Public Session

PUBLIC SESSION

MINUTES OF ORAL EVIDENCE

taken before

HIGH SPEED RAIL COMMITTEE

On the

HIGH SPEED RAIL (LONDON – WEST MIDLANDS) BILL

Monday, 19 October 2015 (Afternoon)

In Committee Room 5

PRESENT:

Mr Robert Syms (Chair) Sir Peter Bottomley Mr Henry Bellingham Geoffrey Clifton-Brown Mr David Crausby ______

IN ATTENDANCE Mr Timothy Mould QC, Counsel, Department for Transport Mr Mark Lowe QC, Counsel, Aylesbury Vale District Council & Buckinghamshire County Council

WITNESSES

Ms Tracey Aldworth Mr David Richards Ms Hazel Morrison Mr Jeremy Banks Ms Melissa Laing Mr Philip Gaskin Ms Lesley Taylor

Mr Peter Miller, Head of Environment and Planning, HS2 Ltd Mr Tim Smart, International Director for High Speed Rail, CH2M Hill ______

IN PUBLIC SESSION

INDEX

Subject Page

Buckinghamshire County Council (Cont’d) Ms Aldworth, examined by Mr Lowe 3 Submissions by Mr Lowe 10

Turweston Parish Council Submissions by Mr Richards 15 Submissions by Ms Morrison 19 Further submissions by Mr Richards 20 Further submissions by Ms Morrison 29 Response from Mr Mould 30

Westbury Parish Council Submissions by Mr Banks 35 Response from Mr Mould 40 Closing submissions by Mr Banks 43

Melissa Laing Submissions by Ms Laing 44 Response from Mr Mould 48

Charndon Parish Council and Calvert Green Parish Council Submissions by Mr Gaskin and Ms Taylor 50

Lesley Taylor, Jolyon Brown et al. Submissions by Ms Taylor 69 Response from Mr Mould 72 Mr Miller, examined by Mr Mould 73 Mr Smart, examined by Mr Mould 80 Mr Smart, cross-examined by Mr Gaskin 84 Submissions by Mr Mould 86

(At 14.00)

Buckinghamshire County Council (Cont’d)

1. CHAIR: Order, order. Welcome back to the HS2 Select Committee. This week we hear from Buckinghamshire north of the Chilterns, beginning with Aylesbury Vale District Council. Tomorrow we shall hear from the Speaker in the afternoon. By way of comment on the Committee’s overall timetable, we intend to complete hearing petitioners from the Chilterns by the end of this month, except those that have already deferred for legitimate reasons, such as AP4. We shall start hearing Camden petitioners in the week commencing 30 November. So we start off with Aylesbury again, and it’s you, Mr Lowe, again on duty.

2. MR LOWE QC: Thank you, sir. Can I say that we are going to be brief? Although there are three witnesses on the slides, A14641, in fact Ms Aldworth will be dealing with these matters herself.

3. CHAIR: Okay.

4. MR LOWE QC: Would you like to introduce yourself to the Committee please?

5. MS ALDWORTH: Yes. Thank you. My name’s Tracy Aldworth. I’m a director at Aylesbury Vale District Council, and I’ve worked for the authority for 16 years.

6. MR LOWE QC: Slide 2 sets out the strategic context of Aylesbury Vale, and I think the Committee will already be well familiar with that from last week, so we move on to the next slide, please, which is that dealing with the strategic road network. Again, the Committee heard evidence about that last week, and in particular the request of Buckinghamshire as highway authority to have the passive provision made available for the southwest link part of the link road. And I think you would like to see, from the penultimate sentence there, you would like to confirm the Council’s commitment to working along with the County Council and HS2 to find an appropriate solution. Is that right?

7. MS ALDWORTH: Yes we would, and I think, reflecting the earlier slide in terms of the context, for the growth particularly that Aylesbury is likely to be facing in the coming years, we’re obviously particularly concerned to ensure that HS2 helps us in that

provision rather than precluding some of those issues that we are going to have to be grappling with in the coming years.

8. MR LOWE QC: And so we undertook, I think, last week to report back to the Committee on the progress of those negotiations, and, sir, since we’ve last met we’ve received a statement from the landowners supporting this option in principle. I don’t know its number. Oh yes, I do. I’ve got it written down. I beg your pardon, forgetting my prompt, A1475(1). And this is a brief note from the landowners that indicates in principle their support for the idea, and I don’t know whether you want to look at it in any more detail than that. Thank you very much.

9. Well, can we move on then please to slide 4? This is the station at Steeple Claydon, and I think you’re here to really report the support of Aylesbury Vale to this concept, and tell us a little more about the help that Aylesbury Vale might be able to give to this idea.

