. As the Committee will know, in effect, in the Euston area, there’s no application of the Need to Sell scheme if the applicants, or petitioners, bought their property after 11 March 2010 because they’re deemed to be on notice. We say there are a number of problems with this provision. The first is that back in March 2010 nobody actually could have foreseen AP3. In other words, what they were on notice about in 2010 was a fundamentally different position to the position that they’re now faced with. And it is one thing to be on notice that there will be a scheme that might end in 2026. It is another to be on notice that there is a scheme that’s going to go through to 2033 or beyond. They’re two fundamentally different positions. So, they were not on notice in a meaningful way about the actual impact that HS2 was likely to have on them.

22. And the second is this, that in an urban area such as Euston or Camden blight is likely to take place when construction works commence, not back in 2010 when the future of HS2 was not at all clear. And what you’ve therefore seen, broadly speaking, is property prices holding up in the area for the time being, but likely to be adversely affected as soon as construction works commence and then continue for the prolonged period through to 2033. And so our submission is that anybody who bought property during March 2010 and September 2015 could not reasonably have understood that the construction works would have ended in 2033. In fact, they could reasonably have been expected to have understood that the works would have ended in 2026.

23. I then turn to the second adjustment to the Need to Sell scheme that we submit ought to be made. And that is the rule under the heading: Efforts to Sell, where applicants must have marketed their property without success for at least three months

with no offers within 15% of a realistic, unblighted asking price. The practical impact of that, in Camden, is that a home owner of an average home which will be about, in the order of 827,000 pounds, would be expected to incur a loss of 124,000 pounds before they can benefit from the scheme. In other words, the 15% works to the spectacular disadvantage of anybody living in the Camden area, where the price of the property is such that the 15% hit that they have to take becomes a considerable amount of money. In many cases, anything between about 100 and 150,000 pounds, which they must personally forfeit before they’re eligible for the scheme. And we say that too cannot be fair and proportionate. And bearing in mind that those entering the property market in Euston may well have committed themselves to mortgages up to 90% to fund their purchases. So, they’re not to be assumed to be people who outrightly own their homes in any event.

24. The third adjustment is in relation to the compelling reason to sell. Now, I know that the Select Committee touched on this in, I think their first special report, at paragraph 116, indicating that the rule was too restrictive and should be extended to anyone with a justifiable reason to move, including those motivated by their age and stage and life. And we would simply double underscore that. If you’ve got a generation’s worth of works, there are going to be many individuals who get an age and stage in life where they want to move but would not qualify as having a compelling reason to sell.

25. And the fourth adjustment to the scheme that we submit should take place is in relation to the rateable value for business premises at £34,800 and our submission is it should be removed. I think that the Committee heard about this from the Drummond Street petitioners yesterday, with some examples that they put forward at what the differences where between, as it were, one type of business and another. And unless the Committee wants me to I think I’ll simply rely on what they said for this part of these submissions without elaborating it further.

26. MR LATHAM: Yes, could I simply add this, I understand that Camden submitted evidence on 10 December on rateable values and I don’t know whether that’s seeped through to the Committee yet.

27. SIR KEIR STARMER QC: Well, we’ll assume it has and if not, no doubt, the

Committee will ask us or Camden to re-submit it.

28. CHAIR: Well, quite clearly, if there are some ordinary restaurants in a row like Drummond Street, who are affected by that then it isn’t a very high hurdle before some hard-working people and businesses start to get effected.

29. SIR KEIR STARMER QC: Yes.

30. CHAIR: Therefore, it’s an issue that we have to consider seriously.

31. SIR KEIR STARMER QC: Yes.

32. CHAIR: I must admit when I read the Government compensation schemes a year ago, I did scratch my head when I looked at that arbitrary sort of figure and I know there’s precedent for setting that figure but I think that it’s something that I think the Government are going to have to think about.

33. SIR KEIR STARMER QC: Yes. I’m grateful for that observation. As I say, I’ve tried to understand and be appraised of the evidence that the Drummond Street petitioners gave yesterday and it sounds as if they were able to demonstrate it in their own terms to the Committee and I doubt I can do better than that. But, the point, in a sense, is an obvious one given the threshold of £34,800 in a place such as Camden.

34. CHAIR: If you’re not careful, you’ll start to get people sub-dividing properties and start playing silly games in order to get compensation and we have enough of that in the property business anyway, I think.

35. SIR KEIR STARMER QC: That may well be true. One should always guard against it. Although, it is no justification for arbitrary rules that are not fair and proportionate, but it’s finding that way through that is important here.

36. And then, finally, on the Need to Sell, the submission that the scheme should extend into all property owners including buy to let landlords. There are obviously a number of buy to let landlords in the area, particularly on the Regents Park Estates, where rents are likely to slump as a consequence of the construction works.

37. So far as the compensation scheme is concerned we suggest that the promoter should be required to give the following undertakings, following from those

submissions in relation to adjustments to the Need to Sell scheme. Firstly, that the Express Purchase scheme be extended to the Euston area in respect of all properties in locations which are predicted unmitigated significant adverse residual in combination effects. Namely, those properties which qualify for noise mitigation. Such a decision would not, sir, be a costly one given the long term value of the assets that the government might acquire.

38. Secondly, the Voluntary Purchase and Home Owner Payment and Cash Offer schemes should be extended to the Euston area. There will have to be adjustments to those schemes if they are extended. We accept that. Particularly in relation to the distance from line where there will be a difference for rural and urban areas. But the adjustments will not all be one way. So, to take an example, capping the Cash Offer payment at 10%, 100,000 pounds is inappropriate given the current and increasing level of property values in Euston. And if the Home Owner Payment and Cash Offer schemes are to be extended to the Euston area we can see no rational justification for restricting it to home owners. Many social tenants see their properties as homes for life and have family, friends and community support networks in the area. Some short short-hold tenants, the only private tenancy currently grants in the area, have occupied their homes for many years. The desired objective of these petitioners is to buy in inclusive communities together throughout the long periods of unique disruption. We also say that the compensation under the Land Compensation Act 1973 offered to lessees whose homes are demolished will be insufficient to enable them to secure suitable alternative accommodation in the area within their existing communities. And this is very much a Camden or Euston problem, where the majority of homes which are to be demolished, the Committee saw some of them on the visit, are social housing in Eskdale, Silverdale and Ainsdale. Many social tenants exercised their right to buy. The value of their flats may be relatively low and under the statutory scheme they’ll be offered market value plus 10%. The problem for them is they then will not be able to buy again in the area and will be forced to leave the area.

39. And fourthly, compensation for businesses in the Euston area, particularly in Drummond Street. Again, given the submissions made yesterday I won’t now elaborate upon that.

40. And then, finally, two points. Firstly, the question of personal mitigation budget.

The promoters acknowledge that the nuisance caused by the works is going to be such as to require HS2 Limited to offer residents a range of mitigation measures including secondary and tertiary glazing and temporary re-housing. Many residents will not find additional glazing to be acceptable because it’s not practical, Georgian or Victorian listed properties with internal shutters etc., or because they’re unwilling to live in mitigated, sealed environments. And residents want to exercise control over their lives and will not accept offers of temporary accommodation in a hotel or some other part of London.

41. And we then turn finally to the specific budget to be set for community and environment for the Community and Environmental Fund and the Business Fund for the Euston area. And really, we make three broad submissions in relation to these funds. The first is that, as I understand it, at present, the funds are only available for Phase 1 and not beyond Phase 1 which is an inherent limitation. Secondly, the Fund is a capped or limited fund with the effect that Camden is, in truth, competing with other petitioners up the line for the same funds. And thirdly, that the two funds, the Community and Environmental Fund and the Business Funds should, in our submissions, be kept separate again to avoid business competing with the community and those concerned about the environment for limited funds. So, members of the Committee, those are our broad submissions on compensation. As I say, if the underlying principles are applicable and adopted by the petitioners then so be it. But, unless there’s any other way in which I can assist the Committee, those are my submissions on compensation.

42. CHAIR: No, I think those thoughts are very useful. And we’re kicking around the report at the moment which we may amend a little to take into account some of the views that have been expressed by people in Camden. Mr Mould, do you want to add anything or?

43. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Might I just make a brief response on the principle focus of Sir Keir’s submission which was on compensation for the impacted construction. He set out three principles. The first was that compensation should be paid under a scheme that is fair and proportionate. The second is that compensation should be grounded not in property rights but should extend the wider impacts on those who do not have extensive property interests. And the third was that there should be equity between those living in the town and in the country.

44. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: Can I just add a fourth? In most places where there’s going to be construction, it’s unlikely to last in an intense form for more than about four years. In, around Camden, that situation is different. I’m not contradicting you. I’m just putting it there as part of the context.

45. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Although, as we have seen, even though in the Camden area as a whole, the construction period of construction will last longer, once one drills down to the direct effects on people in and around their particular streets, one finds that the pattern of the duration is broadly similar.

46. My response to those principles is this. Firstly, so far as compensation for the effects of construction is concerned, the availability of financial compensation for the effects of construction is no more limited in urban areas than it is in rural areas. Secondly, the approach of this project is that which has been followed with all major public works projects and indeed private works projects, that is that the emphasis should be squarely on the control of environmental impacts to prevent, to avoid, to mitigate. See the explanation given in Information Paper, E1. Just to remind you of some key elements of that. The Code of Construction Practice, which gives rise to the noise insulation scheme and the temporary re-housing scheme. The role of the Council in exercising control over working hours and noise from construction sites under the control of the Pollution Act. The obligation on the promoter in the statute to comply with best practical means. The traffic management regime. The continuing pressure expressed through the environmental minimal requirements to relieve inputs as the detailed design continues. That is firmly rooted in the Common Law and in the legislation which has hitherto been passed by Parliament, which is that building works should be carried out with all reasonable care and skill. That is the underlying premise. If that is done, then it is public policy as reflected in the law that those who undertake such works in the public interest should be relieved from the obligation to pay financial compensation in respect of the performance of those works. Otherwise, the clear public interest in refreshing our country’s infrastructure will be frustrated. If those works are not done with reasonable care and skill, in other words, if they are done negligently, then it has always been the case that those who suffer loss and damage as a result will be compensated financially to the extent of their loss.

47. That approach is universal and it benefits both property owners and other

members of the community alike. In other words, there is no discrimination in the conventional approach that is reflected in both the Common Law and in statute law as between proprietors and others in the community such as social tenants and so forth. The mitigation applies to all. And that is the position under this scheme. It is reflected in the very broad and detailed range of assurances that we have given to the London Borough of Camden. It is reflected more generally in the requirements of the Code of Construction Practice. And will be reflected locally in the local environmental management plans.

48. So that is the way in which Sir Keir’s first, second and third principle are reflected in the conventional and long-standing approach both at Common Law and in the statute which, as you know, is the purpose of this Bill to apply.

49. The third point I make in response to his first principle is that compensation when it is available for the effects of construction of major works is fair and proportionate. And the principle on which it rests is this. ‘Compensation is payable where in the absence of the statutory powers which are given to authorise those public works, compensation will be payable at Common Law’. In other words, where a nuisance is caused which would otherwise be subject of compensation, but is authorised by statutory authority from the Bill then compensation is payable under the Statutory Compensation Code for the effects of that nuisance. A right to compensation is substituted for the right to damages. That is principled, fair and proportionate. And it has been recognised as such by the European Court of Human Rights and it is for that reason that the Secretary of State has given a statement of compatibility under the Human Rights Act in relation to this Bill. That is because the requirements of the Human Rights Convention are met in relation to this case.

50. And the final point is that those who consider that the Secretary of State is wrong in that respect have a remedy under the Human Rights Act because they can seek a declaration when this Bill becomes law that it’s principles in relation to compensation are not compatible with the Human Rights Convention and seek to argue that case in the courts. What I have not relied upon to Sir Keir’s principles which I say are for those reasons met, in principle, I’ve not relied upon either the statutory regime in relation to blight, nor have I relied at all upon the Secretary of State’s policies in relation to generalised blight because they are not designed to directly to accommodate the effects

of construction. They are there for a different purpose, which is to accommodate the impact of the scheme in its gestation upon the market and to protect people from the impact of blight on their property values. The statutory blight regime applies as much in the town as it does in the country. The generalised blight policies apply in the town, as in the country insofar as the Need to Sell scheme is concerned and insofar as the Express Purchase scheme is concerned. Those policies which do not apply in the town, whereas they apply in the country are the Voluntary Purchase scheme and the Home Owner Payments scheme. The reason why the Home Owner Payment scheme does not apply as an alternative as opposed to in the country is because the judgment of the Secretary of State and the Government is that those who are in the urban areas affected by HS2, that is to say London and Birmingham, will realise a much greater degree of ultimate advantage from the presence of the stations, once the railway’s operational and those live who live in Northamptonshire and Buckinghamshire. The reason why the Voluntary Purchase scheme is not available in the town whereas it is in the country is because the judgment of the Secretary of State on the basis of the evidence that is before him is that the impact of blight, and the impact on the market, is appropriately supported by the statutory blight regime and by the Need to Sell scheme. And insofar as social tenants are concerned –

51. MR BELLINGHAM: I don’t want to interrupt you? On the point about blight, we have discussed this before, but the blight on urban properties, can you just remind the Committee on the updates supporting professional evidence on that? Has there been a report by, for example, by chartered surveyors or the Association of Valuers or whatever to reinforce that point?

52. MR MOULD QC (DfT): There are underlying reports which were procured by the Secretary of State in advance of the public consultation that he undertook on his proposed discretionary blight schemes in 2013 and 2014. One of those reports has been referred to. It is the report in relation to a Property Bond scheme that was provided as part of that package and in response to that public consultation there were detailed responses from all of the professional bodies which provided the Secretary of State with further information and evidence which was taken into account when he made his decisions. And that is reflected in the decisions document which I’ve referred you on a number of occasions. It was published in April 2014.

53. I know that there is a good deal of disagreement about the decisions that the Secretary of State made. And I know that a number of members of this House, including Sir Keir, have been seeking to persuade the Secretary of State that he should review the decisions he made. But it would be wrong to suggest that he did not have an evidence based justification for the conclusions that he draw as to the correct approach, including in relation to the fact that the Voluntary Purchase scheme should be limited to the rural areas for the reasons that I just summarised.

54. The final point I wanted to make was this. That the particular impact of the works at Euston social tenants and those who have exercised their rights to buy have been the subject of particular and focussed negotiations between the Secretary of State and the promoter on the one hand and the London Borough of Camden, as the social landlord and as the former, and as the freeholder of those tenants/leaseholders on the other. And have resulted in particular remedies in relation to the delivery of alternative accommodation in the local area which is available to those persons, certainly in relation to the social tenants and arrangements are continuing. There is continuing discussion and negotiation about arrangements to provide an appropriate degree of support to the right to buy leaseholders.

55. So, for those reasons, the case was put on the basis of principles, and I respond on the basis of principles for those reasons I would say on behalf of the Secretary of State that he was justified in certifying as he did and that’s the response on these points.

56. CHAIR: Brief rebuttal?

57. SIR KEIR STARMER QC: Just two or three very, very final comments. The proposition that once you drill down into the near 20 years’ worth of work you have patterns that are broadly similar to elsewhere on the line beggars belief and all I can say is try telling that to the people of Ant Hill and Park Hill East or Primrose Hill and elsewhere. This is prolonged work over 20 years, as the Committee well appreciate. That underpins the other points that we make and simply to keep reasserting that in truth this 20-year period is no different to the sort of impacts it will have on other communities up the line is, we see, to manifestly misrepresent the position at Euston. And it does then play into the other point that has been made in rebuttal because sure enough the scheme may be the same or similar to other infrastructure projects but this is

a very different project when it gets to Euston. Having works going on in this way for this period of time with the prospect of the impact over many years is unprecedented in this country and arguably across much of Europe and therefore simply saying, well, it’s no different to other schemes that we’ve run in the past,’ is no answer to the concerns of the petitioners. And that also cuts through to the public policy arguments which are all well and good. But in the end it cannot be used to justify the urban and rural distinctions that are made in this case. And so simply asserting that a scheme is fair and proportionate doesn’t make it fair and proportionate and we would urge the Committee to form its own view based obviously on all the evidence and submissions that it has had and will have before the end of this process. Thank you very much.

58. CHAIR: Thank you very much indeed. We now go back to Annabel Leventon and Katherine Sykes.

Darwin Court Residents’ and Leaseholders’ Association (cont’d)

59. CHAIR: I think we were on your slide 3, weren’t we?

60. MS LEVENTON: Yes, sir. Right. Slide 3 please. 1758 that is. While I’m waiting for it, Katherine has been talking to you about Regents Park Road and the impact of HS2 and I wanted to show you how our street, Gloucester Avenue, is impacted in not exactly the same way but heavily impacted. You haven’t got the slide, have you?

61. MS SYKES: No.

62. CHAIR: We have your slides in the pack.

63. MS LEVENTON: Oh, you’ve got hard copies. Okay. Shall I carry on? You will see, I can’t point it out to you, but you will see that Regents Park Road and Gloucester Avenue run through the village and they converge on their way to Parkway at Darwin Court. I’d like to be able to show you Darwin Court. I’m getting there.

64. CHAIR: That’s alright. We can read them sideways as well.

65. MS LEVENTON: Thank you so much. You can see Darwin Court there in bright green and brown blocks. And you can see that Regents Park Road and Gloucester

Avenue, where they converge, is owned by our garden. And if I could have slide 6, please. That’s the one. Thanks. This is a sales brochure for Darwin Court in1972, while it was being built. Darwin Court is very different in one respect from Primrose Hill. It’s a purpose built ‘70s building which doesn’t match very well with some of the exquisite architecture further up the road but it gives huge living space to those of us there for the lowest price in Primrose Hill. And if I could have the next slide, please? This is Darwin Court now, on Gloucester Avenue and you will see it’s around about 2. 30 p.m. on a weekday November afternoon. You’ll see there is no traffic. This is perfectly normal. Darwin Court is a friendly, neighbourly community. There are over 200 of us. A real mix of nationalities and ages. The oldest is 99. And we have several families with very young children. From here you can get into Oxford Circus on the C2, down Albany Street, the 274 to Baker Street and the other way into Camden. You can walk across Regents Park and be in the congestion zone in 15 minutes. You can cycle into Covent Garden in 20. It’s a very peaceful residential street and it’s an oasis of calm in Central London. Can I have slide 8 please?

66. And here is our problem. Gloucester Avenue will become a rat run for at least 17 years and that represents an entire childhood and indeed it will see me out. Slide 9 please. These are children crossing the road on their way to Primrose Hill School right by the engine near where you had your lunch when you came to see Primrose Hill. They will be at risk crossing the road. You see there’s no traffic there. That’s about 8.45 a.m. They’re health will be compromised. And of my six nonagenarians to my knowledge, people who admit to being 90 and over, Dorothy Eden is 90. She visits her husband Roger, who is 93, in a care home in Harley Road Swiss Cottage every day. It’s a 25-minute walk but she can’t walk that far. Her doctor won’t let her. So she gets the 274 into Camden and then the 31 up Adelaide Road. It’s a difficult and exhausting journey there and back. With Parkway in gridlock, Adelaide Road closed and the 31 re-routed, she won’t be able to get there at all. The cumulative effects of all this will mean many of my elderly residents will be prisoners in their own homes as Mr Bellingham so memorably put it. It will compromise our safety, create stress and ill health for my residents and it will destroy our peaceful environment.

67. And I would just like to add one thing on this. We ask that when HS2 and Camden are doing their Euston Station Strategic Review Board, which has been set up

to deal with some of this, we ask for every citizen, from a citizen, from each ward in Camden, to have a place on the Strategic Board. Because I understand Primrose Hill and Parkway. I certainly don’t understand Kentish Town or Belsize Park’s particular problems. So, one resident, which is, I believe, what is mooted at the moment, will be insufficient to be able to make any headway on this. Can I have your slide P11326(12) please?

68. While I’m waiting for it, this is the recently published information about a new option for spoil removal that has been offered in the last two weeks, I think. And it is a mile and a half long conveyor belt, running a few feet away from us, all the way from Euston, to the sidings at Chalk Farm. It will be noisy in construction and when working. It has to be at least 5. 1m above the rail tracks so it will be right outside our second, third and maybe even fourth floors, blocking our light, removing our view, and be far more noisy and intrusive than any train. It will be worse than the HGVs and far closer. What protection measures will be guaranteed for us? If it’s anything like the Crossrail conveyor belt at Paddington, it may break down. And we haven’t got that slide yet? Don’t worry. Just go on to my slide, 1758(10) please, which is the hopper collapse in Paddington in 2012. Now, if the conveyor belt collapses by us, how will they get the spoil out then? And may I have the next slide, please? 11.

69. In Paddington, they had to take this huge mud mountain out by lorry. How will they get the lorries in? if it collapsed exactly where we are, the mud would either fall in our direction and come right through our windows on several falls, or else it would fall the other way and land across several rail tracks on the other side. It’s another disaster staring us in the face. So I would like to talk solutions please. Slide 12. No conveyor belt anywhere near Darwin Court. Guaranteed maximum noise and site insulation to the blocks at the back as in secondary or tertiary glazing and window blinds. A binding commitment to proper limits on conveyor belt construction and use on the rail tracks. And, obviously, I’m sure you’ll grant with no difficulty at all, full compensation for any damage to the buildings if the conveyor belt collapses. Slide 13, please.

