Public Session
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PUBLIC SESSION MINUTES OF ORAL EVIDENCE taken before HIGH SPEED RAIL COMMITTEE On the HIGH SPEED RAIL (LONDON – WEST MIDLANDS) BILL Monday, 23 February 2015 (Afternoon) In Committee Room 5 PRESENT: Mr Robert Syms (Chair) Sir Peter Bottomley Mr Henry Bellingham Ian Mearns Yasmin Qureshi _____________ IN ATTENDANCE: Mr Timothy Mould, QC, Lead Counsel, Department for Transport Ms Jacqueline Lean, Counsel, Department for Transport Miss Melissa Murphy (for Cherwell District Council) Witnesses: Mr Gordon Raitt and Mrs Harriet Raitt Mr Raymond Brunton, Mixbury Parish Meeting Mr David Trott, International Teams Director, British Dressage Mr Mike Kerford-Byrnes, Finmere Parish Council Mr Patrick Clarke Mr Bernie Douglas Mr Alec Howard Mr Peter Miller, Head of Environment and Planning, HS2 Ltd _____________ IN PUBLIC SESSION INDEX Subject Page Mr and Mrs Raitt Introduction by Mr Mould 3 Submissions from Mr Raitt 3 Submissions from Mr Mould 14 Cherwell District Council Submissions from Miss Murphy 19 Submissions from Mr Mould 20 Mixbury Parish Meeting Introduction from Mr Mould 22 Submissions from Mr Brunton 22 Mr Trott, examined by Mr Brunton 31 Mr Trott, cross-examined by Mr Mould 34 Closing submissions from Mr Brunton 38 Mr Miller, examined by Mr Mould 39 Mr Miller, cross-examined by Mr Brunton 45 Finmere Parish Council Submissions from Cllr Kerford-Byrnes 49 Submissions from Mr Mould 58 Closing submissions from Cllr Kerford-Byrnes 61 Newton Purcell Parish Meeting and Mr Patrick Clarke Submissions from Mr Clarke 64 Mr Miller, examined by Mr Mould 78 Mr Miller, cross-examined by Mr Clarke 87 Closing submissions from Mr Clarke 88 Mr Bernie Douglas Submissions from Mr Douglas 89 Submissions from Ms Lean 94 Mr Alec Howard Submissions from Mr Howard 97 Mr Miller, examined by Ms Lean 105 2 (At 14.00) 1. CHAIR: Order, order. Welcome and good afternoon to the HS2 Select Committee. This week we hear from various petitioners from the Midlands, Northants and Oxfordshire. We begin with Mr and Mrs Raitt this afternoon. Mr and Mrs Raitt 2. CHAIR: Welcome. Can we have up on the map where Mr and Mrs Raitt are? 3. MR MOULD (DfT): Mr and Mrs Raitt live in Lower Thorpe. Their property is being shown on the ordnance sheet. If we go to the next page we can see their property shown in a more local basis. Their property is number 1, Manor Cottages, Banbury Lane, Lower Thorpe. They are situated, I think, about 100 metres from the railway line and they fall within the rural support zone. 4. CHAIR: Thank you. Mr Raitt? 5. MR RAITT: Slide number one, please. That is the introduction that we have more or less heard from Mr Mould. I would like to say first of all on slide one that you might remember a petition by Maurice Cole, who was the parish councillor for Thorpe Mandeville. He did touch on a couple of topics involving transport and the freight issues down Banbury Lane. So, I won’t refer to that in detail. 6. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: Is this where the railway comes thundering past you and you are one of three or four – 7. MR RAITT: Absolutely. We have the numbers and figures to show you. Okay, so on the second slide we thought we would give you a brief overview of what we intend to talk about today. First is the compensation that we feel we need for the situation we are. In the presentation we will show to what degree HS2 will affect us during construction and operation and we will plead that we are a special case rather than just a run of the mill property. I should like to say at this stage as well that over the past years we have engaged with HS2 by having some meetings at our property, by email and we have had letters and visits. We have had a communication following your visit to the area where you had a look around, and we have also had quite a few communications through Andrea Leadsom, our local MP. She supports our case very 3 much. Also, South Northamptonshire Council have the same attitude towards us. 8. Could we go to slide three, please? This is the map that Mr Mould showed. I have highlighted our property there with the red arrow. As you can see, it is not exactly parallel to the line so the distance, 100 metres, maybe from the middle of the house but at the bottom of the garden where the cursor is it is less than that; we think 80 to 85 metres. What this picture does show is the rural and tranquil setting that we are in – we are half a mile from the nearest village. This is a little hamlet. It was a very tight community until HS2 appeared upon the scene and that has been one of the major changes for us. 9. The pink line, as I am sure you already know, is the viaduct area. That is 190 metres to 200 metres long, so it is quite a considerable length. If we could look at the two properties that the cursor is at, this one and the one slightly to the left, these are the two properties that are going to be demolished out of the hamlet, so that already brings the community down from five properties to three. The other two properties – one of each side of us – have already been purchased by HS2 under the EHS. So, we are the only owners of a freehold property still left in the area. 10. The next slide, please. This is again similar to one of the HS2 slides. We have is coloured in orange the properties that will be acquired by HS2 either under compulsory purchase or under EHS. The large area there is because that is the amount of land that goes with that house, so that is why this is not necessarily an area that is needed for construction but is an area that they are acquiring. 11. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: Is the small area to the side of you part of that or is that something else? 12. MR RAITT: That is also an HS2 property already. That is also acquired. 13. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: Which came with which home? 14. MR RAITT: That is number two Manor Cottages that came under an EHS purchase. The reason we have put this map on is to show how isolated we will be compared to the way the community was when we moved there. We have been told, not in writing, but at the meeting that these two properties each side of us won’t be 4 inhabited during construction and that makes us feel we will be even more isolated during that period. 15. Finally, I have a little arrow that says BioDisc and I will come back to that later, but that is a joint sewerage treatment plant which serves three of the houses. This is quite an important point because it is in the safeguarded area and we are just outside it, so I will come back to that in another slide later on. 16. The next slide, please. This is a reminder of your summer visit by the look of it, or autumn visit at least, to see us. On the right this is just opposite our house where you stopped for a while and Harriet appraised you of our situation. On the left is where the bus was stopped. That is where the viaduct will be. You may recall from that visit that some of the people in Thorpe Mandeville had put some balloons up to represent the height not of the viaduct but the viaduct and the gantry. That shows the degree of it compared to the height of the houses that are around. 17. MR MEARNS: I seem to remember the balloons not doing the height justice because of the wind blowing them to the side. 18. MR RAITT: That’s right, yes, so we should add at least another metre on to demonstrate, but that just gives you a concept of the degree of the height of the viaduct compared to the height of the houses around. We have another picture of that later on. 19. Slide six now, the next one. This is just to give you a bit more of a feel of where we are and how we live. It’s a family home for us and or two children. We have been there for about 30 years. It is our only asset. We have spent a lot of money on it over the last 30 years to improve and enlarge it. It was a property that we intended to live in for a good deal longer but that may not be the case now. We chose to live out of a village because it is very quiet, it is very tranquil. We didn’t want the noise of village or town life so we specifically chose this location for the tranquillity that it gives. When we bought it we found it was just right for us, so the HS2 announcement came as quite a considerable shock to us. 20. I will just briefly describe these photos. On the top left our house is the left half of that; the right half is Manor Cottages, which is already owned by HS2. The top right is the back of the house. The bottom left is the view out of the back of our house across 5 the countryside. 21. MRS RAITT: That is actually looking out towards the line.