10. MS ALDWORTH: Thank you, Mr Lowe. I think during the proceedings last week we were very conscious that the Committee were keen to see if there was a solution that could be found by the key parties working together. Fully appreciate that the County Council are in a very challenging position, as all local authorities are, but it was really an opportunity today to present to the committee the concept really that the District Council would be very keen to be part of that negotiation to see what funding it may be able to find to help facilitate a joint solution. We obviously haven’t yet taken a formal decision on that, but it was really that we’re very willing to be a party to that and explore how we might be able to help contribute. The local authority as the District Council is already contributing £5 million towards the East West Rail project, and that’s a commitment that it’s already made, and obviously we’d be keen to see if there’s anything further that we could contribute to help bring forward the prospect of a new station.

11. MR LOWE QC: I think you have at the moment from the New Homes Bonus funding, provided that continues, quite a substantial income every year.

12. MS ALDWORTH: We have, and again that’s really the primary source of where we have identified the commitment we’ve already made of £5 million towards the East West Rail project. And, as you say, subject to the Chancellor continuing with that in

November we’d be obviously looking to that perhaps as an opportunity to put some additional funding in.

13. MR LOWE QC: So I think, sir, that’s a refinement of the evidence you heard last week from Buckinghamshire, and indicates there could well be some public contribution to the pot.

14. MR CLIFTON-BROWN: What it seemed to me from those discussions last week was that the cost proposed was astronomically high. Have you had any discussions with Network Rail to see if that cost could be brought down?

15. MS ALDWORTH: We are a member of the East West Rail consortium, and I think that’s something that we’ll be actively pursuing in the near future to make sure that we’re very clear about how that cost was arrived at. And our priority obviously would be to try and deliver a station within the most reasonable level that we could.

16. MR LOWE QC: I think it’s fair to say we never got the base cost because the Parsons Brinckerhoff material had the cost with an optimism inbuilt to it. So it’s obviously substantially less, the base cost, than 5 million, but quite how much less we don’t know. Thank you. So that’s Steeple Claydon. Oh, perhaps there’s one other matter to be mentioned when we deal with Steeple Claydon. I think you have had, just before we came in here, received an assurance from HS2 with regard to Calvert and works at Calvert. Is that right?

17. MS ALDWORTH: We have, and unfortunately we received it just shortly after one o’clock so we’ve not really had the opportunity to consider that in detail. And I think really what we’d be looking to do is to review that to ensure that it met our concerns, which were primarily that as a local authority we need to make sure that the coordination is effectively managed on behalf of those two national schemes, and certainly another concern that there isn’t any undue delay to the East West Rail project.

18. MR LOWE QC: Yes. Can we come on to those, because I think the letter itself only deals with construction activities around the village and the need to coordinate those with you. Is that right?

19. MS ALDWORTH: That’s right, yes.

20. MR LOWE QC: And as far as that goes, is that helpful?

21. MS ALDWORTH: I think it is helpful, but obviously there’s further work that we would need to do in order that we’re completely satisfied with that.

22. MR LOWE QC: And does it contain any commitment to the cost of the Council through the service level agreement for working within those activities?

23. MS ALDWORTH: No, and I think that’s one of our concerns is we’d want an assurance that that would be covered by the service level agreement with HS2.

24. MR LOWE QC: Last week we presented evidence on behalf of the County Council on the need for a consent for or express permission for temporary lighting during the construction period, temporary landscaping works during the construction period, a permanent footway up the road up to Steeple Claydon, and the movement of the FCC sidings. Does the District Council support or are they neutral on those? What’s their position?

25. MS ALDWORTH: I think we’re happy with those.

26. MR LOWE QC: You support the County Council on those?

27. MS ALDWORTH: Yes we do.

28. MR LOWE QC: Now, let’s turn with the evidence that you deal with next, which is slide number 6 I think. Support for the green tunnel at Chetwode and here I think you’re just indicating your support for evidence that is to come.

29. MS ALDWORTH: Yes we are, and I understand you’ll be hearing some evidence on this later in the week, and it was really just to ensure that the Committee were aware as a District Council we’re very supportive of this. And indeed our landscape architect, Jonathan Bellars, who you’ve heard from last week, will be in support of that should you require.

30. MR LOWE QC: The next I think is familiar information to the Committee, the infrastructure in the area, and can we move therefore onto 8, which is other issues related to the East West Rail route. And we understand that it’s been agreed, we see from your first sentence, that issues regarding the integration of the rail route and HS2

are to be considered by the Committee later in the year. And I think your slide 10 refers to an integration study which has been commissioned by Network Rail to ensure the proper integration of the two schemes. Can you just briefly tell the Committee what your concerns are as a District Council about the relationship between the two lines?