70. MR BELLINGHAM: Can I just interrupt you?

71. MS LEVENTON: Yes.

72. MR BELLINGHAM: Are the discussions with HS2 or the discussions that

you’ve had that there wouldn’t be full compensation if there was any problem with the conveyor belt?

73. CHAIR: There would be compensation.

74. MR BELLINGHAM: Has anyone indicated that?

75. MR MOULD QC (DfT): If our works cause physical damage –

76. CHAIR: There would be compensation.

77. MS LEVENTON: What we would like to do is pre-empt that possibility and make sure it doesn’t happen at all.

78. MR BELLINGHAM: Of course.

79. MS LEVENTON: I’m sure you would prefer the same.

80. MR MOULD QC (DfT): We would share that ambition.

81. MS LEVENTON: This is good. Great.

82. CHAIR: They are also enclosed. The conveyor belts are enclosed. To keep them quiet.

83. MS LEVENTON: Okay. Now we have the problem of our garden being taken over as a compound site.

84. CHAIR: Is that a garden on the flats or a common garden?

85. MS LEVENTON: It is a communal private garden at the end of the blocks. And I’ll show you exactly where it is in a minute. I just wanted to show you what it looks like. Slide 14 please. This is what we will lose for at least a year by HS2’s reckoning. The whole garden is going to be taken over. It has a high wall and beautiful old gate posts which I can’t show you on the Regents Park Road side, shielding us from traffic and passers-by. And you can see how much it is enjoyed with the next slide, 15, of our summer party. This is our only communal space. It’s a safe area for children to play, residents can relax surrounded by trees, wildlife and plants. It’s a precious resource for all of us and for me personally now I’m in a flat instead of being in a house with a

garden. Losing it, even temporarily, will seriously affect the quality of our lives. It’s included in each flat lease and it’s always mentioned on all the estate agents’ flat details. It’s a selling point. We need compensation even for the temporary loss of it. And that compensation, we would like to ask, should come to the leaseholders and residents, rather than the freeholder.

86. Security. In the last year, we’ve had an increased level of break-ins at Darwin Court and we’re struggling with the expense of extra security measures. HS2 have got to get into the gardens somehow. We’ve got one narrow gateway for people. HS2 plan to take down some of the wall in to Gloucester Avenue to make an entrance for vehicles. Now, if intruders can get in to the garden, they can get access to the back of the blocks where the break-ins occur. We need proper guarantees on security while the garden is a building site. And I have looked up, in whatever schedules there are, what kind of practice and it’s extremely bland and not very detailed. And a lot of my residents have become very scared in this past year and don’t feel so safe as they used to. So, we need real particular measures to make sure that couldn’t possibly happen when the garden is a building site.

87. We also have trees on Darwin Court land, as you can see from that picture. And all the trees with preservation orders must be protected.

88. And now I want to move on to why they’re taking over the garden. Once we were told it was to investigate the sub soil below. Now, it’s to reinforce the sewer. And if I could have slide 17 please? This is the sewer reinforcement plan. The green bit you can see is the garden and there’s a red arrow pointing to Block E right next to it. The circles are for the sewer reinforcement. As you can see there’s quite a big gap between the one on the far right and the one in the garden. So, HS2 must have some leeway as to where they dig. Why could they not use the amenity land which is the strip going behind the garden between our blocks and the garden and the railway?

89. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: Do you want to put your finger on it?

90. MS LEVENTON: Oh, yes, I do. It’s rather hard to see on this map but it runs along here. That’s it. Up there. And all the way up past five blocks and you can see the railway line that side of it.

91. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: Yes.

92. MS LEVENTON: This is Network Rail land. You can see the sewer as marked going under the rail tracks, under the amenity land, and under our garden. I don’t know why they can’t use the amenity land to go in to reinforce the sewer. It would be noisy and intrusive, especially for Block E but not nearly as bad as digging up the entire garden. Slide 16 please.

93. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: Just to pace ourselves, how many more pages have you got?

94. MS LEVENTON: Oh, five.

95. MR BELLINGHAM: We’ve got all day.

96. MS LEVENTON: Do you want me to cut and paste?

97. CHAIR: Well, what we’d like are some answers from the promoters about the points you raise.

98. MS LEVENTON: Indeed.

99. CHAIR: And not hear you go on about things. You made some very good points but we’d like to hear from the promoter as soon as we can.

100. MS LEVENTON: Quite so. Well, then, I will just add one point about this. You will see the numbered sections on this plan. 218 and 217 are the amenity land sections. Thank you. 216, to the right here is the garden. 215 is our entrance to our underground car park.

101. Now, 215 and 218 are in schedule 7, covenants to protect tunnels, and also in schedule 11 subsoil more than 9 metres below the surface, but there’s nothing any of us have been able to find anywhere else to do with compulsory purchase that refers to 216, which is our garden. So HS2 might be able to explain that to us.

102. CHAIR: Are they going to buy your garden?

103. MS LEVENTON: Sorry?

104. CHAIR: You talked about compulsory purchase in your garden.

105. MS LEVENTON: Well, to take over for the sewers works this is a compulsory purchase order, and it reflects – so you don’t think it’s compulsory purchase? We got a letter in 2013 -

106. CHAIR: No, no. There are backstop powers in the bill to get access to land. It is not necessarily – the odds are they’re not – they don’t want your garden. What are they going to do with your garden in the future?

107. MS LEVENTON: They’re going to take it for a year, they said.

108. CHAIR: Yes, exactly, so they don’t need to buy it.

109. MS LEVENTON: Well, that’s the letter that we’ve understood, we have seen.

110. CHAIR: If they need it. But it’s only if you refuse them access to land would they compulsory-purchase it.

111. MS LEVENTON: Yes.

112. CHAIR: It’s a backstop power. They’re not going to buy it.

113. MS LEVENTON: Unfortunately it has a knock-on effect when people understand it to mean compulsory purchase when they try to sell their homes and can’t because of that. It’s a very strong contributory factor which I’ll come onto shortly.

114. CHAIR: Okay.

115. MS LEVENTON: I take the point. So slide 19, I’ve got ‘Solutions.’ We want compensation to residents for loss of the garden, and also to block E residents from noise, ruined view and nuisance. We’d like to ask the full restoration of shrubs, plants, furniture, play equipment, and we’d like the garden wall fully restored, and we’d love for our beautiful gate posts not to be touched.

116. We want extra security against intruders during the works. we ask if HS2 would please use the amenity land instead of our garden. Even better, if you move the tunnel to avoid Darling Court you might not need to deal with the sewers at all. Trains should travel on the existing tracks to Euston, which means that the sewer works would not

need to be reinforced.

117. And if you can’t achieve any or all of this, please, please don’t tunnel underneath us.

118. CHAIR: Right. Thank you.

119. MS EVERTON: Thank you.

120. CHAIR: Over to you, Mr Turney.

121. MR TURNEY (DfT): Sir, it is. Thank you.

122. MS LEVENTON: I’ve got a bit more to do.

123. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: I think you’d better finish, please.

124. MS LEVENTON: I’ll do my best.

125. Differential settlement. Can I just mention that?

126. CHAIR: You mentioned it. Thank you.

127. MS LEVENTON: It’s key to everything. Professor Mair said the differential settlement is the critical point. I won’t bother you with the slide if you don’t want, but I have a structural engineer’s letter referring to category 2 damage at the southern end of Darwin Court, which can be quite significant for buildings outside. And there’s a further risk imposed by the empty carriage tunnel.

128. Slide 24. Let’s go straight to that. This is a picture of Darwin Court with the ground dipping underneath it, the disused tunnel right next to it and the HS2 tunnels below. Of course I understand the dip is exaggerated, but it really conveys how vulnerable Lot E is going to be.

129. We also know that noise and vibration are going to be a key factor, not just in the construction but in the running of the trains when the tunnels are made. In our case we have a tunnel near us and a tunnel underneath us, and we are at the shallowest end of those tunnels.

130. The effects of noise and vibration on the tunnel construction, their fitting out and also the lasting effects of noise and vibration on our buildings could be devastating because in our blocks noise travels vertically and we are really affected if somebody below us or above us renovates their flat. Drilling can be heard and vibrations felt throughout the building, and it makes us ill. At least it’s confined to normal working hours.

131. But the tunnel and rail construction, as I understand it, will continue night and day, seven days a week and through public holidays. We need a proper study of the long-term effects and damage to us, the buildings and the foundations caused by settlement, noise and vibration once the trains are operational, and whatever noise will be caused by track maintenance.

132. We asked HS2 for a feasibility study. What we got from them in 2012 was a promise that they would find a similar building under which HS1 had tunnelled so we could compare in terms of noise and vibration, but we’re still waiting for this. They haven’t even indicated they are willing to consider vibration as disruptive. We would like a binding commitment from HS2 to provide mitigation, and if they can’t give us that how can they tunnel underneath us?

133. We’d like a best practice to be agreed so the average person can understand what strictures are placed upon contractors to justify working outside of core hours.

134. CHAIR: How much more?

135. MS LEVENTON: I’m going onto blight now.

136. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: Nine pages.

137. MS LEVENTON: Can I go onto 26? That’s my last – this is my last thing, but it’s possibly the most important.

138. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: Well, if you do address us again next time start with the most important rather than keep it for the end.

139. MS LEVENTON: I thought you’d like a build-up. I’m doing my best; I’m sorry.

140. CHAIR: And we’ve heard a lot about blight and compensation, so we’re -

141. MS LEVENTON: Have you?

142. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: – we’re aware of the issues.

143. MS LEVENTON: All right. In that case I’ll just tell you that we are blighted and have been since 2013.

144. CHAIR: Has nothing sold in your block? Has no property sold in your block since 2013?

145. MS LEVENTON: What we’ve got is the people who have sold have experienced a 15 to 20% loss, which is confirmed by a letter from three estate agents, and I will just say that it has been accepted by HS2 that we have blight because they have bought one flat, 90, under the extreme hardship scheme and another flat, 93, is in process of being bought under the Need to Sell. But what the estate agents are saying – ‘don’t touch Darwin Court’, and buyers are saying to them ‘Don’t offer me anything there so near where the tunnels are.’ So if the situation becomes intolerable for us and we are going to be receiving all the costs and difficulties of HS2 we really should be able to leave.

146. So I’m stopping now. I’m passing you over to Catherine. Except to say, sorry, we need a property bond scheme as Keir Starmer; we need compensation to lease holders for any increase in building insurance owing to tunnels, and we need compensation for being forced to leave our homes if it becomes intolerable.

147. CHAIR: There are quite a lot of petitioners waiting for their opportunity to present the committee, and you’re burning up a lot of time.

148. MS LEVENTON: I’m sorry.

149. CHAIR: How long are you going to be, Catherine?

150. MS LEVENTON: That’s me done.

151. CHAIR: Yes. How long will you be?

152. MS LEVENTON: Catherine’s got one more thing.

153. MS SYKES: Well, I don’t need to make my last three points. I’ve got a slide there. I was just going to add a couple of others. I’ll make one final point, then, perhaps

if It might, just on top of my last slide, which is number 16. It’s this one.

154. CHAIR: Thank you.

155. MS SYKES: Just to endorse all the points made by Sir Keir and by the Gloucester Avenue Association of Compensation this morning, but just to add as well that so far as the distinction exists between urban and rural schemes, I’d just like you perhaps to consider Primrose Hill as more rural than urban, simply because of its tranquillity and its peace and its quiet, which is of course one of three considerations for the rural scheme and the distinction between the two.

156. CHAIR: Okay. Thank you.

157. MS SYKES: Thank you for your time.

158. CHAIR: Mr Turney, after the false start.

159. MR TURNEY (DfT): Let me take it like this. First of all, traffic. In respect of Gloucester Avenue, this is only a construction traffic route for the utilities works in the area. There is, we predict, a diversionary effect onto Gloucester Avenue during the period of the Adelaide Road closure, which itself is a four-month period, and I think we’re going to hear more from the people who live immediately adjacent to that area tomorrow. So that’s the four-month period where there is a particular effect of diverting traffic onto Gloucester Avenue, but construction traffic limited to those utilities works in the immediate vicinity.

160. In terms of the – this is dealing with Darwin Court first. I’m going to go onto the wider Primrose Hill. But looking at sound, noise and vibration effects, in terms of ground borne noise the predicted impact is 21 decibels, which is some fourteen decibels below the lowest observable adverse effect level, and in terms of vibration the figures are approximately a tenth of those which lie at the lowest observable adverse effect level. So these are not significant effects from the operation of the scheme.

161. Sediment. The property lies within the settlement contours, because the tunnel goes almost under part of the property. But that engages our settlement policy. The Committee has already heard about it. I won’t repeat it now.

162. Then we come to the question of the need for the garden. Can I just put up P130047(12)? The utilities works in the area we’re looking at today are primarily concerned with protecting existing utilities whilst we tunnel underneath them. And I think that’s – yes, that’s it. So Darwin Court here, the block’s going up here. There is a sewer running underneath the garden at Darwin Court, underneath the West Coast main line and across into Camden Town.

163. We need to intercept that to carry out the strengthening works. We do that in a number of locations. And we have to do it within that garden area. There is insufficient space in the amenity land between the boundary of the garden and the running traffic of the West Coast main line to carry out those works.

164. That interception and strengthening of the sewer will take up to 12 months. It will require the use of the garden. It will be a relatively small compound and it’s subject to all our usual code of construction practice principles, which include first of all making sure that we minimise the impact on vegetation and so on, and secondly making sure that we restore the site once we’re finished with it. So it is for a limited period.

165. Security. The Committee has heard a lot about site security. That is part of the COCP and it will be managed in the normal way?

166. CHAIR: And you’re not going to purchase it; you would – there would be some payment for the use of the land for the period of 12 months, and compensation?

167. MR TURNEY (DfT): Yes. Precisely. There’s compensation for the freeholder but there may also be compensation for the lease holders so far as they have an interference with their rights over that garden. So we don’t know the terms – or I don’t know the terms of the leases, but presumably they have some right. If that’s interfered with they can make a claim for compensation too.

168. So that’s the position. It is, as I say, for up to one year for these sewer strengthening works. They’re necessary because we tunnel underneath the sewer.

169. MR BELLINGHAM: Has there been a conversation about what sort of compensation could be paid?

170. MR TURNEY (DfT): I don’t think there has.

171. MR BELLINGHAM: I mean, obviously the garden’s going to be badly disrupted. Various fundraising events, charity events won’t be able to take place, et cetera. So is HS2 going to offer – has there been discussion about what sort of package of compensation would be paid?

172. MR TURNEY (DfT): I don’t think there has, sir, but it would certainly strike me as being a sensible idea, that if an agreement could be reached with the hundred or so leaseholders as to what the likely compensation is in advance that would certainly make everyone’s life easier. But it is a garden area that’s used by all the flats. Yes.

173. MR BELLINGHAM: I’d like to recommend it start as a matter of urgency, then. It would put minds at rest of the residents’ association on this point.

174. MR TURNEY (DfT): Yes. I think that’s right. Well, I agree with that, save that we do of course need to make sure that our interference is minimised. So we need to make sure we’ve worked out what precisely we’re doing in terms of the amount of land we require and so on, and have the detail of that site.

175. CHAIR: So the bill scheme is worst possible case?

176. MR TURNEY (DfT): It is.

177. CHAIR: And it may you may not take all the garden.

178. MR TURNEY (DfT): That’s right.

179. CHAIR: It might be you manage to keep it into a corner so they can – yes.

180. MR TURNEY (DfT): Another point about the utility strengthening works in this area is they may not all be required although, having spoken to those in the know it seems very likely that this one will be.

181. CHAIR: So they’d have it inspected first and then you’d have to look at the state of them to see whether or not -

182. MR TURNEY (DfT): That’s right.

183. CHAIR: – you needed the work anyway.

184. MR TURNEY (DfT): But I don’t want to give any false hope. It seems very likely this one we’ll meet.

185. CHAIR: Okay.

186. MR TURNEY (DfT): So that’s the utilities works. I’ll just touch very briefly on the carriage sidings for spoil. The Committee knows that there is considerable pressure to remove excavated material by rail. One of the options which is subject to ongoing assessment and consideration is the use of the Camden carriage sidings. That would be a conveyor-based solution.

187. There is at the moment no concrete proposal. It requires a lot of work. These are the kind of difficult issues that we will need to work through in facilitating that almost universal demand to maximise the use of the rail for removing spoil.

188. I hope that’s picked up, at least briefly, the points specific to Darwin Court. Just turning to the wider Primrose Hill impact, if I could just show P13100, please. The key point here is that there is – there are traffic impacts in Primrose Hill but those relate primarily to the effects of diverted traffic. So we have closures at various points.

189. We’ve heard about the water mains works that are down here and in Albany Street, Park Village East and so on. We’ve heard about Adelaide Road. There’s a closure there. There are periods of road closures that result in traffic going through this area, we predict. It is not, say, for utilities works, our construction traffic. It is the general traffic in the area. It does cause impacts. It has to be managed, and Camden are in a position to manage that traffic.

190. In terms of air quality, those effects flow from diverted traffic primarily in the areas we’re looking at. There are minor changes in traffic flows, and consequently minor changes in air quality but, as the Committee has already seen, in this area we’re on a knife edge in air quality. Small increases in traffic cause what are assessed to be substantial adverse effects on air quality.

191. In the area around Regent’s Park there are periods where there are beneficial effects through road closures because traffic is diverted away, and times when there are adverse effects as traffic is diverted towards particular roads. But the Committee has

already heard several times there is an assurance with Camden that there will be – wherever there are significant air quality effects there will be a process of monitoring and of management through the implementation of action plans where residual adverse air quality effects arise

192. The Lawrie Park in Regents Park – as it’s put, the ‘Lorry Holding Area’ – is there as a management measure. The Committee has already heard about the need for it. It’s for marshalling vehicles so that they arrive at the relevant compounds at the right time and aren’t left queuing on the roads.

193. CHAIR: And I think we heard that if it is possible to take spoil out of the station by rail, that the need for as many vehicles to use that area will reduce substantially. So it still may be a worst-case scenario.

194. I think there will be a reduction in overall traffic, certainly.

195. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: We were also told a lot of them were going to be taking stuff in rather than taking it out.

196. MR TURNEY (DfT): There’s likely to still be a need for management of vehicles. On the hedgehogs, if I may I’ll leave that over for the zoo, who are in later this week.

197. CHAIR: Okay. It will give us something to look forward to.

198. MR TURNEY (DfT): Because they’re coming on that point. The burette was mentioned as an alternative. That’s on Albany Street. As I understand it that’s not currently available for use as a lorry holding area It’s surrounded by residential properties, as the Committee has already seen, and I understand there are restrictions on access to that site. But certainly the use of lorry holding areas is another matter which is being reviewed through the Camden assurances. So that is – may well be a site which is in mind.

199. I’ve dealt with utilities works. I think that’s everything, albeit in very brief turns. Is there anything else I can assist with?

200. CHAIR: Okay. All right, brief final comments? No?

201. MS SYKES: Thank you, Mr Turney. I’m delighted that you recognise my points about diverted traffic, which are indeed important points in Primrose Hill, really. I don’t think Camden can manage the traffic on their own, and they’re going to need significant help and assistance from HS2, and it will come down to assessing what’s going to happen at the Parkway Junction and focusing on Prince Albert Road and the Lawrie Car park and all those sorts of things. So it’s not simply enough to say ‘Let’s leave it to Camden’.

202. CHAIR: Thank you very much, ladies, for your point of view.

203. MS SYKES: Thank you.

204. CHAIR: Right. We now go to 1650, Golamead Limited with Richard Percival.

Golamead Limited

205. MR PERCIVAL: I will endeavour to be very brief. If we could have slide 1764(2), please.

206. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: Sorry, your name?

207. MR PERCIVAL: Richard Percival.

208. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: Percival. Thank you.

209. MR PERCIVAL: That’s an overview of the terrace. 19 houses, most of the freeholds came up for sale about 35 years ago. We bought them – we bought 10 of them, chopped them up into a standard lessee management company and I’m the secretary of the largest of them. I’ve been managing the property for about 30 – 25, 30 years.

210. If we have a look at slide 1764(11), which is the HS2 settlement plot, you will see where we are, because there’s a 62 at the bottom, and we have the four properties, including that, to the left. And as you can see you’ve got quite a lot of settlement behind, which is clearly associated with the hand-digging of that big adit across the back, because the soil loss there is considerably greater than with a PBM bored tunnel. So one of our questions is would some slight relocation of that adit take it further away from sensitive properties?

211. And if we have a look at slide 12 you can see what we regard as the vulnerable properties – and I’ll go into more detail in a minute – are shown in green. They are basically the 19th century properties, very often with mid-late 20th century additions to the back, which is the vulnerability. The magenta ones are new build and the people who bought those did so with prior notice.

212. We identified various vulnerabilities and I’d like to call up, from the Euston Standard Pack, slide P13065(10). 13065(10).