31. MS ALDWORTH: Yes. Thank you. From quite an early stage we’ve been trying to highlight to HS2 Limited the need for us to ensure that there is an effective coordination, an overall masterplan, which is what we’ve been calling it, to bring those two national infrastructure schemes together. Certainly as a local planning authority we want to make sure that the information we receive through planning applications have been effectively coordinated before they arrive to us, bearing in mind if we are going to be a qualifying authority we will need to be determining those applications very swiftly, and therefore ensuring that that coordination has happened prior to their submission to us is extremely important. We’re very conscious that certainly as a location there’s a huge impact in that area, and we want to do our best as an authority to support the promotors of the scheme in turning around our decisions. And therefore we really require them to make a commitment to undertaking that work in advance of any submissions to us, and that’s really part of what we’d be seeking by way of an assurance.

32. MR LOWE QC: Thank you very much. Does that cover all the material within your East West Rail integration slides?

33. MS ALDWORTH: I think the only other point is we are aware that there is a study that has been commissioned. What we haven’t yet seen is the actual brief of that study. We’d very much welcome having sight of that to input into it prior to its conclusion. We’re aware that this is scheduled to be done by November, but we’d very much, again, like to assist with the outcome of that brief, making sure that it meets all the concerns that we raised, so we can perhaps avoid having to come back to the Committee at a future date to raise any further issues.

34. MR LOWE QC: Thank you very much.

35. CHAIR: Mr Mould, do you have any questions of Ms Aldworth?

36. MR MOULD QC (DfT): No, I don’t have any questions, but it’s perhaps

convenient at the moment just to draw your attention to a slide by way of response, which is P8594. This relates to the topic that was just being dealt with by Ms Aldworth, the integration of the HS2 and the East West Rail works. And what the slide does is to refer to the protected provisional agreement between the Secretary of State, Network Rail and HS2 Limited, and to the current engagement with Network Rail with a view to identifying integration opportunities for both projects in order to provide best value for money, and also minimum disruption to both projects where possible, and reference indeed to an integration study, which I think the witness touched on. And that’s being undertaken with the objective of identifying opportunities for the most cost effective way of constructing the infrastructure for both schemes in the Calvert area, and it refers indeed to formulating a joint masterplan for HS2 to achieve cost savings by avoiding abortive works. And the integration study includes working to share environmental information and integrate potential mitigation.

37. That then ties into one of the assurances that the witness referred to as having been provided today, which is that the Secretary of State will require the nominated undertaker to engage with the District Council regarding the programme and phasing of the HS2 construction works in the Calvert area, including the provision to the Council of any relevant updates regarding the interface between HS2 construction works and construction works associated with the East West Rail project in that area. And I mention those matters because I think it gives rise to two further points. One is that in order to address and to give effect to those commitments in practice it seems to me that it’s within reason that we should be sharing information with the District Council, including information about the terms on which the study has been drawn. And that, I would have thought, is a natural consequence of agreeing to engage periodically with them.

38. And the second is that I’ll certainly take away and ask for instructions on how – it takes two to engage, as it were, and so the Council’s work in engaging through that process, how that might fit in with the continuing work that’s being done on service level agreements and so forth. I can’t say anything specific about that now, but I’ll certainly take instructions and see if we can move that forward within the aegis of the arrangements that you have been told about already, which have been formulated through the planning forum which the project has set up.

39. CHAIR: Okay.

40. MR MOULD QC (DfT): So it’s a work in progress, I think.

41. CHAIR: Any other points you want to raise on this point? No. Okay.

42. MR CLIFTON BROWN: I have one point, Chairman, if I may. Neither of you were probably in the Committee when I raised this issue, but this is how you’re engaging with your constituents, because you’re going to have to make a very large number of planning decisions, not necessarily in the normal way, but planning agreements with HS2, service level agreements with HS2. What public engagement fora do you have to get views on people like this East West issue and a host of other issues?

43. MS ALDWORTH: We’ve been working very closely with our colleagues at the county who’ve been leading on that community forum engagement, so that’s a natural route through which we’d be looking to do that, but also we’re in the joyful position of having over 110 parishes, so we have regular forums with all of those parishes in terms of key issues. And certainly for a large number of them HS2, obviously not all of them but for a large number of them, HS2 is a key issue. We also through our own local members, in terms of our elected councillors, would be a route through which we’d be making sure that they are brought up to speed with those key issues. So that would be something that we’ll be looking to evolve as obviously we get closer to the point of having applications to consider.

44. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: This is really for Mr Mould, I think. The two issues we had from last week, one was the question of the East West station provision and the second was the west of Aylesbury ring road.

45. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Yes.

46. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: I need reminding where we’re left with the second of those issues.

47. MR MOULD QC (DfT): This arose in the context of getting our railway past the Princes Risborough line. Where we left it was that we were reviewing the costs of the alternative proposal that had been put forward, the opportunity, I think as you described

it, and I said that we would aim to complete that work as soon as we could. I gave a backstop, I think, of by the end of this month, but I’m hoping very much that we’ll be able to accelerate that and report back sooner.

48. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: A week or so either way doesn’t make any difference if it’s likely to come up with a more positive result for the town and the local area.

49. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Yes, and I think I volunteered the thought that in principle the notion that one should seek to avoid putting a blocker on something that is considered desirable locally, provided that that can be done in a cost effective way, that that was the right way to approach a matter like that.

50. CHAIR: Thank you. Good. Mr Lowe?

51. MR LOWE QC: Yes, that was my understanding of how it was left. Both parties were hoping to report back positively on it. Thank you very much.

52. CHAIR: Okay.

53. MR LOWE QC: So that’s the case for Aylesbury Vale.

54. CHAIR: Okay.

55. MR LOWE QC: Thank you. And, sir, can I report back on some matters that were left over from last week? The property slides, I hoped and fervently prayed that we wouldn’t have to call any witnesses. As I came into this room I received an email which said ‘Property issues put to bed by appropriate assurance’, so I’m sure you’re very grateful to hear that. As to transport issues, I can’t give you that happy news. One of them is the issue that we have just been discussing, the Aylesbury link, and there are others where discussions have continued, but perhaps at rather a slow pace. There has been an exchange of a letter and a meeting this morning. Not everything has been resolved, but can I just give you a very brief update?

56. One large outstanding matter was sensitive junctions safety and capacity. Discussions are continuing and I’m hoping that they will resolve in an agreement, which can be reported back to the Committee but should not need any further evidence or

appearance. The other major outstanding issue was the A355 Beaconsfield Wilton Park relief road. Discussions have continued, they have been positive, and I’m hoping that we will in the end be able to report positively on that, but obviously I have to reserve my position until discussions are complete. Stoke Mandeville bypass extension, we are getting some of the way there in terms of modelling. I think there remains an issue between the parties as to how and when a business case should be made. At the moment discussions are continuing. Again, I would ask to reserve our case and report back. And if any of these matters have to come back, perhaps I should say this, that I do not anticipate them taking more than an hour of the Committee’s time at most, should that be necessary, but of course we’re rather hopeful that it won’t.

57. CHAIR: Okay.

58. MR LOWE QC: So, sir, I think that concludes all the other outstanding matters, save for one other, and that is the position on the service level agreement. And I should say that Buckinghamshire have asked me to express their support for the case you heard from Warwickshire very recently on the inclusion of costs within that related to those dealing with enquiries from members of the public about HS2 and those related to monitoring Code of Construction Practice guidance, a matter which of course has particular impact on the evidence that we’ve just heard from Aylesbury Vale and Steeple Claydon and the surroundings. So with that said, can I move to make the final submissions for Buckinghamshire and the authorities. Sir, we have reduced these to writing, but I certainly don’t want to read them out to you. I think that would be a waste of this Committee’s precious time, and I will propose to summarise that which is being submitted in writing, which also includes, as I understand it, a list of the outstanding asks, merely for the Committee’s future reference. I don’t propose to go through them now.

59. So if I can begin first of all to join with I think my last witness, last but one, Mr Stevens, to thank the Committee for hearing us and for the scale of the task which we understand the Committee are undertaking. We hope you appreciate that these councils are here seeking to act in the public interest and to identify the problems, issues and opportunities presented to them by this scheme. We’re also, I think, extremely grateful for the way in which you have informally, through the discussions in front of the Committee, prompted us and others into action. And that’s extremely helpful and

hopefully it will lead to resolution of matters without you having to make them expressly in your reports. Of course we are also grateful for the way HS2 has responded positively, particularly last Friday, to outstanding issues, but we are obviously also concerned that that interest will now wane as other parties pick up the spotlight and their petitions are heard, and we do urge them not to return to the stilted and painful dialogue that has unfortunately been the past

60. We acknowledge that some of our evidence does seek resolution through additional provision. We keep in mind what you said last week, sir, about that and that we ask you also to bear in mind that it is a fundamental part of your toolkit to deal with these Bills, and where the land take in the Bill would prove inadequate to provide the appropriate and necessary mitigation, it is the only remedy that the petitioner has unless the landowner voluntarily agrees to sell. So we accept entirely that there has to be a very good reason for making an additional provision, and we hope that where we have sought one we have tried to meet that test.