213. CHAIR: Keep talking while we’re waiting.

214. MR PERCIVAL: Well, what 13065(10) shows you is the drains work in Gloucester Avenue, and there is a rather sunburst-type effect which is something of a rarity. It is a party drain. It is actually on our property but serves five houses, and that clearly is, to the utility companies, a bit of a concern about the whole thing. Because drains run in front of our building and they are concerned about that vulnerability.

215. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: And shared drains are another responsibility of the waste water company, aren’t they?

216. MR PERCIVAL: I think they’re still under party wall legislation. I wouldn’t swear to it.

217. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: I think that we changed the law so that if more than one property shared a waste water pipe that then became the responsibility of the water company rather than remain the responsibility of the owners. But that is a separate point from the one you’re making.

218. MR PERCIVAL: No, I didn’t know that. But basically the point is that we do have a vulnerability there. And actually as far as our property is concerned I cannot find any power in the Bill to take out access to our subsoil. Not the subsoil for the tunnel but the subsoil immediately underneath the surface. Land will retain subsoil to allow the works to take place. That is not the problem. I’ve had a word with the helpful Mr Hines. We can deal with that by licence if necessary, at least as far as my company is concerned. Next door I can’t speak for.

219. What I would like to do is actually look at more detail at the cross-sections of the

properties. You’re familiar with Professor Mair’s stuff on settlement. And if we look at slide 15. That’s one of our slides: 1764(15).

220. What you have there is a cross-section of the building, which is marked up in green, a line dividing the modern rear extension, which is a rigid construction, and the two-thirds at the front, which is mid-Victorian, almost late-Georgian-type construction, which is flexible. The two are not bonded well together and you have a big vulnerability on the join, because if you have a look at slide 16 you can see a view down the side of the window, and the brickwork just doesn’t bond in. So that’s a big vulnerability. The problem is immediately behind that are the bathrooms. One wall is on the old structure and one on the new. So that’s the issue.

221. There are other issues in terms of vulnerabilities in the building, like the basements are largely waterproofed using Sika render, which is a very brittle substance. We have fire doors which are at right angles to the terminal, and they have to fit within certain legal tolerances. But in fact there will be quite a lot of damage requiring mediation afterwards, and actually if you then turn to slide 18, slide 18 shows you in blue a section of half-timbered wall with brick infill. I believe it’s the same sort of construction as the Palace of Westminster. But that rests on a bressumer and that is a major point vulnerability.

222. So we have this issue that actually these buildings don’t fit in with the type of buildings that we’re talking about on the site. My own guess is the likelihood is damage is more moderate than slight, and I think it would be very helpful to us if HS2 could review, in the light of what information they are passing over here, the classification of these properties. Because this applies right the way along the whole terrace. They all suffer from these vulnerabilities because they were all the same design, basically.

223. The next point on that is that we’ve never actually been shown any element regarding the way in which the risk to these properties can be evaluated, so we can’t actually comment in detail on that. It would be helpful, I think, to have a dialogue.

224. CHAIR: Haven’t you had a discussion with them after your petition response document?

225. MR PERCIVAL: Sorry?

226. CHAIR: Haven’t you had a discussion with them after your petition response document?

227. MR PERCIVAL: It doesn’t really deal with these particular issues. These types of building are not greenfield flexible buildings or greenfield solid buildings. They’re a hybrid. That’s actually the big issue. And that is I think where we, at our way, if we could have – you’re well aware of the width of the land behind us. I needn’t go into that anymore.

228. But if we could have 1764(20), please. Sorry, I didn’t intend it to be that one. What I would like is actually 1764(22). What this one shows you is the upline in the bluey green and the downline, away from Euston, in the blue. And if you look at the magenta what we’re actually talking about is keeping the lines parallel to the upline – I know the aversion of railway engineers to S curves – keep it the same distance away in parallel to the downline, because that would give us the crucial three metres which will take away something like 70% of the settlement risk to that terrace.

229. CHAIR: Okay. Is that – that’s your main point -

230. MR PERCIVAL: That is my main point.

231. CHAIR: Your main concern. Shall we get a response from the -

232. MR TURNEY (DfT): Sir, I’m grateful. I’ll deal with this really quickly. We’ve got information paper C3, which deals with this. The pre-registration process for a settlement deed starts on Friday this week, so that’s certainly something that this petitioner and the other freeholders on the street should engage with us in early stage.

233. And in light of what Mr Percival has said, we can certainly take away the information he gives about – the specific information about the properties and look at the category of risk that’s been identified. We identify it as a slight to very slight risk. We’re running here the track level at some 30 metres below the ground, so it’s relatively detailed. But we’ve heard what he said, we’ve seen the detail he’s put in his petition and we can look at that.

234. MR PERCIVAL: And in fact of course in terms of basement floors it’s rather less than 30 metres; it’s about 26.

235. CHAIR: This petitioner will have to register on Friday.

236. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: Do you register them or do they register with you?

237. MR MOULD QC (DfT): As we have said previously in relation to the Ickenham residents, we have a system whereby people can pre-register to ask for a settlement deed, and I think you’ll remember that in the summer we said that the system of pre-registration was something that was being established in the autumn. It goes live on Friday the 18th, in two or three days’ time.

238. That basically means that they – that people can say ‘We want to call for a settlement deed.’ It gets them on the list and when the settlement deed system goes live next year it means that we then provide the deed and that gives them a direct contractual relationship with the promoter in relation to the assessment of settlement effects in relation to their property.

239. They don’t need the deed to benefit from the protection that is given under the settlement policy, but in previous schemes it’s proved something that has given reassurance to people to know that they have the opportunity to have that direct contractual relationship which they can hold, as it were, with their deeds, and they can call upon as appropriate when the scheme is – as the scheme is being developed.

240. So this seems like a sensible approach for Mr Percival to consider. He can decide obviously with his colleagues whether he would find that helpful, and the details will be available from the end of this week.

241. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: We’ve got the two-year settlement period, which he has mentioned both orally and more in the papers. If something goes wrong which can be attributed to the work of HS2 presumably there’s a claim anyway, isn’t there?

242. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Yes. Yes. It’s designed to provide a more straightforward process than simply bringing a claim in the common law, as it were. Yes.

243. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: Okay. Right. Thank you. That’s very useful.

244. CHAIR: Right. Brief final comments?

245. MR PERCIVAL: One point of guidance, which is I’m aware that the TfL are looking at the spoil issue. We have actually several lessees petitioners in Gloucester Avenue approach TfL; we’ve got a very helpful reply within about an hour and a half saying yes, they’d be delighted to meet with us and work through our concerns and that sort of thing. What I would like is an assurance that that then doesn’t preclude us, if necessary, if we can’t arrive at something that satisfied us, appealing to the House of Lords if there isn’t an AP in relation to that.

246. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: The House of Lords is a separate application, you might say.

247. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Shall I just interrupt? Sorry, but this may be helpful. The particular reason why – a particular reason why the date that’s been set for the next plan in relation to spoil by rail – that is to say May of next year – is to allow the opportunity for people who are concerned to, if they want to, to raise issue with the second house. That’s been built into the timing for that purpose.

248. MR PERCIVAL: Thank you.

249. MR MOULD QC (DfT): It’s principally obviously focused on TfL and Camden, who are particularly keen to see progress on this issue, and so it was to give them some comfort. But obviously that applies as much to people like Mr Percival. What I would say is that we do not expect to make changes to the bill in order accommodate any infrastructure that would be required for spoil removal by rail. That is something that will be dealt with by another process. So there won’t be any changes made by way of additional provisions for that purpose in any event.

250. MR PERCIVAL: That is very helpful, Mr Mould.

251. CHAIR: Okay, thank you, Mr Percival.

252. MR PERCIVAL: I have nothing more to say.

253. CHAIR: Okay. Thank you very much indeed.

254. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: Thank you for the manner in which you presented the petition.

255. CHAIR: Right. We have 1299, AP3: 60, Jeffrey Travers in person. Hello again, how are you?

Jeffrey Travers

256. MR TRAVERS: I’m going to try and be very, very fast but it’s – I’ve only got a few slides to give you this time. I just want to give you this brief reminder. I actually live in Gloucester Avenue. I live in the house that Richard has just been describing. I’ve got a particular problem in the house. I was just discussing it with the HS2 property chap in the corner with a view to discussing it with the engineer, and that is really my key point.

257. But I’m going to be so fast with this that I’d just like to introduce another point which I think will be very helpful to you tomorrow, particular knowledge that I’ve got, two facets, in relation to the vent shaft. I think nobody else has got this knowledge.

258. I’ll just say for other people’s benefit I’m an architect. I studied architecture in Nottingham, where mining subsidence was part of the course. I was platform architect of Jubilee line west after the tunnel collapse at Heathrow so, you know, that had a big impact on the Jubilee line. I worked with the engineers, supervising tunnelling and station work in Westminster, and it was very bloody. I was also project architect for regeneration of most stations in the large part of the southeast, so I know a lot about the management of railway assets and the kind of wasteland sort of situations.

259. CHAIR: We hadn’t forgotten all that.

260. MR TRAVERS: I know. I know. I’m getting there. So I told you that I wanted to talk about the vent shaft. I’ve also got to re-address what I think is a credibility deficit that you might have got the impression about from Professor McNaughton’s discussion, but anyway that will be very brief, I promise.

261. I’m going to ask that the tunnel alignment is moved very slightly east, as Richard did, and the – to avoid the – and the adit moved as well to avoid the impact on my extension, which isn’t shown on HS2’s maps. It’s matters not covered by Camden in TfL. I’ve been concentrating on traffic with the Euston Action Group and liaising with HS2 and TfL. I’m not covering that because that’s – and also it’s factually-based so I’m

not giving you any rhetoric. So hopefully this will be interesting for you.

262. I will say, traffic-wise, I am a cyclist and I have been knocked off my bike by a construction lorry. Fortunately I only fractured my elbow. I mean, it is a big issue, quite honestly. Now, I’m going to crack on. First slide – my slide 3, please. So this is the first – the first couple of issues. I keep bees with another petitioner.

263. I’ve detected a gap in your information about the site of the vent shaft. I keep bees opposite – right by the vent shaft. You need to know a little bit more about the vent shaft site. It’s not covered by Adelaide Nature Reserve’s petition.

264. I was chairman of the community garden a few years ago, keep bees there. It covers – about 45 families use that garden intensively, enjoy honey and are very concerned about access. It’s right by the vent shaft entrance, site entrance, and they all live on Adelaide Road, mostly.

265. The woodland site as vent shaft has got a very high landscape importance, as you know. You saw it from the bridge. It’s the sort of backdrop, and the vent shaft will take away that woodland. But when – especially when it’s levelled for a car park – they may not be aware that the woodland has a very special ecology. That’s what I’m trying to get across and I want to explain to you. Camden haven’t covered it. They suggested that it should just be – you know, whatever is put up should just be camouflaged.

266. So I just want to get across very quickly to you this was actually the inspiration of a garden I did for Hampton Court; it got a silver medal; it featured on a BBC television programme, quite a long feature. The special ecology is due to the fact nearly every tree that you saw, when the leaves go you see an arboreal ivy tree.

267. In other words, it turns from a sycamore wood into an ivy wood that’s been there over 100 years. Ivy is the principal driver of ecological systems, you know, in this – you probably know.

268. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: The ivy feeds the bees; the bees -

269. MR TRAVERS: It feeds the bees – yes, exactly. You wouldn’t know that. You went there; you couldn’t see the ivy. Now all you can see is ivy, and every tree is now an immense dome of ivy flowers – or ivy fruit now, and obviously it feeds the bees

before they go to sleep in the winter. And actually the sycamore feeds them in the spring when they wake up, because that’s the first flower. So that’s my point about the ecology.

270. I think that might be it, actually. Let’s have a look. It’s this, because it’s a steep, slopey site that you get that. In other words, they’re not competing for sunlight. It’s a very, very south-facing bank and it actually works with the community – the nature reserve next door, which is a grass bank. So you’ve got this – also got this second – a third ecological system, which is the woodland fringe. Just bear this in mind when you come to assess it. Nobody is going to give you that information otherwise, and you wouldn’t see it. It possibly accounted for the discovery of the previously-extinct Barbary bug which is, as you probably know, a spotted hairy scarab beetle, very large.

271. So that’s that one. My particular knowledge of Juniper Crescent, which Camden said – the possible use of the vent shaft – site of the vent shaft on that site will impact on social housing tenants – is that I designed the access road to the depot when we did the – we did Safeway supermarket we put the infrastructure in. And it was designed so that the access would not impact on the social housing.

272. However, you know, any lorries will. But I just draw your attention to the fact that the supermarket, the road to the little roundabout that feeds the supermarket has got a bus station, the lorry deliveries – the delivery lorries and the large car park serving Camden Lock as well. And that fronts on to the social housing. The social housing itself, about three or four units, or maybe half a dozen units, form a barrier block onto the access road and they’re insulated from the railway.

273. So – and it – the depot is currently active so it has lorry traffic at the moment. The depot is going to be, under AP3, and HS2 compound, because the woodland site is so restricted and sloping they haven’t got enough space there for a compound, so they’re going to use the depot as a train shipment centre, so you’re going to get more lorry movement.

274. If you had the vent shaft on this much better site, a flat site, you would possibly reduce the number of lorries; the depth of the shaft would be smaller; you wouldn’t close Adelaide Road, which will have a much greater impact on the social housing tenants. So that’s my point about that. So I’m going to whizz on, because you’ve got

time constraints.

275. Slide 5, please, shows you my particular problem, which I’m really worried about. You’ve seen the block. This – my extension isn’t shown on – it’s been there 35 years. It isn’t shown on HS2’s drawings. It’s – I showed it in black in – just going through, the map in the middle is HS2’s contour map.

276. The block – yes, thank you – is my extension, which isn’t shown, and it’s – it’s on the peat bog, basically, in the back garden. Because when they – if you look at the section – when they build the -when I built the extension – when they – sorry, when they dug the cutting by the nature reserve they dumped all the spoil behind the houses. So if you look on the bottom left-hand corner of the slide, the -

277. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: Put your finger on it.

278. MR TRAVERS: This one. It shows you’ve got about nine metres of London – I would say it’s London clay, but actually it’s spoil. It could be anything, basically. And that was dumped on a marsh, so outside my back – you can see from my foundations this was a cantilevered double-reinforced concrete foundation calculated by Arup, rejected by the building inspector, and I had to redo it myself. It’s on a peat bog. The yellow bit is peat. I actually had the derelict flat next door I could get it out from, but the chap who’s helping me made a pile of it twelve feet high in the back garden. When he discovered it he refused to take it out in one go. He sort of double-handled it to make me pay him more. But it’s peat.

279. Now, as you can see there’s a back wall that’s behind that, and that’s a new building that they’ve built knowingly over the tunnels. That’s going to go down 20, maybe 30 millimetres, 25, possibly, millimetres. It’s going to take me with it. Now, the problem is my roof is a zinc roof. It’s a zinc pyramid roof that was installed by the foreman who did the Mosque in Regents Park, so it’s a really precision item. The gutter falls aren’t very great. When it goes down my roof isn’t going to drain. It drains towards the house, away from the railway.

280. So I’m going to be stuck. I’m going to – I mean, it’s almost inevitable I’m going to need a new roof, or my cantilevered foundation is going to be cantilevering over space. Now, hopefully HS2 can advise me what they can do about it, because if it

cantilevers they can probably pressure-grout it full before it collapses. It is – it is a big issue. I know about this kind of thing because I’ve done mining settlement and stuff like that. They don’t go at once. But, you know, if you can – if you can move that, move that hand-dug vent shaft – and it’s the hand-digging of the vent shaft with the pneumatic shovels, there’s no real control over the amount of subsidence. That’s the problem.

281. That would be great. They’ve got to be 200-metre centres or something. And if you could shove the tunnels a bit further back that would be great. Now, I can give you chapter and verse on how you do an S-curve in railway line, and you don’t need a very big one if you need one at all. But you should be able to, if you look at the – if you zone in on the concrete tolerances of the portal, bearing in mind that the boring machine is coming from the north to the – I can show it to you in the next slide, actually.

282. Before I do that, let me show you – let me show you – yes, sorry, in the right-hand corner of this slide you see the stationary winding engine vault. That section is not to same scale as the other one. The actual winding engine vault is set into the original London clay, but it fills up with water to above the level of the canal. So it’s obviously fed by the marsh, basically. And it has to be pumped out regularly.

283. So we’ve got a real mess there, quite honestly, and I – next slide is P11 – this is the HS2 slide P11 – sorry, P13117 – not mine. That’s – no. P13117. So it’s not London clay; it’s fill, basically. The tunnels are through London clay but there’s an enormous amount of fill over it, so they got it wrong. So this needs to re-addressed. I hope this is helpful to you; that’s all I’m saying.

284. I’d like to show you another – this is P113118(11).

285. CHAIR: So essentially what you’re saying is you want us to move the railway to stop your extension falling 20 millimetres?

286. MR TRAVERS: If you could just push it back a bit is what I’m saying. And the next one is the alignment. It’s coming up. Yes, this shows they’ve done a study of doing – I think maybe Martin Sheppard showed this to you – of pushing the track a bit east. They eventually pushed it 31 metres east and then said ‘It’s not going to work.’ This is the same ploy that they did for the double-deck down thing. They did something

which was completely ridiculous then said ‘But the original one is much better and this one doesn’t work.’

287. I mean, the rules for an S-curve are you need to have a straight bit between the two curves. You get a little bit more wear as you might have found out on – if you have a reverse curve, a little bit more wear on the curve, but we’re talking about that. Now, we don’t need much to actually deflect them, if at all, because you’ve got tolerances on the concrete of the portal, because as I say the boring machine is coming from the north. So there are large tolerances built into the portal. So we need to look at that forensically.

288. CHAIR: How many more points have you got to raise, Mr Travers?

289. MR TRAVERS: Pardon?

290. CHAIR: How many more points have you got to raise?

291. MR TRAVERS: Okay. The next point is

292. CHAIR: How many more points?

293. MR TRAVERS: No, I’ve only got a few slides, sorry. This is really important to me because I’m having kittens about this. So I mean, the point is who’s been taken in by this. Who has been taken in by this? That’s what I’m saying. Where they give you this kind of ridiculous S-bend and say 31 metres deflection -

294. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: Why don’t you just say how far out you think it could reasonably be pushed?

295. MR TRAVERS: I think maybe about eight or nine metres. That would do be mine, if they could maybe shove the adit up a bit. I’d like to also show you this slide, because something else popped up out of the pack. Slide P13118(9). It shows you can actually rework – rejig – you know, look at that forensically. P13118(10).

296. Yes, that’s the dive under. I’m really just bringing this to your attention. It’s a drawing for the dive under, but the clearance is to West Coast main line. I’m going to show another slide now, which is my slide 10. Professor McNaughton said they’d done a lot of – please bear with me on this. This is really, really important because it shows

my scepticism about the information that I’ve been given about the alignment.

297. Professor McNaughton said they’d done a lot of work on the dive under, and the clearances and concrete sizing that they’ve established for the dive under just will not fit under Hampstead Road Bridge. Will, HS2 sent me this drawing; it related to the alignment under my flat and it’s got the working drawings of the dive under, and I fitted it under Hampstead Road bridge with HS2’s abutment rules, no centre support, and I get an extra high speed track and a half with the clearances they’ve given to the west-coast main line.

298. That’s the scale of magnitude. If they don’t give you any evidence – this is the – I didn’t have this until a few days ago. I presented this to you so that – and also it shows you can have up to six existing NR tracks through the bridge. I’ve used the bridge abutments. That’s three of Professor McNaughton’s points that this kills stone dead. If we move on to slide 9, please.

299. He also said that the platform thickness of the track – the thicknesses under the track were far too small. St Pancras station’s suspended slabs set in to the right – so I just happen to have the record drawing of it. And they are thinner at St Pancras station. That’s number 1. The other point is that I’ve got the air conditioning ventilation plant next to the station that that’s under. So he said I would need to raise – should raise the gradients to one in four and five.

300. CHAIR: I don’t think we want to go through what we went through before.

301. MR TRAVERS: I know. Well, you haven’t gone through it before because all you have is innuendo.

302. CHAIR: It just feels like we went through it. Yes. All right.

303. MR TRAVERS: Well, you didn’t, you see, because -

304. CHAIR: Can you come to the point?

305. MR TRAVERS: – this is proof. This is proof and there’s only one other slide that demonstrates that he was wrong about the retaining wall in the concourse, because I can show you it’s only five metres high. He said it was a massive, deep retaining wall

which wouldn’t allow the phasing. So on every one of this points I’ve got geometric, graphical proof that he – that his criticisms were incorrect. So I’ll leave it like that.

306. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: It’s probably a shame HS2 didn’t use you to design the railway, and it’s a shame that these things are outside your particular petition, which is about how you’re affected with your extension that you might have.

307. MR TRAVERS: Well, they’re giving you evidence. Maybe this evidence will show – you know, will allow you to be sceptical about the evidence that HS2 are giving, because you really should be. When you look into it forensically you find that it -

308. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: I think you’ve stopped.