61. As to the case in detail, I will not repeat it. I would remind you of the particular way in which Buckinghamshire is impacted by HS2 throughout the whole length of the county, and all we seek is that particular care is given, either by way of assurances or your report, that this project will be mitigated sensitively so it doesn’t impede or inhibit the growth that is about to take place and will continue in Buckinghamshire.

62. There were some obvious main areas over which we gave evidence. Steeple Claydon and Calvert was perhaps one of the most substantial. You’ll remember Mr Tett’s slide which indicated the scale and the number of infrastructure events that were going to occur there during the construction period and the legacy that was to remain permanently, the 2,130 hectares I think during the construction period that could be active on the line in this location.

63. We accept and are grateful that HS2 will retain existing physical connections, or some of them, most of them, but in perpetuity you’re only going to get connectivity between these communities, and those communities all have a hub around Steeple Claydon, by crossing HS2. It may be perfectly acceptable to cross it in a car, but think of those who have to cross it on a road, who have to climb up a bridge 10 metres high or whatever it may be, who then have to walk across the active line with

those fast and long trains, and then have to walk over the IMD. We ask you to bear that in mind in particular, and the psychological effects and the intimidation generated by that sort of crossing so that the concerns of the residents, we suggest, are well-founded, and in particular where leisure pursuits form part of the economy of the area, and you’ve heard a lot of evidence about that.

64. So we suggest that there is a compelling case for the provision of mitigation to the community at large by way of compensation in perpetuity. It’s a special case because of the very special and the extreme scale of the impacts on these communities. The community has settled on the funding of the rail halt. It would bring them real benefit, it would bring some benefit to HS2, and it would bring permanent benefit to the residential community and to the economy of the area. The relevant local authority just told you it wishes to enter into discussions to try and find some additional funding. This should be something which with a joint effort with HS2 that should be made possible for this community as some recognition of the particular sacrifices that they are being asked to make in the national interest. That’s all I’ll say about that.

65. Another particular aspect is that which I raise in paragraph 11, and that is the threat of the sustainable placement, as it’s euphemistically called, on Furze Farm. We have not seen any evidence to justify the choice of the site. We have seen no evidence to justify the failure to use the landfill just down the road with the 10 million cubic metres of capacity. We suggest that the appalling threat to the use of this farm even as a temporary dump should be removed at the first opportunity, and if not by HS2 then by this Committee.

66. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Might I just steady you at that point, because I am able to report that the promotor has now decided that it does not require the use of acquisition of the land which has hitherto been earmarked at Shepherds Furze Farm for the deposit of material, either temporarily or permanently, and so that has been reported to the landowner, to the farmers, and I’m able to report that now publically to the Committee.

67. MR LOWE QC: Well, we’re very grateful to hear it.

68. MR MOULD QC (DfT): The only matter that remains outstanding is the location of a balancing pond, which is presently shown on the plans as being within the farmer’s

land. We are now going to review that as part of the detailed work to see whether there is an alternative location for that balancing pond, but that’s, I think I’m right in saying, now the one outstanding matter in relation to that area of land that was hitherto earmarked for use for the deposit of excavated materials.

69. MR LOWE QC: Well, we hope to hear the roll out of even more good news for these local residents. Thank you very much. Ecology. There are three topics: biodiversity offsetting, connectivity of habitat and the ecology review group. You will remember the evidence. I will keep it very brief, but in terms of biodiversity offsetting, this Committee in October last year, that’s a full year ago, was seeking the early publication of the calculation, and we’re still awaiting it. We’re told it’ll be before the close of these hearings. All we urge is that it’s as soon as possible so that it may make some useful contribution to the ongoing debate about mitigation. We want to get it out there rather than keep it holed up in the background of HS2.

70. In terms of connectivity of habitats, we’re not making any criticism of what’s been done for protected species and what is proposed to be done for protected species. All we’re seeking is a slightly wider, more holistic approach to ecology so that other areas of mitigation or potential mitigation can be identified and if necessary dealt with. We’re not on a species specific trail of bats or deer or anything like that. We’re looking for a more holistic approach to the ecological assets of the area as identified by my witness. We would like the review group to be identified as soon as possible in order that it may take a more proactive role.

71. Turning to landscape, I won’t repeat the evidence. All we ask for is dialogue on the basis of exploring some options instead of defending already adopted provisions. If this is going to be an exemplar of good practice we shouldn’t have any areas where the landscaping still needs to be tidied up and potentially more land is needed to be required before this Bill is put to bed. So we suggest that the work must be done now to see if any further land is required before it is too late to act to provide best practice landscaping throughout the route.