309. MR TRAVERS: Thank you.

310. CHAIR: Thank you. Do you wish to respond, Mr Turney?

311. MR TURNEY (DfT): Can I just put up P11276, please? This is on the nature reserve. We’re going to hear more about the nature reserve tomorrow, because we’ve got the nature reserve association, and there is a local nature reserve in this location. And then we have the vent shaft compound, and then we have this Network Rail land, which is also recognised as being of nature conversation interest, but as a private nature reserve and as a site of biological interest.

312. So our compound is a limited area in this longer embankment area. We’ll hear more about it, but it’s the usual COCP measures in respect of retention of trees within the compound, reinstatement, and as we’ll see on P11277, proposals to enhance and reinstate around the operation vent shaft and in the wider area that’s been identified. So there are ecological management measures which you’ll hear more about tomorrow.

313. Juniper Crescent, you’ve heard already there are operational reasons for not selecting that alternative as a vent shaft location.

314. In terms of the protection of the property and the roof, well, you’ve just heard from the freeholder of the building and you’ve heard what we said in response to that: There is the opportunity to enter into a settlement deed and we’ve already said in respect of that property we’ll look again at the risk classification in light of the information

that’s been provided.

315. I’m not proposing to go into the double-deck solutions again. The Committee has heard on that.

316. CHAIR: Do you want to say anything about bees?

317. MR TURNEY (DfT): Well, bees, it’s there. It’s the nature reserve. There is reinstatement. I can’t speak for the bees necessarily during the construction stage, but we can hear more about that if necessary with the nature reserve association tomorrow. Certainly the final position is a degree of reinstatement and enhancement.

318. MR TRAVERS: I think the scale of – am I allowed to -

319. CHAIR: Yes, you’re allowed a few brief final comments.

320. MR TRAVERS: It’s only one point. The scale of the work needed to actually create a car park on the access road is going to – must take out most of the trees. Now, you know, I appreciate that this is, you know, an issue of value judgment, but I was only trying to flag that there is an ecological significance for you.

321. I apologise for, you know, encroaching upon the previous petition issues. I just thought this is information that I just received, and I thought it was significant to you, particularly – Camden have stressed to me – I could show you two slides but I’m not sure whether I’m allowed to at this point.

322. CHAIR: No, you’re not.

323. MR TRAVERS: Camden have stressed to me in writing that they are not allowed to raise the issue of the station design. They’ve had to sign that away as of TfL, and they said that I should present any evidence that I’ve got to you, because otherwise the strategic board will not consider alternatives. And that’s what I did.

324. And I’ve just one last point, is that WSP – this relates to the alignment as well as double-deck down. WSP, the main conclusion of their review of the double-deck down was that infrastructure work in this area where we’re talking about is not a greenfield site.

325. And they said in engineering terms, you know, in a greenfield site the issues are, you know, fairly – are much more black and white. In this particular area compromise is probably in order. And the compromise – I’m not saying it’s a -

326. CHAIR: Yes, can you come to the point? Brief final comments.

327. MR TRAVERS: Yes. The compromise is not saying it’s a duff solution, it’s an accommodation. And when you do that you get the same kind of synergy that you get with the ivy growing up the tree. You actually need to take that on board, and I’m just asking you, as the Select Committee, that that should be your role in this area. Thank you very much.

328. CHAIR: Thank you very much. We’re about to vote so I’m going to adjourn until 4.15. Or 4.30. Order, order.

Sitting suspended On resuming—

329. CHAIR: Can I call 1338, Kenneth and Margaret Fulford? Are you here? In that case, you wait a minute. Have you sworn in? You need to swear in. We’ll take you in a minute. Alright. Silvia Ranawake?

Silvia Ranawake

330. MS RANAWAKE: Yes. Good afternoon. My name is Silvia Ranawake. I bought my property, 18 Fitzroy Road in 1968 together with my husband to raise a family, and I have been a resident of Camden since 1964. My property is located 20 metres across the avenue and 125 from the cutting. Besides presenting my own petition, I support that of the Gloucester Avenue Association – in short, GAA – and I have permission to refer to the petitions of two Fitzroy Road residents, Joanna Reeves and Colin St Johnston.

331. Point one on my list of main points, I fully support the GAA in their request that the vent shaft be moved from Adelaide Road side to Juniper Crescent, and my particular concern and reason for this is to avoid the closure of Adelaide Road. As you know, presenting scheduled for four months, Adelaide Road is an essential bus route and, as such, the only public transport link between Primrose Hill and Swiss Cottage, with its

public amenities, library, swimming pool and sport centre. Especially the young, library, sports and the old, keep fit and rehabilitation after illness, use these extensively. My neighbour, Joanna Reeves, cites the case of her grandson, who is a very keen sportsman, still at school but trains every day at the gym and I myself used both pool and gym after my two hip replacements to aid rehabilitation. I know of two other neighbours in the same position now.

332. I’m sure I would not have recovered as well as I had if I had to wait for four months. So if you say, ‘just four months’, yeah, that can mean something for people. Number two, also I am supporting the GAA petition on the contents conservation and compensation that perhaps should be resumed. There was no consultation on compensation initially, as far as I know. My property was above the tunnel in the original plans. The first thing I heard about HS2 was a letter from some unknown solicitor’s firm pointing out that there was a tunnel to be under my house and saying that the best thing for me was to sell, and this firm had plenty of experience with HS1 and were very happy to help.

333. I phoned Camden Planning and they knew nothing about HS2 at this stage. I then learnt that the property was above the tunnel and therefore I had no right to compensation, so understandably, I would like to associate myself with the GAA petition regarding compensation above tunnels and their request for renewed consultation. Number three and four concerns the risk of damage to property and compensation for such damage. On this ground, I of course support the moving of the tunnel alignment centrally and the railway land in the GAA petition, and I also would like to request that houses in Primrose Hill be surveyed at cost to the Promoter with a view to claiming for damages incurred through HS2 construction works, should this situation arise.

334. My PRD1 speaks of excavation induced ground movements and I also quote what Dr Michael De Freitas, an expert in engineering geology of the Imperial College, says regarding basement excavations. I heard a very good talk by him. The ground will continue to respond long after the work is complete. It may be small, but it may not be uniform, meaning that neighbouring properties can be gradually distorted as the ground nearest the excavation moves more than that furthest from it. He recommends long term monitoring of water levels and their responses to rainfall. Number five, the request also

by GAA to widen the Need to Sell scheme to the want to move scheme. I support this request.

335. I looked at the literature and as far as I can see, the scheme cannot provide assurances regarding compensation, because it is very difficult to define what a Need to Sell is. For example, if my son and next of kin has to move to the States, say, I shall have to follow and at my age, for obvious reasons, and I’m not sure whether that would be covered. Number six, construction traffic; the disruption and the gridlock caused by the construction works and the lorries. I’m very pleased that HS2 has reached an agreement with Camden regarding the local traffic management plan, and that the possibilities of transporting spoil and materials by rail are now investigated, but at the same time, it must be said that even the best plan of mice and men cannot resolve the traffic problems of a borough that is already severely congested.

336. My particular concern is the potential blockage of Parkway junctions already mentioned by several petitioners, because that provides Primrose Hill with access to Camden Town and the rest of London, and my fear is that there might be gridlock, which is very dangerous for the elderly and physically vulnerable, such as myself. I carry a significant stroke risk, and these junctions provide direct routes to ambulances between Primrose Hill and area hospitals, and in this situation, it’s minutes that count. I would therefore support the GAA request that there is a special investigation into these junctions. In addition, I request assurances that residents are represented as stakeholders on panels that plan and monitor local traffic.

337. Seven, local air quality. I share the concern of GAA regarding increase in pollutants in Primrose Hill and across Camden, and I support their request for measuring air quality and for finding agreements on air quality. Pollution is known to cause health problems, we all know that, particularly in the young and in the elderly, and I am thinking of construction traffic near local schools. I was very impressed by the presentation this morning. My grandsons are already suffering from asthma and it truly distressing to be called to the school with ambulances outside the school and seeing the little chap trying to be brave. I’m also thinking of Oldfield, the old people’s home, at the end of Fitzroy Road, quite apart from my own problems.

338. I’m sorry there was a mix-up with the numbers. Number eight, noise; requesting

monitoring and mitigation. I’m very grateful to HS2 for the assessment of sound levels that they sent, and their assurances that there is no increase predicted at this moment in Fitzroy Road. I’m also pleased about the assurances given to London Borough of Camden regarding noise mitigation and, in particular, because they also cover cases where impacts change, and the consideration of special cases. On the other hand, I haven’t really seen that working hours cover construction traffic, but I noted that in Gloucester Avenue, the construction traffic will take place in the night only and during weekends and bank holidays, which isn’t particularly reassuring.

339. I am thinking here about the effect of noise on small children and the elderly and those with medical conditions, the people who cannot move, and of course, of those who have to look after them and have to stay in the same place all day long. People who work, that’s different. But for those who have to stay all the time, it’s another matter. From experience, I can say that the Code of Construction Practice does not always offer satisfactory protection. When I was driven to despair, really, by a nearby basement excavation, Camden Planning told me the only thing I could do; move out for the duration of works, and I request that if that is necessary, that the incurring costs should be compensated.

340. Lastly, the point of independent advice on technical matters. I share the concern expressed in the letter from Hilary Wharf of the HS2 Action Alliance to our chairman, and I would like to add my worries to her request, that the Committee procure independent advice on technical matters. I realise that it was told by HS2 that the Committee decided that they would not want to access such advice, but I think, nevertheless, that I can put my request to you, and I think you might reconsider. I am particularly concerned about this advice on alternative schemes, for example, such as using Old Oak Common as a hub and terminus, and with his permission, I quote the petition of my neighbour in Fitzroy Road, Colin St Johnston:

341. ‘Instead of using Old Oak Common as a connection point, the planned route goes through our area at enormous extra cost. The process of building this less than adequate connection will cause huge damage to the area, long-term loss of jobs and traffic jams for many years.’ Thank you very much for your time and your patience.

342. CHAIR: Thank you very much. Nearly every point on that list we’ve dealt with

several times. Is there anything you want to add at all?

343. MR TURNEY (DfT): No, sir, unless there’s anything I can assist with.

344. CHAIR: All right. Thank you very much for your contribution and getting through very quickly. Thank you. Right. We’ll have you, Simon, and after that we’ll have Kenneth and Michael. You didn’t get that confiscated as a weapon as you came through security this morning?

345. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: The one at the back needs a running repair.

Simon Neave

346. MR NEAVE: My name is Simon Neave and I have lived for 23 years at 148 Gloucester Avenue, which is right next to the pub where you had your lunch a few days ago when you visited the area. It’s the next door house. It’s a five storey terraced house, and it’s slightly complicated. I own it and I live on the top three floors, but I own a shop which I rent out to someone on the ground floor and I rent out a flat on the basement. I’m going to mention that later, because, if the issue of compensation arose, there’s also the issue of capital gains, which might well diminish the compensation, but I hope nobody will want to take it from me.

347. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: How long have you had the property?

348. MR NEAVE: Since 1993. I’ve only got two issues and they will be brief. One is the closure of Adelaide Road for four months, and I think that there’s a solution to it which is right here, and I think I detected a certain amount of interest in you in the solution which is possibly moving the vent shaft, and I’ll mention that later. The only other issue is compensation and mitigation. Now, at the very beginning when we first came here, Sir Peter mentioned the 1962 smog, where he said he could only just see in front of his hand and then it was followed by an extremely cold period. Well, I raise that because the pollution we’re having now is invisible, not quite as serious as that, no one would pretend that, but it’s got NO2 and sulphur in it, and it is serious, and extra lorry movements will increase the pollution all around our area and it’s almost as serious as that very visible pollution of many years ago.

349. We younger boys, at a school not very far from here, in 1962, didn’t take the smog

and the ice as a divine attempt to hasten the 18 year old Sir Peter from the school he was at then, though some did say he was a very tough prefect, and this is the first time I’ve seen him since, but I was several years younger, and I do remember that awful smog. Now, I go swimming now twice a week to keep fit, and in fact, it’s very good, it’s paid for by Camden Council. You can go free of charge to the local pool at Swiss Cottage, and I use the very frequent 31 bus which runs along Adelaide Road and that is a very busy road. The east-west road south of it is the Marylebone Road and the Euston Road, then there’s the huge block of Regents Park, so the next north east-west road is Adelaide Road, which they are proposing to class for four months.

350. That is a very serious thing to do. It’s a major thoroughfare. I use the 31 bus. There are 12 of these busses every hour. I reckon they carry 10,000 people a day. So for four months, these busses are going to be seriously diverted. I’m going to find it a bit harder to go to swimming, but I shall do it, and I’ve asked people who I go swimming with every – twice a week I meet people in the change room and I talk to them, since I knew I was coming here. I said, ‘are you affected by this?’ I found 32 people who travel on the 31 bus. That’s just a simple poll of people. 32 people with grey hair, and some of them are not going to be able to swimming over this four month period.

351. So it is an important issue, and it affects a lot of people. As I said, I thought I detected far more than a flicker of interest in you when the thought of moving that vent shaft away from Adelaide Road onto Juniper Crescent was raised. Therefore, it that happened, we wouldn’t have to close Adelaide Road for this extraordinary long period of four months. We wouldn’t have to close it all, and I really would ask that you look to explore having that moved, as it will make a really significant difference to an awful lot of people who use a very major road. I’m no rail engineer and I don’t need to be, because we were told it can’t be moved because of S-bends and stuff like that.

352. That isn’t rail engineering. That’s something that you Euclid and his students in 350 BC could understand. It’s simple geometry, and it’s quite possible to move that track without inflicting serious damage on the trains. We were told that it will be a suboptimal railway – I heard the phrase earlier – if it has to be moved to accommodate, shift it away from us so that you can get it nearer to Juniper Crescent so this new shaft can accommodate it. Incidentally, the new shaft would be less expensive than the one in

Adelaide Road, because the railway line drops down all the way, so it’s much closer to the ground than the shaft would be – and they never mentioned that – the shaft would be at Adelaide Road, much closer to the ground, and therefore the main expense of building a great vent is vastly reduced. They don’t have to go so far down. It’s not so far down to reach it from Juniper Crescent as it is in Adelaide Road.

353. They mentioned that the handicap of moving those tracks is the S-bend, which means the train is only going to be able to go at 110 kilometres an hour instead of 145 kilometres an hour. I suggest that’s ludicrously fanciful. When the front of the train reaches where they say it can be doing 110 kilometres an hour, the back of the train – because they’re long – will still be just coming out of the platforms. Has anyone ever seen a train roaring out of a platform at 65 miles an hour? It may be they’re designing it to be able and potentially to be able to travel at 65 miles an hour there, but it isn’t going to happen at all. I’ve also asked people who are railway engineers, is it feasible? Of course it’s feasible to move it. These trains won’t be doing that speed.

354. I went to Brussels last week and when I stood on the Eurostar platform, I looked at the four platforms at St Pancras; they all have a large red sign saying, ‘25’, and underneath it, ‘40’. That means the trains leaving the platforms at St Pancras on our last high speed line, the HS1, are restricted to 25 miles an hour or 40 kilometres an hour after they leave the platforms, and they have to – then they go into a tunnel and then only when the very back of the train – the train driver, when I asked him about this – only when the very back of the 18 coach Eurostar train is in the tunnel, do they accelerate from 25 miles an hour up to 200 miles an hour, or whatever they do in the tunnels.

355. So it’s absolutely fanciful to say that the service is going to be degraded because they can’t travel at 110 miles an hour a few yards from Euston station. It just doesn’t make sense, and we were told that and expected to believe that. If you ever travel on a train and the back of it is doing 65 miles an hour when it leaves a platform – that doesn’t happen in any country, even with the magnetic thing in China.

356. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: Presumably it travels at the same speed as the front, doesn’t it?

357. MR NEAVE: Sorry, say it again?

358. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: The back travels at the same speed as the front. They’re joined together.

359. MR NEAVE: Well, these are almost joined together. I’m going to come to that in a minute. Sorry, one other thing I wanted to say. Why would it have to close for four months? Why do we have to – even if you can’t do that, you can’t ask them to move the shaft to Juniper Crescent, why on earth, if they stay at Adelaide Road, does it have to take four months to build an extremely simple undecorative structure that just goes down not very far? Look at the Shard which was built at London Bridge. This is a mighty structure with huge foundations, a job a thousand times bigger than this little shaft these people have to build.

360. They didn’t close any roads to build the Shard. They were able to build the Shard without any destruction at all. All these huge buildings you see in London with huge deep foundations, which make this little thing seem like a tiddler, this thing they want to build and close the roads for four months for. All these huge buildings in London have been built without any kind of disruption whatsoever. Can you be a bit tough? If you can’t accept the movement to Juniper Crescent, can you be tough with them and say, ‘do you really have to close it for any months at all? Why four?’

361. CHAIR: Well, we’ll get an answer in a minute. Are you going to move on?

362. MR NEAVE: I’m afraid I’ve got three or four little things, but I’m nearly there. They played the magic card today, saying, you know, ‘Camden is going to benefit from this. You’re just benefiting. Camden is going to benefit. This is going to be the regeneration of Euston’. Can I suggest this is hot air? Kings Cross was seriously regenerated by HS1 by St Pancras coming there, international, because there were huge waste railway lands which were waiting to be redeveloped and hung on HS1. Go to Euston, there’s no scope for redevelopment there. The British Library has already been put there on waste railway land. This wonderful new medical centre we’re having near Euston has been built on the only other waste land.

363. There will be no massive regeneration for Camden by this. True, there is the roof surface of Euston, but that can be done at any time, as I think Sir Peter mentioned about the redevelopment can take place at any time. It doesn’t depend on HS1. So there’s no upside for Camden at all in HS1. It’s all downside, and many of us will be taking the

punishment. Now, I want to introduce these trains which I said to you before are built in the only train factory in London, and I brought them, not to be silly, but because I want to say this: the railway at the moment is not to full capacity. Virgin’s annual report of 2014 – they are the two operators, London Midland and Virgin, and this is relevant, I think, sir, if I can talk about it, Virgin said that their trains were 50.4% full. So here is their train of five coaches. Their train has two empty carriages at the moment, on average.

364. That is huge scope for extra capacity on the West Coast Main line, and secondly, their trains are only to nine or 11 coaches at the moment. They could easily put another two more coaches on. So there is huge scope for extra capacity there. The second point, London Midland, it’s true they are 70.5%, their trains, on average, but that is still one carriage completely empty. I live out on the railway line. We look out on it from our house. I see them going past all the time. In winter particularly, you can see when any of the trains or full or empty. The last or two or three coaches on all trains, even in peak hours, are empty. That’s partly because people are walking towards the front to get out quickly, but large parts of those trains are not full and will not be full for years, and it can be mitigated by London Midland having 12 coaches instead of eight, and these Virgin people having 12 coaches instead of nine or 11.

365. It’s not here to say that it can’t be done. It can be built. Just as we can argue that Juniper can be moved, they could deal with, therefore, because there’s not a capacity issue, just one tunnel. A single tunnel, bidirectional tunnel, could be built from Euston until the line gets straight of the – only three or four miles on. Modern train control systems are completely automatic. There’s no need for the trains to conflict or wait for one another. That’s called an EC3 system, or something, in Europe. Trains are completely automatically controlled by computer, and they wouldn’t suffer at all by having a single tunnel. I hardly expect you to be a revolutionist, to suddenly come up and say, ‘one tunnel’. In fact, it is quite possible, and that means that there’s plenty of room to push the things around, much less cost and far less disruption to all of us in the area.

366. I just hope you’ll look at Juniper as a serious possibility that really will benefit everybody, and that’s what you’re here for, to try and see who can benefit, and secondly, a single tunnel, bidirectional tunnel, rather than a mighty two tunnel system.

Thank you very much indeed.

367. CHAIR: Thank you.

368. MR TURNEY (DfT): Why is there a closure to build this vent shaft? It’s because there is a drop of levels, so the first that needs to be done is the construction of a retaining wall to allow the site to be levelled., and those earthworks to take place, and those works, on our assessment, require the full width of the Adelaide Road carriageway for that four month period, and then for the rest, the construction road is narrowed, but the full width is not used. If we just look to P11275(10), the blockage on Adelaide Road for that four month period, you can see in the middle here, that passage, so this is the diversion route.

369. So, inconvenience for those who wish to travel on this part of Adelaide Road, but there is an alternative route available for that four month period. If we don’t need to close the road for four months, those around the area can be confident that it won’t be closed for four months. It’s not in our interest to close it for longer than we need to. So that’s the diversion, but we’ll hear more on Adelaide Bridge tomorrow, I think.

370. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: And I think it was Simon Neave who kindly pointed out that the BBC was redeveloped without a single recording studio being disturbed.

371. MR NEAVE: You’re absolutely right, yes.

372. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: I think that’s helpful.

373. MR NEAVE: I’m good as reading various people’s stuff. Thank you very much indeed.

374. CHAIR: Thank you for your contribution. We’ll now have 1338, Kenneth and Margaret Fulford, who I understand are going to be brief.

Kenneth and Margaret Fulford, and others

375. MR WALLACE: Good afternoon. I’m Keith Wallace. I’m representing Kenneth and Margaret Fulford, Mr and Mrs Loizou, and Charles Thomas. Since the response document was received from the Promoter, we have been endeavouring to engage with HS2 to deal with a number of specific technical issues. We met with HS2 on 3

December and arising from that meeting, we have been endeavouring to settle forms of assurance to deal and address with those particular issues. I’m pleased to say the discussions and negotiations with HS2 have been fruitful on those specific issues, and we’re hoping, as we speak, to settle the detail of the form of assurance, subject to clients’ confirmatory instructions and satisfaction on the fine detail of the assurance. If those assurances are satisfactorily met, we won’t have any need to trouble the Committee any further, and we hope that will be settled very soon.

376. CHAIR: Okay. So you just want to reserve the right to come back if there’s a problem?

377. MR WALLACE: Yes.

378. CHAIR: Okay. Thank you very much indeed. Thank you. We now go to AP3: 73, Jonathan Digby and Susanne Kaiser. Welcome.

Jonathan Digby and Susanne Kaiser

379. MR DIGBY: Thank you very much. Can I have the second slide from my pack? Thank you. Sir, I intend to be very short, but what I really wanted to do today was just to firstly highlight the part of Gloucester Avenue that I live on. You can see from this map, the green square is my property, which is number 9 Gloucester Avenue. I share the freehold and one of the flats, and this property is on a stretch of Gloucester Avenue which runs from Parkway to the beginning of Regents Park Road. It’s actually a bit of Gloucester Avenue which some people often confuse with Regents Park Road, which is why I felt it was important to highlight it separately today, and also because I think it has some specific issues caused by HS2 which are not necessarily the same as other people on Gloucester Avenue are experiencing, and so I think it’s worth highlighting that.

380. I put it very simply on this map. Firstly, you can see, in front of the property where the road is, the construction of the tunnel is happening a few yards in front of the property. To the south of the property, we overlook the zoo car park, and so the proposed lorry park is also an issue for us, and then to the east, we have the Parkway portal, which I think, again, has been touched on today, which is likely to cause considerable congestion in the area. So I just want to look at those three things very

quickly. In terms of the property, before I bought my flat, I’ve lived there for 15 years, the property was actually subject to being underpinned for subsidence some years before I moved in, and that raises concerns for me in terms of the building of the tunnel.

381. I’d like to have assurances, really, about whether or not building the tunnel is going to have a more negative effect or a different effect possibly causing differential subsidence, simply due to the fact that we have been underpinned previously, and I think it’s something that’s worth drawing attention to HS2, that the property has been underpinned and therefore there have been problems in the past which I would very much hope will be taken into consideration. As you can see, I mean, we’re on the line of demarcation which cuts through the front of the house, so we are very, very close to the construction. Also, in terms of the construction, we have the Darwin Court garden in front of us, which I won’t go into, but obviously we heard about that earlier, and the construction work that’s going to be taking place there for a year.

382. We also have the West Coast Main Lines right in front of us, and we’ve also heard about the potential for a conveyer belt bringing spoil backwards and forwards, and again, I don’t know the timescale of that. I imagine it’s quite long. So there are a number of influences affecting us in terms of that side of the property. In terms of the proposed lorry park, one of things that is deeply concerning for me on that is the proposed timescale, because I think I’ve read that it’s 16 years that HS2 want to have this lorry park for, and I would ask whether that needs to be for 16 years? If changes are made to the way that spoil is taken out of Euston, will that affect the timescale of the lorry park?

383. So I’d like to put that forward, and then also, adding to what many people have said today, which I don’t to go over, but any road closures, particularly caused by the building of the Parkway portal for instance, are going to increase the congestion, increase the pollution. We’ve already heard that we live in a part of London where we’re already at levels of pollution which are above what is deemed acceptable. So it was really to highlight this, the south side of Gloucester Avenue and how we feel slightly beleaguered to be sort of surrounded on all sides by various aspects of the construction. I’m sure there are others which I’m not even aware of.

384. I think one of the key issues, in terms of what I want – there are three things, and I

think one of the most important things to start receiving some timely and transparent information about the timescales of when different parts of this construction are actually going to happen, because I think that would make things much easier for us to deal with, to understand the different stages and really get our heads around how badly it’s going to affect us. So I would implore HS2 to actually start being a bit more forthcoming with their information. The second thing I would like to ask for is that I think the property should have an independent survey because of the previous subsidence that I already mentioned, and I would like to have an assurance that that might happen.

385. Thirdly, I would just like to add my weight to what many people have been saying today, which is about having fair compensation for any loss of – all kinds of things. I mean, I work from home, for example, and there are some things that are very hard to quantify in terms of the impact that they have on you, but I’d like to have some good frank and open discussions about how we are going to be compensated for many of the disturbances that we’re likely to deal with, as well as potential things like loss of value of property, but to be honest, although that concerns me, I’m much more concerned about the timescale of the construction and how over these years, we are going to be affected on so many different levels. So that’s all I have to say, really. Thank you very much.

386. CHAIR: Thank you.

387. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Insofar as settlement is concerned, this property is, on our assessment, outside the 10 millimetre contour. He is within 30 metres on plan of the running tunnels, and so assuming that the petitioners have a freehold or a sufficiently freehold interest, they will… in that case, they are entitled to call for a settlement deed under our policy. They can, therefore, if they wish to, preregister for a deed as from Friday of this week. There is, as I think the committee know, this document, the High Speed 2 Guide to Settlement, which is available on the website which is a simple guide to the settlement arrangements which has been in existence now for some months, and I’d recommend that to those who are concerned about settlement.

388. So far as the lorry park is concerned, even assuming that a substantial amount of material is brought in, taken out by rail, which as you know is the project’s ambition, it will be necessary to continue to regulate deliveries to work sites via the lorry holding

area. As to the duration of that, at the moment we can’t be more specific, but as the detail of the construction of the project is developed over the course of the coming year a greater degree of information will become available and it is one of the assurances we’ve given to Camden which we are required to act upon in the coming months, is to develop the local community engagement and information exercise so that we give the local community a greater degree of information about the detail of construction as that detail emerges. So over the course of the coming months, more detail will become available of matters of that kind.

389. CHAIR: Okay.

390. MR DIGBY: Can I ask how is that information being imparted to us? I mean, do we have to go and search for that ourselves or is it actually going to be… is there going to be some easy way that we’re actually given the information?

391. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Well, as I say, the detail hasn’t yet been…

392. MR DIGBY: No, when the detail is ready.

393. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Well, when it’s ready, the detail – when I say ‘the detail hasn’t yet been completed’, that includes not only the hard copy, if you like, or the information that is held – is provided electronically, but also the precise means whereby it will be disseminated. But the ambition and the requirement that we have is to make sure that it is made available to local people so that they don’t have to spend many, many hours searching for it, that they will be able to call up our website or they will be able to go to the local library. I have no doubt that there will also be, from time to time, things such as leafletting and that kind of thing for people who are within close proximity to the works.

394. MR DIGBY: Email? Could we be emailed information? Is that…

395. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Well, as I say, it’s being developed…

396. CHAIR: I think it’ll be on the web. Camden will have the full information. I’m certainly sure that many of the community who are very switched on will be sharing what information there is when it comes out. Thank you very much indeed. Sorry you had to wait so long.

397. We now go onto petition 1406, 1407, 1410, 1416, 1775, represented by Martin Nelson, Alice Gray. Welcome to you both.

Martin Nelson and others

398. MR NELSON: Thank you.

399. MS GRAY: Can I just point out that in the package, the property indicated, we live at different properties in Princess Road. We’re representing Princess Road, but the property indicated is this property otherwise you might find it confusing because I’m on the other side of the road.

400. CHAIR: All right. Who’s going to kick off, then?

401. MS GRAY: I’ll kick off. My name is Alice Gray. I have lived in Princess Road for 54 years. There were still steam trains at the end of the road when we moved in, so I’m hoping we’re not going to go back to that level of air pollution with the current proposal.

402. I live in a terrace. Can I have 17671, please. I live in a terrace which is a mixture of multiple occupancy and entire households. I’m here representing a number of petitioners and residents within Princess Road. And also the children and staff at Primrose Hill Primary School, where I am the governor.

403. In relation to land owner notice and the insurance, we would like to say how much we welcome the assurances from HS2 Limited that there will now be absolutely no compulsory acquisition of any part of the Princess Road properties, numbers 1 to 65, land parcel 252, as these are not within bill requirements for surface acquisition and as such the bill does not give the promoter powers to acquire or interfere with the sellers at this location. It would be much appreciated, however, if this information could be officially communicated to all the residences and business in Princess Road as most are unaware of this change and are still worried about it.

404. Despite this assurance, we are still concerned about potential damage to seller properties as a result of the unspecified, as yet, utility works in Princess Road. The implications of the statement that the promoter will not provide the petitioners with a schedule of condition in relation to the utility works but the petitioners may be entitled

to a condition survey if their property is judged to meet the criteria set out in HS2 information pages C3 Ground Settlement are unclear, given that there were no such issues raised in 1993, 94, when previous works were carried out in Princess Road in relation to the sewer.

405. So we would appreciate clearer and more timely communication with Princess Road residents and businesses about the details of the utility works since the boot shape nature of Princess Road residential and business properties means that some of these basement cellars contain bedrooms, bathrooms, toilets, utility rooms, kitchens and other developed living or work spaces, as well as storage, so any possible damage is very worrying. This relates to the basement cellars which stick out from the property under the pavement, up to the kerb.

406. So this a view and you can see the nature of the basements on both sides of the road. These are terrace houses and businesses which run in terraces. So it’s the entire length of Princess Road is a series of terraces, all of which have basements.

407. In response to… Specifically to the sewer works, despite HS2’s statement that an assessment of excavation induced ground movements has identified instances where utility mains and services may need to be diverted, monitored and/or strengthened in this area, we’re still unclear as to what these works will consist of, so we would appreciate some clarity.

408. This is particularly worrying given the potential damage not only to the basement cellars but also to the storm release that runs down Princess Road and protects us from the severe flooding that we were subject to before its construction. This includes a Hydro-Brake system – which is 17674 – installed at the junction with Gloucester Avenue to avoid surface water backing up and pouring into the basements along Princess Road, as happened in the late 60s, 1975, and, to a lesser extent, in 1988.

409. Its effectiveness was evident post-installation when severe flooding post-Camden in 2002 did not affect us. There’s an illustration of that in 17672, where you can see Camden did an assessment of flood risk in 2002 following the 2002 floods. You can see in the circle, these were the roads that were flooded in 1975, so you have Gloucester Avenue, Edis Street, Princess Road and a little bit of Fitzroy Road, I believe. So we are very happy with the functioning of our sewer, flood and storm relief sewer at the

moment.

410. There’s also the next slide which is 17673, which indicates the flood risk area. So the idea is that the water flows down and then collects in this area, and then before we had the storm relief sewer, it backed up and flooded.

411. So we seek reassurance that HS2 is in possession of all the details of these sewer works that were carried out in the 1990s, precise size, depth and robustness of the system, and we seek reassurance that they have sufficiently assessed its vulnerability to damage from the proposed bored tunnelling in Gloucester Avenue.

412. We are also concerned that HS2 Limited’s utility works could in fact, rather than strengthen the system, make us once again vulnerable to severe flooding events. If this were to occur, we would wish that HS2 would make good any damage such that the system was returned to its previous high spec functioning and furthermore pay suitable compensation in the event that our basements are flooded before this work is completed and our insurance premiums increase.

413. If HS2 is unable to provide categorical assurances that the sewer system will not be damaged where it intersects with the proposed route located under Gloucester Avenue, we would ask that the proposed route be shifted a bit further over under the railway where it would be further away and thus potential damage reduced. This would also fit in with moving the air vent from Adelaide Road to Juniper Crescent, of which you have heard a lot today, and we would just endorse Gloucester Avenue Residents Association and others, the presentations and the asks on that.

414. As an illustration of our concerns at the lack of detailed information about these utility works, I’d just like to provide some information provided to me by my neighbour, who investigated this. He contacted HS2. He was put in touch with the engineers, Arup, who said that there was a need to replace a Victorian sewer in Princess Road. They were not clear about the final route or where access would be required, but told him that under parliamentary procedure they had to cover all the bases and alert everyone who might be affected.

415. When pressed for more detail, the engineer said it would not be available until the scheme was developed further. They also did not seem to know about the three metre

storm sewer that was built under Princess Road in the 1990s.

416. The schedule of conditions survey of 10 Princess Road, that’s my neighbour’s house, done before the work started was sent to him on 20 April 1993. So construction would have been completed in 1993-94. Thames Water should have the records and these should have been accessible to Arup.

417. The contractors for the storm sewer were Barhale. The work was done from two compounds, one in Gloucester Avenue from which they hand dug and one by Prince Albert Road from which the tunnel was thrust forward. We believe that the two ends met at the southern end of the school… I can show you were that is. 17677. So somewhere in this area. And just before the sewer turned into Princess Road from Gloucester Avenue they installed a Hydro-Brake to moderate the flow.

418. The disturbance to Princess Road residents during the process of all this boring and digging was minimal. The stretch under Gloucester Avenue between and beyond the ends of Princess Road and Edis Street appears to be immediately underneath the Hydro-Brake that feeds between the original storm sewer in Gloucester Avenue, which I understand is constrained, passed under the canal in an inverted siphon, and the new 1993-94 storm sewer that went under Princess Road to connect to the main one in Prince Albert Road, which, I believe, is below the level of the canal.

419. Whether the new storm sewer and Hydro-Brake will need attention will depend on their levels. My neighbour tells me that the sections in the Arup’s 2013 drawing suggested that at the north end of Princess Road it’s at 30 to 31 metres above sea level while the bottom 7.5 metre downward tunnels are at about 2 metres. Assuming the tunnel disturbs 10 metres above that, this still provides 18 metres clear, which might be enough, but we would like reassurance on this. However, I am not sure that this quite coincides with the information provided in the PRD to myself, which says that it is 26 to 36 metres from ground level to track level. So that was November 2015. So we would like more data and we would like to be reassured that sufficient… that HS2 has sufficient detailed knowledge of this storm sewer in order to make sure that the works that are being carried out will not cause us to be flooded again.

420. The hygrogram diagram – I’ll just go back to 17674 – shows a typical section of how it works. I am not sure if ours is at the junction of Gloucester Avenue and Princess

Road and turns a right angle or whether it’s slightly upstream. But there are two events about 600 millimetre square in the pavement outside the Engineer Pub and Melrose and Morgan Shop, and two rectangular events in the road. So it’s near where the proposed route is at present.

421. Their layout suggests that the storm sewer enters Princess Road under the pavement outside the Engineer or perhaps partly under the corner of the Engineer. So we would presume that it ends up outside of the road, but under the road, not the basement cellars. So we would like reassurance of that, because drawings that we have been given don’t make that clear. We believe there’s also a kink in the storm sewer outside the school where the thrust bore from the south joined up with the hand dig from the north, so…

422. CHAIR: I’m not sure we need to go into so much detail. Clearly research has… that’s very well.

423. MS GRAY: Okay. And it’s just that we were very worried because the information that we were given seemed to indicate that HS2 was presume a Victorian sewer which hadn’t been touched, and we’ve had all these works done in the 90s, which they should have had… Information they should have had available to them.

424. CHAIR: All right. Are you nearly coming to the conclusion now…

425. MS GRAY: I am. Close to. In relation to construction traffic, air quality and dust, I’m not going to tell you any more about all the things that you’ve heard, because other people have made those points very clearly and we would just like to say that we support the presentations and the asks of Darwin Court and Gloucester Avenue Residents Associations. We would support, also, the asks of Euston Action Group points in relation to construction of traffic, air quality and dust.

426. In relation to the school, very briefly – 17677 – I would just like to point out that the Adelaide Road closure and also proposed road closures that haven’t been specified as a result of construction work nearby would have a knock on effect in terms of road access to the school and children coming into school from north of the borough.

427. If I can take you to 176710. This is an indication of the postcodes where children

who attend the school come from. As you can see, the majority of our children come from NW1, NW5, NW3, NW2, NW6, and three or four of those would be affected by the Adelaide Road closure because that’s the way that public transport comes in. So children coming in by bus and also those being driven by their parents by car, they would find it much more difficult to get through, if Adelaide Road is closed. England’s Lane is very narrow and there are a lot of quite serious problems, presuming that that’s going to be an effective alternative route during rush hour, which is when the children go to school.

428. CHAIR: Okay. We almost there?

429. MS GRAY: And I think in terms of the response to my concerns about Haverstock School, now the construction was going along Adelaide Road, the problem there means that it’s just shifting noise and environment impacts sideways. So in line with the Camden mitigation assurances and the requests of the various other presentations that you’ve heard today, we would also support a shift, as much as possible, from road to rail because we cannot see how we will survive with the quantity of HGV movements that have been anticipated. We would ask that, rather than air quality being measured and then being told, well, actually, that’s really unacceptable, that we presume that it’s really unacceptable and that as much as possible can be done to mitigate that by doing as Crossrail have do everything by rail. I’m just going to hand over briefly to Martin.

430. MR NELSON: Slide 12. Just a brief addendum on air quality and transport issues. I know that the wider Camden community’s concerns about air quality, other forms of pollution, HGV traffic and wider transport issues are being well covered in your hearings by Paul Braithwaite for Euston Action Group, amongst others, and you heard the concerns of the cyclist presented by Camden Cycling Campaign expertly yesterday. So I’ll restrict myself to three brief points on these issues and through mitigation asks for Princess Road and beyond.

431. My perspective is as a cyclist, environmentalist of long standing, an ex-governor of another local primary school, St Paul’s, and last week as the singing Santa to various local nurseries. I’m therefore taking a long view from the past, remembering cycling back to 1970s, to the present and the future, with the health and well-being of the very

young in mind.

432. Slide 13, please. So, this is London’s original cycle route. It started in Princess Road. Once you’ve taken you’re attention away from the price of a sewing machine in almost pre-decimal currency, you’ll see that the route is familiar to you. From Princess Road it goes to the portal down through the Camden Cutting and into Euston at west Melton Street. I note yesterday’s assurances, the committee is minded to find the safest and the best way for pedestrians and cyclists to cross the Euston Road at North Gower Street and I hope this little bit of history adds a little bit of weight to that and that you assume best practice. I know Paul Braithwaite would like to see a cycle and pedestrian bridge across there, between the two Gower Streets, and perhaps the original cycle route deserves such a solution.

433. I’ve cycled, as I say, for 43 years all through London. I know the Melton-Euston Street crossing is becoming over the last… with a 40 years perspective, the last year and a half, it’s getting to be extremely dangerous, and Professor McNaughton said that 25% of customers for Euston will be pedestrian, and there’s all sorts of infringements at that crossing right now. So I think a bridge in the future is well worth thinking about.

434. So my three quick points: cycling and walking. TfL has been planning for a 400% increase in cycle journeys over the first quarter of the 21st century. I believe that will be exceeded. So from my observation of 43 years of almost daily London cycling, we are at the beginning of exponential growth in cycling and the beginning of a virtuous circle where people start to talk about it and the infrastructure growth. So that’s going to be exceeded. Walking and cycling will be essential transport components if London is to thrive and indeed survive.

435. Cycles, pedestrians and HGV’s do not mix, but I heard the assurances to his Camden Cycling Campaign yesterday and like them very much over HS2 who see themselves as champions of best practice. Please, no deaths of cyclists. Indeed, no injuries. Let’s hope for that.

436. Air quality. Diesel is now recognised to be poisonous. Dangerous PM2.5, PM10 and NO2 pollution is not confined to Camden routes such as Robson Street and Eton Road. The squares have recorded extreme levels of NO2 pollution. As a petitioner just now said: modern pollution you cannot grasp, but it’s there.

437. So we in Princess Road are concerned about construction traffic, especially in and out of proposed zoo carpark holding area nearby but also in general. The proposed Adelaide Road closure will be a gridlock and rat running, exacerbating pollution and nuisance in Camden as a whole, which is why we support the Juniper Crescent mitigation proposal which I feel, having listened all through today, is very much still in the frame.

438. Cost benefit analysis of the two sights including these might be well worth pursuing.

439. My final point is about community. I’m going to introduce it in an unusual way. I understand that it was a successful launch… Major Tim, our own Major Tim, is about to see the planet from space tomorrow, an experience which all astronauts say enhance a sense of planet citizenship.

440. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: Today.

441. MR NELSON: Yes, he’s launched, but I think… well, he won’t see us because we’ll be in the dark, but tomorrow morning, perhaps.

442. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: He’ll see the planet.

443. MR NELSON: He will see the planet, yes, already, perhaps, yes. But 11.03 was the launch. Anyway. He is going to see the planet from earth. That’s the point. My idea, EQ, is to use the equinoxes, the twin planets days or events when we are equal under the sun, 12 hours night and day for everybody through the planet, for just that purpose. So we zoon out into space in our imaginations to see the planet as a whole, then back again to ourselves and our local community as part of that bigger picture. So the equinox’s in late March and September make an excellent biannual audit point for any project or business to monitor their environmental standards and progress, and their community engagement.