72. I have just concluded on transport in the sense of bringing this Committee up to date with the negotiations. As I say, I am worried about when the spotlight strays away from Buckinghamshire everything will be slowed up. These are important matters, very

important for the future planning of Aylesbury that the southwest sector of the link road is made possible, that the opportunity for the linear park is made possible, given the effects that HS2 will have on the western boundary of the town. And its most important also that the other parts of the network that I have just been talking about and identifying as the subject matter of debate are resolved in a responsible way, in the public interest of both parties. So, sir, those are my closing remarks. Thank you very much.

73. CHAIR: Thank you very much, Mr Lowe. Right, we now move on.

74. MR LOWE QC: Yes. I’ll move out.

75. CHAIR: Okay. We now move on to Turweston Parish Council, petition 1444, AP2137 and David Richards is going to deal with that item.

Turweston Parish Council

76. CHAIR: Are you both parish councillors or…?

77. MR RICHARDS: Thank you very much. Yes, good afternoon Chairman and members of the Committee. My name is David Richards. I’m chairman of the parish council and have been for the last 12 years. Foolishly or otherwise I said I would stay as chairman until we resolved all the issues we have in front of us, so may be a lifetime commitment. My wife may have other thoughts about that, but anyway I’ve been a member of the parish council for 16 years. Can I introduce Hazel? The Members who came on the Select Committee visit met Hazel. I was unfortunately not able to see you because I was away, but Hazel will be adding some colour to some of the issues that we wish to bring in front of you today.

78. So the first slide, I think this is the entrance to the village you did not experience, those of you who came on the visit. It’s in fact the entrance to the village from Brackley north, and more about construction traffic later, but would be the entrance, we understand, could be the route for construction traffic coming from the residential camp

in the A43, which I think you saw when you did the Northants visit.

79. Okay, slide number 2. Just to put it into perspective with the parish itself effectively being, in a sense, cleaved in half by the route. To the left of course you’ve got the village, sitting right on the boundary with south Northants. It is bordered on the north west area by the Great River Ouse. That’s the boundary. You saw the bridge on the previous slide. And of course very much closely linked to Brackley, south Northants, but we are of course part of Buckinghamshire. To the right we really have the major recreational routes into the open countryside, with the natural inclination certainly of the villagers and Brackley residents to move through the village, which is why we wish to focus on construction traffic later on. To the southern part, again the Great Ouse takes a turn and we border Oxfordshire, and the Great Ouse, as I said already, forms that boundary as well. Next slide.

80. So I think you always want straight up in front what we want. Consistent with our messages that were given on your Select Committee visit that we wish to retain our Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee playing field in its current location, and in order to achieve that we wish to preserve the maximum useable space on the playing field when the line is operational. A small point but important, relocate the Scouts storage unit permanently or temporarily before construction starts. And finally, not least, if you like, very importantly, no construction traffic to use the village roads.

81. MR CLIFTON-BROWN: Could I ask perhaps could you relate that to your previous slide so we can see where on the map these things are?

82. MR RICHARDS: Absolutely.

83. MR CLIFTON-BROWN: Or another map.

84. MR RICHARDS: Yes. We’re going to show a Google Map picture with the village.

85. MR BELLINGHAM: Can you show which road we come in on?

86. MR RICHARDS: You came in off the – is it the magic finger – off the 222. So you came from Westbury, your previous visit was at Westbury, and then you –

87. MR BELLINGHAM: So we went past Glebe Farm and up –

88. MR RICHARDS: Past Glebe, yes, you came up here and then you turned up to the playing field –

89. MR BELLINGHAM: Which is on the right.

90. MR RICHARDS: – which is on the right. The entrance I was showing you is this road here from Brackley, curving round over the Great Ouse and into the centre of the village.

91. CHAIR: It’s why we arrived early, upsetting some residents I think.

92. MR RICHARDS: Hopefully you got the measure of support –

93. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: And it rained.

94. MS MORRISON: It rained.

95. MR RICHARDS: And it rained, I gather.

96. MS MORRISON: And it was the end of the day for you.

97. MR RICHARDS: Yes. But we took comfort I think, certainly the report back I got was that you took on board the points extremely quickly, so hopefully we can get through this session in a similar time. Okay. Mr Bellingham, is that sufficient?

98. MR BELLINGHAM: That’s perfect.

99. MR RICHARDS: Okay. So next slide please. Right, we just wanted to put a bit of colour, important for the village just to highlight the impacts that we have been experiencing to date. Property blight. Hazel will talk in a minute about the implications of that. We have two properties that are going to be demolished further up from where you visited the playing field, one actually bordering on the playing field, an equestrian business that was established some 20 or so years ago, or maybe a little bit longer, and, if you like, built up as a separate business, including looking after horses for the Queen, so it was a settling down place for horses I think that were brought in prior to going to their trainers, and one further house that effectively disappears into the cutting. So from that point of view obviously quite an impact initially when the village suddenly realised

we were going to have properties demolished.