444. Under such a regime, for instance, HS2 might feel more inclined to install real time meters quality equipment in critically affected residential areas for continuous appraisal rather than an annual retrospective air quality measure from historic data.

445. In conclusion, firstly, we ask that HS2 plans to minimise all HGV and LGV

movement, replacing them by, where alternative, where possible – perhaps altogether – well, that’s not going to be possible – where possible, and to uphold the highest environmental standards, especially here in the densely populated and vibrant Camden.

446. Secondly, I would be delighted if HS2 consider a biannual environmental and community audit equinox – that’s late March and late September, by the way – when all potential negative impacts – noise, air quality, vibration, traffic, utility works, flood risks, subsidence, compensation, consultation, communications – are subjected to the rigour of bigger picture responsibilities of sustainability and stewardship to become champions of best practice. Thank you.

447. CHAIR: Thank you.

448. MS GRAY: Can I just reiterate our asks?

449. CHAIR: Well, you’ve sort of been through them in quite a lot of detail already, and I don’t think you need to, because we’ve been writing them down.

450. MS GRAY: Can I then just refer you to the slides 17678 and 176714 which list them. Thank you.

451. CHAIR: Okay. Is that you, Mr Mould, or…

452. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Yes, thank you. The utility works that are required on Princess Road are works of a kind that Mr Turney explained earlier, that is to say, works to ensure that the sewer run on that road is safeguarded during the construction of the railway and tunnel going to the north and going to the east. At the moment they’re expected to take up to 12 months with a two-way traffic road, up to 15 vehicles. The sewer run, as I think you’ve heard, is located within the highway, so it will be in, to use the old terminology, within the top two spits. The boring tunnels for the railway, 25 metres down, and somewhat away from Princess Road as you saw on the plan.

453. So on that basis, the project does not envisage any particular difficulties in controlling those works so that the risks that the petitioners have identified with a considerable amount of detail, those risks can be properly managed and the risk of damage that has been mentioned can be controlled and avoided. In the extremely unlikely event that these… what are effectively these street works do give rise to any

damage to property, then that damage will be compensable under the general law.

454. More detail will become available during the course of the coming year, as I’ve explained in response to other petitioners, as the detail of the project becomes clearer. I’m afraid, like it or not, we are at a stage still, where detail is, to a large degree, for the coming months rather than now.

455. I’m not going to comment again in relation to the more general points that have been raised; you’ve heard our position in relation to that. I just want to make one point about the light motif of today which is the Juniper Crescent alternative for the vent shaft. You’ve heard a number of people make the case for Juniper Crescent as opposed to Adelaide Road. The particular reason why people come before the Committee, as property owners, is to express concerns about the impact of the scheme on their property. Thus far, I haven’t heard any petitioner say that the impact of the vent shaft at Juniper Road, as opposed to Adelaide Road, will make any substantial difference in terms of settlement or ground or noise or vibration, to their property, and I would suggest that that is a matter that the Committee will be particularly keen to know.

456. Thus far, as I’ve said, our position is that there is no significant advantage to be gained by moving the shaft away from Adelaide Road to Juniper Crescent, for those petitioners who live in the areas of Gloucester Avenue and surrounding streets. Thank you.

457. CHAIR: And access to schools and things like that, that’s something which Camden Council inevitably will have to deal with…?

458. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Exactly...

459. CHAIR: …planning and transport routes.

460. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Exactly...

461. MS GRAY: Thank you.

462. CHAIR: Okay. Thank you very much to you both. Right, we now have 1234, 1235, John and Rosemary Emanuel. I’ve got 459 Anthony Hallgarten and a number of others listed together.

463. MR HALLGARTEN: That’s myself, yes.

464. MR EMANUEL: If I may say, sir, I’m Mr Emanuel, but Mr Hallgarten is going to cover some of the same points.

465. CHAIR: Okay, so basically, you’re associated with all the people that Mr Hallgarten is dealing with?

466. MR EMANUEL: But I also have another point.

467. CHAIR: Why don’t you come and make your individual point first and then you can go through all the – come and sit there. Next to Mr Hallgarten, and then he – and we can cross that one off. You’ll need to juggle to the right, otherwise you’ll be off the TVs, that’s it.

John Emanuel and Rosemary Emanuel

468. MR EMANUEL: My name is John Emanuel. My wife and I have lived 20 years – sorry, live at 20 Regents Park Road since 1988, some 27 years. By my next birthday, I’ll be 80, so in all likelihood, the effects of HS2 are going to continue with me for the rest of my life. Before I actually make my point, I would like to express some horror at the thought that Juniper Crescent versus Adelaide Road didn’t affect us and our properties. We care about Primrose Hill, we care about the environment, we care about the views, we care about the greenery, we care about nature, we even care about the leaves. And to suggest that our properties are just simply bricks and mortar, is undervaluing us and our properties and Primrose Hill. So that is an aside, which I didn’t plan, forgive me if I shouldn’t have brought it up.

469. CHAIR: Okay.

470. MR EMANUEL: I want to be very brief, and I’m going to make one main point. Before I make the point, I just want to say we support, my wife and I support and endorse the submissions of the Gloucester Avenue Association that presented earlier today, and support, in large part, the evidence given by Katherine Sykes and Annabel Leventon.

471. As you’ve heard Primrose Hill is an agreeable place to live in, and I won’t go into

all the details why it’s very agreeable. Because it’s so agreeable, it’s a desirable place and because it’s a desirable place, close to the centre of London, the residential values are rather high. I’m often embarrassed by –

472. CHAIR: We have noticed that.

473. MR EMANUEL: How valuable properties have become. My concern is that, despite the best efforts no doubt, of HS2, there will be bad traffic conditions, pollution, noise, to a greater or lesser extent and I’m not at all sure what that extent is going to be. But it will almost certainly undermine, to some extent, to a greater or lesser extent, the value of my property. My property is a maisonette, in a terrace house – you’ve seen similar pictures, and it’s 110 metres from the HS2 operations.

474. After a lifetime of work – I’m still working, as is my wife, it represents our major asset, and therefore, if the value goes down, our asset that we built up over our two working lives will be affected.

475. It’s quite likely, at some point, we will want to move, some point in the next 20, 25 years, for sure.

476. CHAIR: 35, at least.

477. MR EMANUEL: I think it’s undisputable, unfortunately. But we may want to move, just because we find living in the shadow of HS2 unpleasant. And we would like to be able to move, for example, to a property of similar quality, say in Belsize Park or in St John’s Wood, not too far from our friends and our community in Primrose Hill.

478. But I’ve done some calculations and I won’t bore you with the detailed calculations; if we were to sell our house and lose a few hundred thousand pounds, possibly, our maisonette, and take that loss, and then buy another property of similar value, unblighted, and pay the stamp duty on it, the loss to us would be really very great indeed. And in fact, it would be so great that we couldn’t afford to move to a similar property locally.

479. So I think it would be grossly unfair if we contributed to HS2 through our taxes, like everybody else in the country, and then take an individual private financial loss, simply because HS2 has its most disruptive engineering site on the whole project, 110

metres from our house.

480. I’m very disturbed by what I’ve heard about the compensation schemes, I think they fail to recognise the harm it does to people, for people more than a few metres away from the track. If we are to suffer major impacts, whether you’re in Primrose Hill or somewhere else, then it seems to me, only correct and just, that we should be fairly and properly compensated. And those costs, those compensation costs should come off the HS2 budget, not off our personal budgets. Thank you.

481. CHAIR: Thank you very much. Right. I’ll presume then, we’re dealing with 459 AP3 33, 1073, 482, 1841, 1660, 508, 1656, 1339, 1671?

Anthony Hallgarten et al

482. MR HALLGARTEN: Sir, if you call up slide 1, as I think it’s called.

483. CHAIR: You have a lot of friends.

484. MR HALLGARTEN: The representations, which is slightly complicated, is set out – I apologise for the slippage in the title. It includes, Mr Emanuel, it also includes three of the houses represented by Mr Wallace, who has been working very hard on certain assurances, and in due course, I hope the other houses will also get like assurances and therefore, I’m not going to go into any detail of that nature.

485. I think all the houses between Berkley Road and Gloucester Avenue have asked me to speak for them on general issues. I also speak on my own behalf; I live in Chalcot Crescent, which is about 200 yards away, and Mr Emanuel lives at the other end of Regents Park Road, and there are others who have endorsed what I’ve said. You may have spotted that the various petitions, when it comes to general matters, follow much the same form.

486. Another petitioner who has adopted what I want to say is Miss Rosemary Hunt, that’ a further – it’s number 1352, I think. So that’s slightly complicated. In addition, one of the owners of the houses in this particular stretch of road is still living in Primrose Hill but has moved to a different road, and they’ve also asked me to speak on their behalf.

487. So, having said that, I’m age 78 and like Mr Emanuel and many others, will not see out this particular scheme.

488. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: You can’t guarantee that.

489. MR HALLGARTEN: Can I say, first of all, that I adopt what has been said by the Gloucester Avenue Association, both this morning and in their formal petition, where they deal in detail with things like air quality, and their anxiety that these matters will simply be left to HS2 acting as judge, jury, and, as they say, executioner. We are very concerned, all of us, I think, to make sure that the ring is held, and in that respect, this Committee, as we see it, acts as a buffer between the juggernaut of HS2 and the other juggernaut of the State, those determined to push things through irrespective of what may be the consequences.

490. So, I adopt their – what they have said today, but I also adopt what I’ve read and heard from Delancey Street and Albert Street, and indeed, what I’m going – talking here tomorrow in relation to Adelaide Road. And one cannot but be moved to here and see the evidence that has come forward from them. And their plight is infinitely worse than ours, I appreciate that, but we would like our plight to be dealt with on its merits.

491. If I come to the particular issue which has brought this particular group together; if you go first to slide 2, it would be, this is the material which we got – if you can go to the next page. It’s slide 3. This is the material we got and what you’re concerned with – I don’t think it’s been introduced by anybody else, is a line which runs vertically on the plan from Gloucester Avenue to Berkley Road, which we now know – I emphasise ‘now’ – to be a sewer, which we are told, but I don’t believe that there’s any evidence which firmly confirms it, that it’s about one metre below the surface.

492. Now, two points to be made on this particular document. First of all, coming to it, there’s no key to it, it’s almost impossible to decipher, even for someone who, like me, went to the library and tried to look up all the backup documents. I found some of the cross references, but not all. But at least it emerged that this particular item affects all the houses between Gloucester Avenue and Berkley Road.

493. But the particular chart is not even accurate in that it didn’t show – and this caused great concern to two or three of the houses – it didn’t show that this particular line

actually runs underneath, not merely within the garden, but underneath some of the back extensions.

494. Then how were we informed about all this, in the most opaque fashion with a formal letter and – I should say that one of the houses, one of the homes that I represent, Mr Richardson, who is at 196, is in a slightly different position because the tunnel actually will run under his home. And this is what he got in a very lengthy letter, they said what they required from him, amongst other things, was a restrictive covenant, a restrictive covenant. No indication, a covenant over what? Now, I’ve been told today that the idea of the covenant is simply to prevent him tunnelling – building down in such a way as to penetrate the tunnel, which is, we’re told, 30 metres below ground. Why couldn’t he have been told that?

495. One of the people I represent has been left in a complete spin because they understood that what was going to happen was that their garden would be dug out. Most of us were able to deduce, but we weren’t certain about it, as you’ll see from the petitions, that what was intended was to attack the sewer from one end, and only, as a last resort, to do the digging out. So, the first of my requests, I’m very happy that we’ve got some assurances on the way, is some more clarity. We’re only given, indeed, the information that we now have, 18 months after the petition, when we received the responses.

496. In addition, if I can just mention it, why is it that they wish to look at these particular sewers, and there are two possible alternative explanations for that? One is that all the problems during construction and the other is there will be problems during the running of the line through vibration. That, I hope, is now going to be clarified, but look at it from the point of view of your petitioners.

497. If, in fact, a sewer – a metre below the ground is going to be affected by something in the future, we know not what, surely their houses are going to be affected as well. Now, we’re told that that’s not going to happen, but you can see the spin that many people were put into by simple lack of information and my earnest request is that, please, can people give us full information when there are further developments, in simply language, that gives sufficient detail for people to understand it. What’s happened, I believe, is, it is a cost cutting exercise, formal letters have been sent to

everybody, but no one has bothered to get down to the detail they ought to have done, to give proper communication. So that is my most urgent ask in relation to that.

498. And then, I won’t ask you to turn it up, but in paragraph 15 of my petition, I set out the sort of letter that we ought to have received in the first place.

499. Now, sir, can I move to traffic and parking? It’s obvious that problems will be created, or exacerbated by what’s going to happen, not only in the area, but increasingly, to the south and north of us. Evidence given in relation to the potential blockage of the entrance and exit into our area from Parkway is, I think, very convincing, and the problems in relation to entry from the north, I hope to demonstrate to you shortly.

500. So, our request in relation to traffic and parking is simply this; that HS2 have to revisit their plans to give much greater priority to avoiding the problem in the first place. We’re told by HS2 in their response that all is going to be subject now to a local traffic management plan, but what we ask, and the local traffic management plan is to be done by the nominated undertaker, rather than the promoter, so that’s being – the buck’s being passed one down the road, and there again, we ask that local groups, such as the Gloucester Avenue Association be consulted, rather than bypassed when one comes to deal with local traffic.

501. CHAIR: Wouldn’t your local authority consult you?

502. MR HALLGARTEN: I’m sorry?

503. CHAIR: Wouldn’t your local authority consult you? At the end of the day, the local authority are going to be the people that are principally decide these things.

504. MR HALLGARTEN: Well, the local authority is meant to be looking after us, but the local authority is strapped for cash and it has – is very short on resources. And in fact, if I can just add a slightly light touch, if you turn to slide 4, this is something I was going to elaborate on, but well – it’s our local magazine, it’s not the usual sandwich, with a tiny bit of cheese between the bread which consists of estate agents’ advertisements, this is a genuine magazine. You’ll see – I’ve only taken some pages, but the reason I’m referring to it at the moment is if you look at the bottom of that page, ‘Primrose Hill, a conservation area’. And within that magazine, I have to distribute it, is an article

savaging, and quite rightly, the local authority, for failing to police at all, breaches of planning rules. People get planning permission, and flout them, or they build without getting planning permission at all, and we feel, I’m afraid, that with the priorities that Camden Council, very rightly have to give, looking after the old, sick, much greater problems than the one we’re confronting, this simply won’t happen without proper local consultation.

505. If I can turn to the question of parking, obviously, there’s going to be an impact on what’s available. From what happens to the south and north of us, particularly the south, and particularly, the impact on the zoo. It’s been a – obviously, a loss of parking in the Delancey Street and Albert Street area. And I’d like to show you the next exhibit I have, which is item 7. Which is, in fact, my street. And the reason I’m showing you my street – you may recognise it, it’s the street where Paddington Bear was filmed, but I’m not going to ask you to bring the terminus to Paddington.

506. The reason I’m showing you this is you’ll see there is pavement parking. And the fact is, that’s – there is no further parking available within our area, from which cars can go when they’re displaced. There was a very good scheme which was devised about 12 years ago, in consultation with Camden Council, Mr Emanuel and I took the lead. And – I’m sorry –

507. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: Have you stopped talking?

508. MR HALLGARTEN: And when it’s suggested, ‘Oh, well, we’ll leave it to the local authority and others, to make sure that alternative spaces are available’, they aren’t, they simply aren’t. And I was present, I think, when you visited the bridge, you will have noticed that almost all he parking spaces around you were occupied. So, if there’s no further space available what’s to be done?

509. If you like, I can turn to the question of traffic generally, but you will also have noticed from your visit to the bridge, that there wasn’t much traffic running around it at that particular stage.

510. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: There wasn’t – you say there wasn’t much traffic?

511. MR HALLGARTEN: There wasn’t.

512. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: No, there was a dustcart in the way.

513. MR HALLGARTEN: That may have caused a temporary obstruction, not as long as an obstruction as we expect HS2 to make. The traffic flows and flows fairly well but it’s not getting better, around the edges of our particular area. And that’s already nearing saturation point. If you look at the next two slides, this is a picture from her house in King Henry’s Road, looking up towards Primrose Hill Road, taken by one of our petitioners, showing the traffic, obviously, in late afternoon, queuing up Primrose Hill Road.

514. On the next page, you may say, I was lurking around, looking for an occasion when there were bad traffic, I wasn’t, I just went out and thought I would take some photographs. If you look at the bottom photograph, this is the beginning of a queue at the junction between Primrose Hill Road and Regents Park Road, which runs all the way to Adelaide Road, and I’ve taken photographs – the next photograph up, is looking backwards, and then halfway along, you’ll see a continuous queue.

515. So, that’s the position as it is at the moment and one wonders how it will be if one gets the incremental amount of traffic that is being made inevitable by the HGV traffic being funnelled through Adelaide road, and therefore, diverting ordinary traffic onto Primrose Hill Road.

516. We’ve now been told that up to 75% of waste may go by rail, and I’ve got two questions in relation to that. Why do they need another six months to make the study? In the response which I got in September, from HS2, they said it may not be possible to move more than a limited amount by rail; that was their position then. I suspect that’s their position, as it will be in May 2016. This looks to us, if I may say so, is a get out of jail card. ‘Oh, well, things are not going to be as bad as you say they’re going to be because all the stuff’s going to go by rail, so why are you worried?’. And we apprehend that what we’re going to see in May 2016, is, ‘Oh yes, we’ve had a look at this, but we can’t do better than we’ve planned for ?’.

517. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: Why don’t you give what you’re asking for and then reply, rather than say what you’re after, they saying, well they won’t give it to you? It would help us a bit.

518. MR HALLGARTEN: My ask would be, ‘Let’s have the true figure tomorrow’. All I can do…

519. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: You’ve made the ask, then, when you’ve got to the conclusion, we’ll have a go at answering.

520. MR HALLGARTEN: It does seem to us as if it’s shuffling things off into the future, with a promise which we feel has got no real substance. I’m sorry to have to say this.

521. Can I also say, in relation to traffic, that we’re – or I’m rather concerned about the absence of joined up thinking. Can I give you an example? In the agreement with Camden, there is a laudable undertaking by HS2 to look into, by their employers, greater use of shared cars and less use of private vehicles. Now, in my petition, one of the things I canvassed was the suggestion that during this period of great disruption, there should be an extension of the congestion zone to the north, possibly to Regents Park – to Albert – Prince Albert Road, possibly to Adelaide Road, possibly further north. It seems to me a good idea to get people to make a voluntary decision not to go into an area which is already going to be congested.

522. Now what was the response of HS2, they simply said, ‘This is none of our business’. This is none of our business.

523. CHAIR: I think we’re sort of getting off the topic. It isn’t any of their business, to be honest.

524. MR HALLGARTEN: You say that, sir –

525. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: Rather than have an argument with them, and turn it into an argument with us, why don’t you just complete what you’re trying to say and then stop, please?

526. MR HALLGARTEN: What I would like would be for the various bodies to get together to see what they can do to mitigate. We’ve got the Mayor of London who doesn’t seem to be dealing with the possible extension of the congestion zone. At the same time, we’ve got a scheme which, I think is only in embryo stage, of shutting certain entries to Regents Park, to traffic, at the very time when those entrances will be the most

necessary. And we are concerned that somehow, we’re going to be a piecemeal rather than a holistic – use a current term – approach to the whole problem. With one authority shuffling offices to the other, rather than getting together and saying, ‘How can we best work for managing traffic in London?’

527. Can I lastly move to compensation? I suppose the one benefit of property blight, is it might keep out the oligarchs, and the speculators.

528. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: Too late.

529. MR HALLGARTEN: But I can’t think that there is going to be much other advantage. And can I obviously endorse what has been said, and indeed, what Mr Emanuel has said, giving his personal example. And can I say also that the Committee is plainly alert, at least to some of the iniquities of the need to sell scheme, as we saw in paragraph 116 of your interim report, dealing with age and stage of life.

530. Gentlemen, you cannot have been other than moved by what was said last week, for instance by a gentleman who felt he had to move, he had a sister who had a rental property in the same block, and many of those who spoke from Delancey Street, who found themselves potentially and actually out of pocket in consequence of what’s going to happen, if this project goes ahead in its present form.

531. And the plight of myself and others, including, I think, Mr Emanuel, is nothing like theirs. And I appreciate that, and it’s rather humbling to read their evidence, if I may say so, but what I have to say, I think, must apply generally, the same principles must be applicable.

532. And if the law and practice is current adverse to the petitioners, you’re our only safeguard. I urge you very strongly to make powerful recommendations for the law and practice to be changed, until it becomes – if I may say so – fit for purpose in the 21st

Century. 533. Can I make some bullet points? I’m cutting very short.

534. CHAIR: I hope you will be relatively short because we have discussed compensation endlessly for two years.

535. MR HALLGARTEN: We are reminded for time to time of the robust approach

taken in Victorian times, but the robust approach was taken against the background of the absence of any legislation in relation to pollution or noise; indeed, the absence of protection given to the public and generally.

536. We have here a project that will go on for a very long time, and that takes it into, I think, a completely different category from the comparable items that you’ve had to look at. Someone who’s having their disruption for six months or so can wait before they sell; they can put up with it, because then they can move on. But if it’s as long as this is, that simply isn’t possible. I picked up, Mr Mould on 10 December said, ‘Prevention rather than financial is the more effective remedy’, and then he said, I think in another passage, ‘Mitigating the impact of building work rather than providing financial compensation’. Well we accept that, if one can mitigate it, fine. But the kind of mitigation that is in issue still leaves a huge gap between the reality of the disruption and the previous calm that people enjoyed. That gap needs to be plugged, and the only way it can be done is by being plugged financially. There’s no rationale, as we see it for owners, and indeed others, not to be compensated for their actual loss. In economic terms, why should uncompensated owners be meeting the cost, which should be borne by the whole body of taxpayers?

537. CHAIR: We are under a bit of pressure time-wise?

538. MR HALLGARTEN: Yes.

539. CHAIR: We have quite a few petitioners to get through and we have a vote at 7.00.

540. MR HALLGARTEN: I think that all the other points that I would want to make have already been made.

541. CHAIR: Thank you very much. Mr Mould?

542. MR MOULD QC (DfT): A couple of very quick points, by reference to this plan, P1302. In order to construct this railway through the Primrose Hill area, we are boring tunnels at depths of around 25 metres, along the line that you are now familiar with. Those works will, by definition, be taking place underground. We need to construct a vent shaft at Adelaide Road. The construction traffic that will serve that vent shaft is

going to be routed to the north of the West Coast Mainline, which as you know, runs at grade – at surface in cutting along the northern side of Primrose Hill. So that traffic will be on the other side of the West Coast Mainline, and that traffic will be confined to traffic serving the Adelaide Road vent shaft site.

543. To the south of the existing West Coast Mainline, in Primrose Hill, the only HS2 traffic will be traffic associated with the utilities works that you’ve have described to you over the course of the last day or two. The roads in question are marked out on the plans on the plan in front of you here. Beyond that, there will, we acknowledge, be likely to be some displaced traffic, but that is traffic that we are committed, with Camden and TfL, to managing as part of the overall management of traffic in this local area. Local people will have an opportunity to participate in the preparation of traffic management plans through the local environmental management planning process, which involves community engagement.

544. But that, in a nutshell, is the extent of the direct impact of construction on the Primrose Hill community. Once the railway has been built, it will be running in tunnel at depths of 25 metres, and we have given evidence which indicates that, both in terms of noise, vibration and settlement, the risks are very low indeed; and they are eminently manageable because railways have been run in tunnels beneath London’s streets for many, many years. They are an integral part of the capital’s infrastructure, both in terms of local and national travel. That is the context in which this and other petitioners’ concerns should be seen. We, of course, intend, to engage, as the details of the construction process begins to take place over the course of the coming year; and we have given commitments to Camden in that respect. We intend to honour those commitments.

545. Finally, the petitioner said he wants, effectively, to see both HS2 and the strategic transport body and the local authority get together in order to mitigate traffic and other impacts. That is exactly what the assurances we’ve given to Camden and the assurances we’ve given to TfL are designed to achieve. Let us – may I pray that we do at least one thing: let us at least give those assurances and the framework for environmental control that they set up, an opportunity to succeed, rather than assuming now that they are doomed to fail.

546. CHAIR: Thank you. Brief final comments?

547. MR HALLGARTEN: Only thing I’d like to point out which I didn’t out before is that some of the construction works will take place within Primrose Hill, in particular, attention to the sewer if it has to be attended to, at either end, and that will cause a loss of parking during that, and there’ll be other construction work at the time. My primary thrust is the displacement of parking from the sewer.

548. CHAIR: Parking is going to be a problem, and we know it’s going to be bad. It’s a question of whether it can – the situation can be improved. Thank you very much indeed.

549. Right, we now go to AP3: 46, Gervais Williams and Miranda Glossop?

Gervais Williams and Miranda Glossop

550. CHAIR: Welcome, I know you’ve been here all day as well.

551. MR WILLIAMS: Thank you very much; thank you for the opportunity to come along. I want to raise matters which have been very different to anyone else, which they’ve raised up to now, so they’re completely different matters. It is to do with the vent shaft, and moving the vent shaft to the alternative location in Juniper Crescent. I think my slide’s coming up –

552. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: Sorry, your name is…?

553. MR WILLIAMS: Gervais Williams. Anyway, I’ll make a start; necessarily we’ll have to talk around the slides, such as they are. So my detailed discussion is that I live in Primrose Hill; I’ve lived in King Henry’s Road and other areas for 28 years. I come to this, really, looking at how the Adelaide Road site was selected, and in particular, the context planning guidance overall for that. So, if we look at the overall selection criteria in the Adelaide site, there was indicative journey time was a big part of it; the estimated capital costs and any changes to that; the access regarding relative safety – and that’s to do with exit routes and such like; and the preferred options. There were three, four and five options that were looked at, and some of them had a few extra seconds; some of them had a few extra costs – a little bit of extra costs. But ultimately, the main drivers were those factors. What we don’t have in the summary is what environmental factors

were included, or environmental costs. We heard from HS2 earlier, when they were talking about considering the vent shafts, they looked at consideration of Primrose Hill, whether they should put it on Primrose Hill, and they said that they didn’t actually include Primrose Hill because they felt the costs – and I presume it’s the environmental costs – were going to be too high. So the background is, what are the costs, what are the environmental costs, which have been weighed and balanced. Have you got the slides, by the way? They were sent through? They may have been rejected or something.

554. We’ve got the background document first of all regarding government policy, regarding wildlife and ecosystems. This is the Defra document here, it refers to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity. In particular, paragraph 8, it really talks about coherent ecological networks, and I think that’s the framework which is now guiding all planning guidance in this area: coherent and resilient ecological networks. That led onto a document which came from the Mayor of London, called ‘Green Infrastructure and Open Environments: the all-London Green Grid’, which was published in 2012. That’s part of the overall view of the planning process where national planning policy framework came into being. This is part of that, and part of the guidance. So what used to be the PPGs and the PPSs – particularly PPG17, which would have been largely the guidance for this kind of vent shaft, that’s been superseded now, by the Mayor of London’s document?

555. The main driver of that is very much that the government’s objective is to mainstream the value of nature across society, and particularly ecologically coherent planning, retaining, protecting and improving the natural environment is the core objective of the planning system. Under the London planning policy, policy 218 of the London Plan promotes the vision of an integrated network across London that performs a green infrastructure and makes explicit reference to the production of this supplementary planning guidance to help implement this policy. So this policy is very much part of the London Plan policy itself.

556. I think the key thing to emphasise is that although this – this does not have formal development plan status, that the London Plan enjoys – this supplementary planning guidance provides non-statutory guidance to supplement that plan and it may be taken into account by the authorities as a material consideration. The reason I talk about that is because I think we can come back to that later on.

557. So within that, what is the guidance: within the foreword of this, written on page 7, written by the Mayor of London, it starts off with a few words, I’ll just quickly, briefly read these, they were on my slides, ‘If you were look down on London from the stratosphere, you’d be struck by how green the city is, but the plethora of green and open spaces, formal and informal, large and small, helping to define and shape the form of the city. Down here on the ground, we look on them in a very joined-up way, making sure the contribution they make to the quality of life, to the environment and the economy are maximised. The all-London green grid aims to fill this gap.’ Then it reads on, ‘We have to look at the green grid as an asset, value for the whole range of social, health and environmental, economic and educational benefits it bring to London. It needs the same kind of protection, investment and innovation in design and management as other more familiar types of infrastructure.’ It goes on to say, ‘It is vital to see them as integral to the capital’s metabolism as the roads, railway lines and water pipes’. So what we’ve got here is the setting out of what this guidance is really going for. This approach is very much in line, I think, with national thinking. It makes clear the value of green and open space, which should be at the centre of our choices, when we promote economic growth and promote wellbeing. Page 12, paragraph 1.2, it says, ‘The structure of the all-London grid is built around these four elements, including existing and proposed green connections and corridors’. So what I really want to talk about for the next 10 or 15 minutes is about green corridors, green corridors are at the core of the planning process when it comes to these kind of issues. One of the sites, the Adelaide site is a green corridor and I’ll come onto that in a minute.

558. It defines green corridors in the glossary. This refers to relatively continuous areas of open space, leading to the built environment, which may be linked and may not be publicly accessible, e.g. railway embankments. They may allow movement of some animals, plants and act as a conduit for species to reach further into urban areas than would otherwise be the case and potentially provide extensions and connectivity to green spaces they join. So the key issue is that we’re looking for, in this guidance, the network of green spaces to be linked up by green corridors. It then goes on to specifics in this document, where it considers the green corridors themselves, and gives specific guidance on certain areas. This area, of course, is part of the central London area. It says, on page 124 and paragraphs 1.5.178, ‘This area is the most urbanised part of London and this present unique challenges in implementing green infrastructure,

interventions, and it is also the place where new and improved green infrastructure can provide benefits in relation to surface flood water, mitigating the urban heat effect and increasing access to open space’. So, what we have here, then, is the trees and vegetation and open spaces, street and civil spaces within the central area, can provide green links through the urban area, linking with green spaces and transport notes, are as much of a feature as they are of London and terraced houses and streets themselves. So when you look at this document – unfortunately we haven’t got the document here – but what you’ve got here is the network of strategic corridors, and I’ll leave it with you if you want to, it’s a public document of course, you can access it. There’s a strategic link which is identified, which covers this site, which goes up past this site, and it really starts initially down in Parliament Square down here, and then it goes through various areas, including Regent’s Park, Primrose Hill, and then directly up to Hampstead Heath. So this is a strategic corridor which has been identified by the Mayor of London, within the planning guidance, as a specific area deserving planning weight. And in particular, the strategic green infrastructure promotes additional pockets of nature in central London, by diversifying management, linking spaces to provide wildlife corridors and promote accessibility and interpretation of the natural environment in parks and the walking routes. So this particular one is, its name is the – I will just get it here – this particular route in the document here is known as the Nash Ramblas link, and it runs north, from Parliament Square at the Thames, through Royal Parks and the grand avenues in the central activity zones, to Regent’s Park and Primrose Hill. It continues through the residential streets to Parliament Hill and Hampstead Heath. So we would argue that this is an area – this is a part of planning guidance which should be accounted for by HS2. We can’t find much in the documents, in the decision-making of why they put the vent shaft in Adelaide Road as to why this weighting wasn’t really included.

559. Particularly interesting when you then consider how Camden recognised the weighting. Camden have a – I’m just going to look at my slides here – Camden have gone through as well, and put their judgements. They have to decide which sites have an importance of nature conservation, are in this area. We have, of course, Regent’s Park, a site of metropolitan importance. They’ve got Primrose Hill, which they gave a Grade 2, a site of importance, and that’s because it’s a – it’s not quite as high-grade as Regent’s Park, but still quite a high grade. But when we come to the Chalk Farm Embankment, and particularly the area which is being destroyed by this particular

proposal to set up the vent shaft, we find that actually, Camden give this a Borough Grade 1 importance – in other words, a higher importance than they give to Primrose Hill. So we come back to the original decision-making, which we talked about earlier, where Primrose Hill was determined to be too environmentally adverse to site a vent shaft. When you actually look at the local plan, as determined by Camden, this site actually has a higher grade, Grade 1 status, versus Primrose Hill, which has a Grade 2 status.

560. CHAIR: Is any of this relevant?

561. MR WILLIAMS: It’s absolutely relevant, because if you’re going to choose to set your vent shaft on an area, a site of importance for nature conservation, then that is clearly a matter which should be given weight, in context with all the other factors as to whether it should be at Juniper Crescent.

562. CHAIR: Okay.

563. MR WILLIAMS: So that’s the background to it. In particular now, we’re find in planning guidance, now refers to green corridors quite frequently. There’s plenty of planning evidence where the Planning Inspectorate have referred to green corridors as reasons for their determining their solutions. There’s an appeal decision here; it’s a very short one, it’s only 11 paragraphs. But this actually refers to another site where there was a planning application to put a building on an area which formed part of the green corridor. It was also designated as an urban green corridor; it was part of a Leeds site, actually, but it absolutely had the same planning status as this. If anything, it probably was a little bit more inferior because it was actually Grade 1 – it wasn’t necessarily Grade 1 which this is. In that document, it says, ‘This site forms part of the wider area of land designated as the urban green corridor on the proposals map to the EDP.’ When you look at this document under paragraph 6, you see whilst the site is privately owned, with no known public access and may never be used for recreation, or be large enough for that purpose, it formed part of a wider corridor area of land that played a positive role in visual terms. The proposal has compromised the integrity and visual amenity of the site, which is important and a strategic part of the designated urban green corridor.

564. So coming back to this, the urban green corridor has been defined by the Mayor’s office, it’s been defined by Camden, and what we have here is a similar proposal which

is doing exactly the same thing, which is compromising the urban corridor by blocking it, by removing the trees and unused, un-trafficked area, where people don’t walk, and don’t walk dogs, and it’s a very strong value in the urban plan.

565. On paragraph 7, it says, ‘Whilst the applicant considers there is little or no wildlife to be found on the site, I note the site comprised a mixture of grassland and trees and would therefore provide an important habitat area. The proposal has not retained this corridor function of the land, and moreover, it has compromised the link in the corridor which formed an important part of the wider, ecological network’. So again, we’ve got exactly the same repetition of the fact that the link’s been removed, the corridor is not valid because of the knocking down of the trees and interceding with a building.

566. Then it comes by paragraph 10, it’s paragraph 10 when they conclude, ‘I conclude that the policy that the proposed development has resulted in an unacceptable loss of open space and is contrary to the policies and paragraph 74 of the framework which looks to provide open space and a network of spaces that link the urban areas with the countryside’. So we’ve got a very similar planning process, a precedent which has been defined by the Planning Inspectorate, using exactly the same kind of language, using exactly the same kind of metrics, and finding that the local plan is compromised to an unacceptable degree by this factor.

567. So when it comes to actually siting and choosing the location for this vent shaft, and comparing it with the vent shaft as in Juniper Crescent, then you find that this area is an area of trees; it’s an area which is un-trafficked, so it’s an area of green corridor. It’s been highlighted by the London Mayor; it’s been highlighted by Camden; and the weight has not been added, included, within the decision-making process as to where to set the vent shaft. Clearly when you set that against the costs and the complications of putting the vent shaft at Juniper Crescent, there should be a weighing of those factors and an inclusion of those factors in the decision-making. We think that that’s actually not been included in this particular case.

568. I just wanted to touch on the Adelaide Road vent shaft construction site. It is actually a very awkward site; it’s on a very steep embankment; it therefore requires heavy building of a retaining wall, and it’s those retaining walls and the need for the engineers to build back behind – which is the reason why the Adelaide Road is being

closed, that cost is very substantial, and I think that cost may be offsetting some of the costs they were talking about with regards to the costs of putting the extra tunnel work underneath, underground. I think when you look at that, you might find actually the costs of moving to Juniper Crescent are not as high as it was originally thought.

569. I had a couple of other mitigations. The other one is, if the committee decides that it must be sited, that the site – you know, you’ve chosen the site and it must be on Adelaide Road, then there’s a lot of railway noise in the King Henry Road area. Again, I’m sorry you haven’t got this, this is the detail from Defra, which shows the railway noise from the surface railways. At the moment, the King Henry’s Road, which is on the south side, have a retaining wall which retains a large part of that noise away from the buildings, even so you get noises of between 65-75dB, quite loud, in this area. If you were to build a building on the far side, you would get the effect of canyon effect, and the noise gets reflected back. About eight years, I had a noise engineer do some work on this, for a different site which wasn’t built in the end, and they felt it added around 3-5dB extra noise to residents in Primrose Hill, and in doing so, that’s a doubling of the energy noise. It’s already at 70-75dB. This would take us up to 75-80dB. Again, very substantial noise. If the building is to be constructed there, it needs to be built in a way which is actually mitigating of reflecting of the noise.

570. I can talk about traffic, but I won’t talk about the traffic because I think other people have already covered it. To summarise at the end: guidance on planning matters has changed, and there’s a much greater emphasis now on coherent, ecological networks in line with international conventions. The Mayor of London has issued supplementary planning guidance as part of this London Plan. The all-London grid is supplementary planning guidance on covering sites, such as Chalk Farm railway embankment. This replaces PPG17, and it forms a material consideration in planning terms. That’s what they have determined. Specifically, the all-London grid highlights the strategic links, and the Chalk Farm railway embankment forms one of these. This is within the most urbanised part of London with its unique challenges. The Nash Ramblas link covers the green network in this area. Camden have allotted a Grade 1 status to the site, of importance of nature conservation, even rating it more highly than Primrose Hill park nearby. There is planning precedents on green corridors from the Planning Inspectorate. An application to construct the building of less significant site, within an urban corridor

in Leeds was refused because it broke the integrity of that corridor. There are considerable challenges to building this vent shaft, and particularly we would argue that the reflective noise, if it is to be built there should be addressed as part of the mitigation.

571. MR CRAUSBY: Mr Strachan?

572. MR STRACHAN QC (DfT): Yes, I’m not going to repeat what I’ve taken to the committee to about the site selection for Adelaide Road, but for the record, there are some slides I took you to earlier today, P11275(11) which we don’t need to turn up, just for the record. That summarises the way in which the site was selected. There’s a much more detailed explanation in the Environmental Statement. But on the issue of environmental mitigation, certainly the environmental effects of the use of Adelaide Road have been fully considered and as part of the scheme, the design of the vent shaft sites, there are a number of additional environmental mitigation measures proposed. They divide into three, the first of which of course is the enhancement of the adjoining Adelaide local nature reserve – that’s the area of land immediately to the west, and you can see what management measures are proposed to enhance that as a local nature reserve and green space. Then there’s woodland replacement planting on the part of the site to the east which stipulates, as set out in this document. Then behind the vent shaft building, on the site itself, there is the provision of a green corridor to maintain connectivity between the two sites, and that all has the effect of mitigating the impacts on the vent shaft, once constructed, and indeed, enhancing the Adelaide nature reserve in the way that’s set out in this slide, once the scheme is operational.

573. MR CRAUSBY: Would you like to respond?

574. MR WILLIAMS: I looked at the economic statement, and it talks a lot about bats and other things that were mentioned. It really doesn’t talk about these issues, these planning issues, despite what HS2 say. I don’t think they’ve taken the modern planning guidance into consideration; they haven’t given it sufficient weight and I would contest that it’s been properly addressed.

575. MR CRAUSBY: Okay, thanks for your evidence. Right, now we have AP3:130, Patricia Callaghan and others?

Patricia Callaghan and others

576. MS CALLAGHAN: Thank you, my colleague, Councillor Richard Cotton is going to go first, and I’m going to wind up very quickly.

577. MR COTTON: My name is Richard Cotton, I’m a councillor for Camden Town, the Primrose Hill ward. Patricia Callaghan is another councillor for Camden Town, Primrose Hill ward. A third councillor, Councillor Lazzaro Pietragnoli was here earlier today but has had to go off to work.

578. MR CRAUSBY: Can I just say, we do need to kind of try to – we’ll be having a vote a 7.00.

579. MS CALLAGHAN: We’re going to be as brief –

580. MR COTTON: As brief as we can –

581. MR CRAUSBY: Thank you.

582. MR COTTON: In the past five years, HS2 has been the main issue raised by residents with us, whether by email or at public meetings, including, as you’ve heard, some of the largest public meetings ever held in the area. Our petition reflects that and as you can see, shares the concerns of residents which have been exhibited by other petitioners. We thank HS2 for the detailed response to our petition and for the assurances they’ve given in response to Camden Council’s petition which covers some of the issues we raised. For that reason – and because we appreciate you are working to a tight schedule, we will try not to go over the same ground covered my many local residents and stakeholders, who have petitioned in their own right. We therefore, today, like to focus on two main issues. The first is Juniper Crescent, at the site called the Juniper Crescent satellite compound, point 11 of our petition. It is the only compound on the CFA2 that has been retained as a construction site, after the removal of the HS1- HS2 link from the project. By the way, the removal of that link is something we really value as a positive response by the Secretary of State to the concerns raised by residents and businesses in Camden Town.

583. We appreciate that when you visited the effects on those in Camden, you rightly focused on the areas of the borough where the impacts of HS2 is greatest, and you only briefly saw Juniper Crescent from the bridge between Chalk Farm and Primrose Hill.

So let me briefly describe the other side. Juniper Crescent is a Y-shaped street, partly one-way, partly two-way, off Chalk Farm Road.

584. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: Would it help if we looked at P12926(1)?

585. MR COTTON: Opposite the junction with Ferdinand Street. It’s a one-way entrance regulated by three-phase semaphore, leading to a two-way street with the exit being at the back of the petrol station. After that, on the right hand side, there is the only pedestrian access to Juniper Crescent. A complex of 120 flats and houses, owned by various housing associations with most of the residents being families with children. After that, there’s a gyratory on the right-hand side of the street, and the right-hand side of the street becomes very narrow and you have some residential properties with their main entrance on that narrow street. At the end, there is the gate, which is the entrance to the Juniper Crescent satellite compound.