100. The other one that very much hit the headlines, just to remind you, we have an unoccupied grade II listed house – if we could have the next slide – which hit the news media, local television, was Mrs Harper-Tarr who effectively was going to sell the property to a young couple in the village who are wanting to start a family. Everything was agreed, and, as you can see here, she couldn’t sell it. If we go onto the next slide, because this was the message the couple got from the Woolwich just before Christmas 2012, if I’m correct, giving a valuation of zero on the property. Admittedly work needed doing to it, but if you look in the detailed remarks effectively they were saying because of the location and the proximity to the route that they could do nothing more than value this property at zero because of the implications also of the extra cost.

101. You can imagine the seismic impact that that had on the village in terms of their key asset. An Englishman’s castle or Englishwoman’s castle is their home, and therefore in fact left a rather cloud over what the future was going to be for the village, which we believe we’re very lucky to live in. It’s a wonderful location, and suddenly we find potentially that we don’t have anybody who would be willing to buy the home, and let alone anybody able to get a mortgage.

102. Next slide please. I’m happy to say that Mrs Harper-Tarr eventually was – John Bercow intervened, the house was eventually bought by the Government as part of the extraordinary hardship scheme, and I’m absolutely delighted to say Mrs Harper-Tarr is very comfortably settled into a nursing home and celebrated her 100th birthday in July this year.

103. CHAIR: It also proves that Woolwich was wrong in his estimation, because it clearly got its market value.

104. MR RICHARDS: Yes, they got – eventually.

105. CHAIR: So it wasn’t worth zero?

106. MR RICHARDS: Yes. So the village housing stock. This is the implication in terms of what’s happened on property purchases so far. We have a housing stock of 84. Hazel will talk through these numbers in detail. I just wanted to highlight that we’re

talking at the moment with – as of last week we gathered four more properties that had had the blight notice accepted on them, so we’re now up to potentially 20 or 23 houses including, we estimate, three to four for the Need to Sell scheme, more difficult to get that information because obviously it may be for personal reasons, family reasons that people are going to be applying, but we could be talking about in excess of a quarter of our houses will be effectively owned by the government. Not to make light of it at all, but we could almost say we look as though we’re going to be nationalised in some extent, and maybe the Secretary of State will come and live in one of the houses. This has a big impact. Hazel, can I ask you to carry on?

107. MS MORRISON: Yes. I think before David moves on to slide 8, which deals with Turweston playing field, I’d just like to illustrate some of the social impacts on our community and the concerns of our residents who we’re representing today. Just looking at these figures, David’s mentioned the housing stock is 84 houses, the exceptional hardship scheme seven properties. As you know, that scheme has now closed and a total of 141 properties in the whole of the stage one were completed. So this represents 5% of the properties that were actually sales completed, which is quite significant, I think. The total housing stock also, 26-27%, and possibly growing in the future.

108. Briefly, a little bit about our community. We have a thriving church congregation thanks in no small part to very active church wardens and our parochial church council. We have a busy village hall with regular volunteer activities held there, but that requires an organisational committee. We have a great village team who prepare and serve monthly lunches in the village hall, and during Lent simple weekly Lenten lunches. There are regular coffee mornings with homemade cakes and many people, especially those living alone, really welcome such gatherings. We also have a parish council with quite a large workload too.

109. The dead hand of HS2 is having and will in the future have a huge impact on our lives and our ability to sustain this same level of community activities. 25-26% of our housing stock is likely to come into the ownership, as David said, of the Department for Transport in the next two to three years, and this also includes a substantial amount of grazing land around the village. And probably there will be more to come in the future as others seek to sell under the Need to Sell scheme. It’s a low starter but it’s there and I

think many others will be accessing it in the future. I think this tells a story of huge social change taking place over a very short period of time.

110. Some people, due to the uncertainties of whether they could sell in the future, applied under the exceptional hardship scheme or served blight notices or are considering applying under the Need to Sell, whereas in fact they would have preferred to remain in the village or move on at some future time of their choice. We have welcomed new residents who have moved into the village as a result of these sales, but by the very nature of tenancies many stay for just one year and most are not able to contribute or volunteer in the same way as long-term residents.

111. I think we in the village believe that the impact of blight cannot be understated. For those who do not at present qualify under the Need to Sell or who simply don’t feel able to put themselves through that process, the uncertainties about the future do cause great anxiety. Just knowing that you have the basic right to put your house on the market when you wish is denied to all of us and the result of this can gnaw away at people. This is where the property bond would have made such a difference to us all. We are very well aware that, thanks to HS2, in the next year or two we will have lost or are likely to lose many of the people who make things happen in our village. Given the circumstances and the sheer speed with which these changes are happening, they will be very hard acts to follow in our small community.