586. On the left-hand side from Chalk Farm Road, you have the back entrance to Stables Market, which is the main pedestrian access to Camden Market for those arriving from Chalk Farm tube station. There is then a pedestrian and disabled ramp which provides access to the Morrison’s supermarket. After the gyrator, on the left, the street leads to the Morrison’s car park, and the terminus for the 27 bus, which goes from Morrison’s to Chiswick. We appreciate the promoter in its response has given a reassurance that the number of lorries would go down from 40 per day, reported in the original Environmental Statement, to only 10 per day. But we believe imposing even 10 vehicles a day on a very narrow road, widely used by pedestrians, ending in a very busy junction, with three-phase semaphore will cause disruption and may cause serious risk to pedestrians accessing Juniper Crescent and Morrison’s. We appreciate that in their response to Camden Council, the promoter seeks to maximise the use of railways, for the bringing and removal of construction materials from and to Euston Station, point 512, and we would request that this specific measures is enforced for the site at Juniper Crescent.

587. Whether it will be used as a construction site, or as a new site for the vent shaft, as requested by the Gloucester Avenue Association, and other petitioners, we really think that the railway should be used as the only way of moving construction materials to and from that site.

588. The second point we wanted to focus on today is compulsory purchase orders and engagement. You have already heard Mr Shepherd of the Gloucester Avenue Association speak forcefully about this earlier today. Many people in Primrose Hill – and you’ve heard from Darwin Court, Princes Road, Regent’s Park Road, Berkley Road, received a compulsory purchase order letter from the promoter earlier in 2014. We remember only too well the shock and anger of many residents in receiving those very bureaucratic letters written in legalese, not in plain English, and causing a great deal of distress. As local councillors, we organised the meeting with HS2 at Primrose Hill School, and more than 200 people from the area attended, and a lot of concern was raised directly to the HS2 engagement officers, and we actually felt they were caught in a very difficult position and unable to give clear reassurances to the people at that meeting.

589. So in addition to requesting we take into serious account the requests for compensation for people and properties outside the safeguarding zone – and that point’s also been made by our local Member of Parliament, we would like to make a more general point on the need for HS2 to engage with residents. We appreciate that the forum has been set up and we attended many of those meetings, and again, sometimes the impression, was that people from HS2 responsible for the engagement process, were sharing a lot of information but were not really in a position to address the concerns that were raised to them. In addition, the main focus of the engagement forum was Euston Station and very little attention was given to the consequences of the development in CAF2 and CAF3, although members of those areas were allowed to be members of the forum.

590. We really think it’s important if construction of the HS2 railway goes ahead, that engagement with local communities is improved. We appreciate there’s an entire paragraph on this topic in the assurances given to Camden Council recently, but we would like to ask that the engagement process becomes a two-way process, where in addition to informing residents and providing detailed explanations of the expected disruption – point 4.3.2 – and of the measures taken to minimise or mitigate the adverse impact, and I quote point 4.2.3, the people in charge of the engagement process are also able to actively involve the local community in designing those mitigation measures. Very often in the past engagement processes, HS2 has not been able to address the

concerns raised and to make a good use of the local knowledge of the area, provided by local people, preferring to rely on technical experts who are doubtless excellent in their field, but know very little about the local area, and its specific problems. We would like to ask in the end that during the construction period, CAF2 and CAF3 engagement with local residents is taken to a higher level. We thank you for your attention.

591. MS CALLAGHAN: Thank you very much. I’d like to stress what my co- councillor has just said about engagement. As a local resident, and a local councillor, who like many others, have lived through five years of the proposed development of HS2, I want to stress again, underline it and stress again, the need for solid, continuous, meaningful engagement with our community. As so many people’s lives within that community will be disrupted by this project. There is a commitment that the Euston Station strategic redevelopment board will be decided through the terms of reference for this board, and that will be done with Camden Council’s impact and should be done by March 2016. We are asking for two nominated representatives to sit on this board from each of the affected wards, obviously including Camden Town with Primrose Hill. This is very important for our community and again, I would stress: meaningful, solid, continuous engagement. Thank you very much for listening to us.

592. CHAIR: Mr Strachan?

593. MR STRACHAN QC (DfT): Yes, the Juniper Crescent request regarding the removal of material by rail. The committee has already heard about the assurances to the further work that’s taking place about material by rail, which I don’t need to put on the screen again.

594. So far as the CPO letter is concerned, Mr Mould addressed that earlier today. It wasn’t a CPO letter; it was a letter required under Parliamentary standing orders, notice to landowners of the proposed bill procedure and the right to petition, and you were taken to that letter where it gave information about how to request more detail.

595. On the question of engagement, we certainly agree with the principle of continued engagement and we’ve given assurances to Camden, and I don’t put them up on screen, but they involve amongst other things, the formulation of an engagement strategy to make sure that everyone is fully engaged in the continuing process, particularly during construction in Camden. In relation to the board, I’ve already explained in answer to a

previous request, the nature of the strategic board and its membership as agreed with the London Borough of Camden and TfL and the sorts of things it will be dealing with on a commercial basis, as distinct from the other processes of engagement with the full participation of the public, which are explained in the assurances.

596. CHAIR: A brief final word?

597. MS CALLAGHAN: Does that mean we will get full local representation?

598. MR STRACHAN QC (DfT): Not on the board, no. But there are other processes for that –

599. MS CALLAGHAN: So there will be representative groups feeding into that board?

600. MR STRACHAN QC (DfT): The key one of course is the London Borough of Camden which is the body –

601. CHAIR: I think the other danger is, since everybody is asking to be on the board, you end up with a massive board, and it won’t get –

602. MS CALLAGHAN: We can’t have that -

603. CHAIR: Essentially, the whole point of this is to try and pull things together and get all the bodies working together in a more strategic way. I think one of the things we’ve taken on board is that there needs to be a holistic view rather than just HS2 and everybody else outside.

604. MS CALLAGHAN: We’re quite happy with that.

605. CHAIR: Okay, thanks to both of you; thanks for being brief. Alright, 905, Jesper Groenveld? 905, Jesper Groenveld? Not here. 1291, David Roberts and others?

David Roberts and others

606. CHAIR: If you sit to the right, you’ll be on camera.

607. MR ROBERTS: This is, I hope, pretty brief. Our petition is very simple. Everyone seems to have said the same things. I’ve lived in Berkley Road since 1987.

The Bill designates – Berkley Road is, if you look at exhibit P12952(2) you see Berkley Road and you see one of my neighbour’s houses highlighted in red. The Bill designates Berkley Road as land potentially required during construction. The petitioners are the owners of properties at 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, and 174 Regent’s Park Road. The petitioners are 1291, 1258, and 1257. We are concerned about our rights and interests in property will be seriously and injuriously affected by the Bill. We’re mindful of the fact that a number of the matters that were also in our petitions were addressed by other petitioners, so we’re not going to talk about them. However, we would fully endorse the Gloucester Avenue petition and Tony Hallgarten’s petition from Regent’s Park Road which was made a few minutes ago. Our problem is this: the Bill is unclear as to what is planned for Berkley Road, the extent to which life as a resident of it will be disrupted and for how long. This uncertainty will affect the value of our properties and their saleability. The definition of land potentially required during construction is unclear, as to the extent of works needed, their nature or duration. The definition of that expression, land potentially required for construction, is boundary defining the maximum possible extent of construction works required to build HS2, as far as the current level of design allows, this only covers service works, includes all tunnel portals, vent shafts, and head houses, but does not apply to wholly tunnel sections or to air rights, and also encompasses associated highway access, drainage and utility works. We’ve been told verbally at one of the meetings by HS2 staff that Berkley Road would only be required for access to utilities. This would involve disruption for a matter of a few months in the initial phase of construction. However, the promoter’s response document to our petition dated November 2015 in respect of our petition is entirely generic and lacking in any specificity in respect of the actual works planned for Berkley Road. I’ve got it here, but is has in paragraphs 1-4 which seem to be cut and pasted from another document.

608. Our frustration is that neither in the legislation nor in the promoter’s response is there any clear exposition why Berkley Road is being designated as land potentially required during construction. It could have said that it’s connected to the drain issue affecting the back gardens of 174-194 Regent’s Park Road which is on that diagram, if you do have it in front of you, the 12952 –

609. CHAIR: As we are pushed or time, shall we ask HS2 for their very general

response to the points.

610. MR ROBERTS: I’m nearly finished, it’s just we were going to say, can you tell us –

611. CHAIR: What are you going to do in Berkley Road?

612. MR STRACHAN QC (DfT): What you were told orally was correct. It is utility works, and it’s principally access to the utilities that run along Berkley Road and connect into the utilities that run through the back gardens on Regent’s Park Road, which I think you’ve heard about previously. So that is the sole reason for the land going into the Bill in relation to Berkley Road. It is for utility works solely.

613. CHAIR: So you inspect the utilities, you see whether they need strengthening or safeguarding, and if they do, you use the powers under the Bill; and if they don’t, you won’t?

614. MR STRACHAN QC (DfT): We won’t do anything.

615. CHAIR: So it’s precautionary at this stage, but we have the powers if we need to, to access those utilities from Berkley Road. Part of that is to eliminate disruption to the gardens, obviously, of the utilities where we’re seeking access to the utility itself.

616. MR ROBERTS: Can I ask: utilities, do you mean gas, electricity, water…?

617. MR STRACHAN QC (DfT): In this case, it’s water.

618. MR ROBERTS: So it is the sewer?

619. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: It’s stuff under the road, which can be clean water, foul water, electricity, gas.

620. MR STRACHAN QC (DfT): In this case, a sewer.

621. MR ROBERTS: My last point, then: why can’t it – can it not just be changed, the legislation? So it just says, ‘We want Berkley Road for six months for a year’. You don’t want to say anything more specific, and this is the reason we want it?

622. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: They don’t want to be more specific, they don’t

know what they need yet.

623. CHAIR: Until they look, they don’t know quite how long or if, and it’s precautionary; it’s just that they may need to do the works, they may not need to do the works. But I don’t think it’s something you ought to get too excited about; I think there are a lot of roads like this, and it’s just so there isn’t damaged done when the tunnelling happens.

624. MR ROBERTS: Right, so this is as good as we’re going to get?

625. CHAIR: Yes, and in due course, you will no doubt here when they do the inspections, whether or not it’s need or not needed and how long. But they just don’t know at this point.

626. MR STRACHAN QC (DfT): And the assurance we’ve given to Camden is about advanced notice of works, so people will receive notice if any works are required in here, when they’re going to occur, what their duration would be, and what their nature is.

627. MR ROBERTS: Alright, that’s as good as I –

628. CHAIR: Alright, and you were brief.

629. MR ROBERTS: Thanks.

630. CHAIR: Right I missed the Friends of Regent’s Park and Primrose Hill, AP3:143? Who are the last people today?

Friends of Regent’s Park and Primrose Hill

631. CHAIR: You get the circulation back after a while; we haven’t lost anybody in the Committee Room yet.

632. MS HILLMAN: You have it every day!

633. CHAIR: Only for a year or two. Thank you, I’m sorry you are last.

634. MR MACFARLANE: Thank you; I’m pleased you’re still here!

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635. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: In body if not in mind!

636. CHAIR: We have about 15 minutes until we vote.

637. MR MACFARLANE: We will try not to gallop. I’m Conall Macfarlane, and I’ve been Chairman of the Friends of Regent’s Park for about three years. We have about 1,000 members and I’ve lived in the area for 47 years. This is Judy Hillman, who is our patron and she will actually talk about herself.

638. MS HILLMAN: Well my credentials are, I was a member of the Royal Parks review group in the 1990s, it was about a five-year long job off and on. I then moved onto the Heritage Lottery Fund Urban Parks Advisory Group for another few years, which was great, and one learned a lot. I’m now an active patron, and I’ve lived in the area for about 45 years, I think – anyway, a good long time. So I have an interest in the area as well as –

639. CHAIR: You don’t look old enough!

640. MS HILLMAN: Anyway, the points I want to make –

641. MR MACFARLANE: Slide (9), could we have?

642. MS HILLMAN: Thank you, I’d forgotten about those. Is about the Royal Parks I that they are owned by Her Majesty in right of the Crown and I’m not sure whether you know that. I’d love to know whether there’s been any consultation to make sure that at least the Royal Household knows what’s going on; and they’re managed by government, under relevant powers dating back to 1851. But because the Royal Parks come under one of the Departments of State, they cannot put in petitions, so they cannot be appearing for you to ask the things, or ask them to put their view. So we have – if we say, I’m speaking a bit on their behalf, it’s only because I love them; it’s not because I know their ins and outs and exactly what they think.

643. But in any event, the Secretary of State may not sell or lease any part of a Royal Park or its buildings. The Zoo, actually, which opened first in 1827 does have a lease, but that’s really because that was before the Royal Parks – before Regent’s Park became a park. However, when it comes to the Zoo car park, it has a licence, and that’s what everything in the Royal Parks has. Whether it’s a franchise or a building or the Zoo car

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park. Then just a tiny bit of background: Regent’s Park is of national and international importance. I’m sure – well, you might know – that it was designed by John Nash to include the surrounding grand terraces. They are Grade I on the English Heritage or Historic England list of parks and gardens, as are the terraces. It is a complete landscape. It has 400 acres, approximately, and includes gardens, a boating lake, water fowl collections, tree-lined avenues, a theatre –

644. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: I think we know –

645. MS HILLMAN: Okay, and the largest open air sports facility in central London, and children’s playgrounds which are very near Gloucester Gate which is a key thing to do with the Zoo car park. It copes with nearly 11 million visitors a year, about one-third come by public transport and they shut at dusk –

646. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: I think you’re still taking –

647. MS HILLMAN: You want to shut me up –

648. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: Bring us something which we don’t know.

649. MS HILLMAN: Well, one never knows what people know.

650. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: Well, assume we know everything.

651. MS HILLMAN: However, like wisdom, which is beyond the price of rubies and gold, its contribution to the quality of life in London cannot be valued. HS2 is not the first beady-eyed developer to set his site on the park. In recent years –

652. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: HS2 is not trying to develop on the Park.

653. MS HILLMAN: The Zoo car park is part of the park.

654. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: It’s not trying to develop on the park. Just say what you want to say about the car park.

655. MS HILLMAN: Well, I’m going to say more about that later. But if the Euston development proceeds, the car park will become even more important because of the loss of open space to the east; and the pressure on it will become greater. The Park bans commercial vehicles, do you know that too?

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656. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: Yes, as do most other Royal Parks!

657. MS HILLMAN: Well, except to specific premises, and that includes coaches, bringing school parties.

658. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: My wife used to be the Minister in charge of Royal Parks, I used to be the Minister in charge of transport. Please get to the car park!

659. MS HILLMAN: Well, using the edge of the park may seem cheaper than alternatives, but the real costs are too high. The Royal Parks have been unable to petition as I said, and –

660. CHAIR: I am told the Queen has to consent to the Bill because she has an interest.

661. MS HILLMAN: Well, I’m going to hand over to Conall next.

662. MR MACFARLANE: Well, I’m going to talk, I’m afraid, not about the colony of hedgehogs which inhabit the Zoo car park which you probably do know all about, although it would be a much more stimulating subject. However, I might add that their fate is perhaps a metaphor for the humans unfortunate enough to be living in the path of HS2. My principal concern is traffic, whether it be pedestrian, cyclists, cars or lorries. Could I have slide (11) please? As you’ll see, the strategic location of the Zoo car park, which includes the red frilled area which is the addition that HS2 is going to requisition. Please also note the dotted green lines, one which leads off the Outer Circle and the other which comes off Prince Albert Road and leads into the car park which I believe you visited so I don’t need to say anything more about that. But certainly what you will have appreciated when you were in the car park, are the very wide verges.

663. Anyway, what I’m going to go on to say is, could I have slide (14) please? Now this is a much wider view of the intersection which the Delancey Street residents have already highlighted as an area of intense congestion of road traffic and what will be appreciated is that the traffic which comes down Prince Albert Road is going to be disturbed by the lorry entrance which is going to be made into the car park, or – and whether the lorries are going to enter there, or whether they’re going to exit there hasn’t been revealed. But the alternative is that the traffic is then – these heavy lorries – are

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going to have to then go down Gloucester Gate, turn right and turn right again in order to get into the Zoo car park. So the danger and the impediment for other traffic is going to be colossal.

664. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: We understand that.

665. MR MACFARLANE: Good, I won’t say anything more on that subject then.

666. Could I have slide (19) please? Now this shows the breadth of the actual grass verge, and it also gives you some idea of the buses and they’re going to have to cut over this verge in order to get access to that bus car park. Then could I have slide (6) and (7) please, and this gives you some idea of the present congestion in Prince Albert Road, which is going to be used as either the exit or the egress to the car park.

667. Then could we go on please to talk about cycling super highway 11, and I don’t know whether that is familiar to you?

668. CHAIR: Yes, it is.

669. MR MACFARLANE: It is?

670. CHAIR: We’ve had a lot of cyclists over the last -

671. MR MACFARLANE: Can I just explain to you what cycling superhighway 11 is?

672. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: You can, but we’ve had three goes at cycling, including the Camden Cycling Campaign and others.

673. MR MACFARLANE: Right. Well, could I just have slide (16) up please? This shows you –

674. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: We know all that.

675. MR MACFARLANE: You know that?

676. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: We know even more detail than that. Can I make a suggestion? If you can finish in the next two or three minutes, we might get Mr Strachan or whoever to finish as well, and we can all stop at 7.00, otherwise we’ll have

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to come back afterwards.

677. MR MACFARLANE: Well, I will see what I can do for you. But what I was going to say was that, what so far has not been realised is, as far as I can make out, any sort of dialogue between Transport for London and HS2 and Camden and I see that the proposer’s counsel, that actually said that there should be a join-up with Camden’s traffic authority, but it needs to include TfL as well and their plans for the cycling superhighway.

678. CHAIR: They have all signed up to agreements. There are agreements being drafted between TfL and HS2 and the Mayor of London on all these matters which were discussed.

679. MR MACFARLANE: Well, I should be very grateful if actually that meeting could happen, because so far –

680. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: It is a series of engagements; it is happening, it will happen.

681. MR MACFARLANE: Fine.

682. CHAIR: And Boris told me a couple of days ago, they have decided –

683. MR MACFARLANE: Right, well then I think the only thing that I need to say then is one other thing about cycling, which is that one of the major users of the Outer Circle are the sports cyclists –

684. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: We do know about that as well; they normally break the speed limit.

685. MR MACFARLANE: Yes, you’re quite right.

686. MS HILLMAN: Yes.

687. MR MACFARLANE: I won’t talk about them either. Thank you. And I think, then, that – the only thing is that Judy was going to comment on P11270 which –

688. MS HILLMAN: Well I can do that very briefly. I think really what I wanted to do is to denigrate it, because a lot of it is meaningless; it’s waffle. It doesn’t say what it

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should say. For instance, on page 3, it says the majority of additional land to be included is for the purpose of mitigating the lost parking space and to minimise the disruption; it doesn’t say what it’s actually going to do. It doesn’t say whether the lorries are all going on the eastern end, and perhaps the Zoo is going to retain the use of the western end. It also doesn’t give any indication whether there is going to be lighting that will stay on into the night or whether there’s going to be hoarding. I certainly heard one person mention that there will be hoardings around that area.

689. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: If you finish in 30 seconds –

690. MS HILLMAN: Yes, I realise; I am galloping. When it says, ‘Working hours’, what is the meaning of that? Will they start at the same time the cyclists go around at the crack of dawn? Detailed proposals for that? There are none. How do you stop the moving and returning? What about the hedgehogs who travel at night and need – and it is a very important habitat, apart from those – the hedgehogs and the bats.

691. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: Thank you. The Chairman may let you go on for two minutes into seven o’clock.

692. CHAIR: Mr Strachan?

693. MR STRACHAN QC (DfT): I know you’ve heard a lot about it, but just for clarity. The lorry holding area, the entrance and exit is off Prince Albert Road. The lines shown into the Outer Circle is solely there to assist with the creation of the lorry holding area. Other than that, I know I’ve already responded in some detail to the issue of cycling and the use of the lorry holding area. For good or ill, you should be revisiting the subject tomorrow when the Zoological Society are coming in.

694. CHAIR: Very exciting.

695. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: Can we congratulate you on your Friends organisation and on your park and your hill!

696. MR MACFARLANE: Thank you sir.

697. CHAIR: I’m sorry you were last; I’m sorry we rushed you. The difficulty is, we’ve had three weeks of this, and we’re getting to know a lot of the issues very well.

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698. MR MACFARLANE: Three weeks?

699. CHAIR: Well, no, just talking Camden here. The byways and highways of Camden. But we know a lot of information we didn’t really need to know when we started this process.

700. MR MACFARLANE: I’m very sorry we’ve burdened you –

701. CHAIR: Anyway, thank you very much indeed.

702. MR MACFARLANE: Thank you.

703. MS HILLMAN: Thank you.

704. CHAIR: Order, order. We meet tomorrow.

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