112. I hope that I have shown that the social impacts on Turweston are considerable and that they do deserve acknowledgement. We also believe that our requests that we come to you with today are relatively modest. Over to David.

113. MR RICHARDS: Thank you, Hazel. In the next slide I turn to our first key ask, which is in respect of our Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Playing Field. This is a field that is held in trust by the Fields in Trust on behalf of the local community. We, as the parish council, are the managing trustees, which effectively means that the village has to pay for the upkeep of the field on behalf of the charitable Fields in Trust and in terms of money our annual precept is £7000 per year. Some £2500 per year is spent on looking after the playing field, and that is not just for the village. It is a very well widely used facility, particularly with the residents from Brackley, and we will talk about that when we come to construction traffic. Of course, the natural routes into the

footpaths that I mentioned at the beginning mean that this is a very idyllic site where families can have picnics and where there are playground facilities, which I know that the Select Committee saw. So it is very important not just as a village resource but as a local resource for use by residents in our neighbouring villages and, obviously, in Brackley.

114. I almost feel that I should apologise because we felt that we were making significant progress in terms of resolving the particular issue I am going to unfold. We had a recent bilateral meeting on 1 October to try to bring to a head what we had clearly stated was our preferred course of action, but we have not yet been able to resolve those issues, so I think from our perspective we hope to get the support of the Committee, if you are so minded, to be able to get on and resolve this issue, which is very important to us. I know that it is probably small in terms of the workload that has been going on within HS2 dealing with all the issues raised up and down the line, but at the end of the day to spend something like four years trying to get to a resolution makes it wearing on the residents as well as testing the patience of the voluntary parish council.

115. Could we have the next slide, please? This gives the positioning using Google Earth. Just to point out, this was the road the Select Committee came on to the double bend on the corner. Then coming up here, effectively, most of the road is single traffic and you can’t pass with ease on any of the roads. Coming up here is effectively a route into the houses that lie adjacent to Turweston Airfield, and it is a no through road, so for the residents who live up here, who I think live in what amounts to five, six or seven properties, this is their route in and out and obviously potentially the weekly dustbin lorry and whatever delivery lorries may wish to come.

116. This is the equestrian business I talked about, which effectively disappears into the cutting, and this is the house sitting on the corner which, again, sadly disappears into the cutting. That has already been bought by the Department for Transport and the couple who lived there have now moved elsewhere.

117. So, in terms of what we are talking about, this is our existing playing field and this is the proposed new site which we have been offered, I have to say without any real discussion, to potentially replace the existing playing field with this new site.

118. MR BELLINGHAM: This point on the Google map where the line goes?

119. MR RICHARDS: I will show you on the next slide when we focus on powerlines but the line cuts across the top of the playing field.

120. MR BELLINGHAM: It cuts across? It slices off that top right-hand corner?

121. MR RICHARDS: Yes, I will show you on the next slide.

122. MR BELLINGHAM: That will be very helpful.

123. MR RICHARDS: I just first of all wanted to emphasise that we are here representing the village rather than having a multiple number of petitioners from individual villages unless they have specific issues which we may be hearing about elsewhere, but everybody in a sense is united behind the parish council and the work that we have been doing so that we are representing two very, in a sense, common issues on behalf of the whole village, which is obviously this playing field and when we talk about construction.

124. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: Would you say to your residents that we greatly appreciate that? I think it is sensible for them and it is helpful for us.

125. MR RICHARDS: Yes, I absolutely will do. We had our annual meeting on 21 May – I put forward a report every year – and laid out all the issues that we were involved in discussions on and we asked for a mandate. The mandate we were granted unanimously by everybody who attended the meeting and any comments I received from people who couldn’t come to the meeting was that we wished to reject the proposed new site for the playing field but retain the existing playing field and undergrounding of the powerlines. Also, we put on the table the possibility of relocating or extending the green bridge. At our meeting on 1 October we discussed in detail with the promoter the benefits this might give to us and the conclusion was that because there may be a risk of additional noise occurring closer to the houses in the village, that we took that off the table and agreed that that wasn’t a good course of action.

126. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: The green bridge?

127. MR RICHARDS: The green bridge moving. We have a green bridge and it was a question of whether we could move it nearer to the playing field to give a little more

protection.

128. Could we have the next slide, please? This illustrates, as I say, my attempt using Google Earth. I wouldn’t like to say that it was absolutely to scale but directionally it’s correct. So, we have a route coming up from Westbury to the south across the Great Ouse Valley coming up through the corner here – this was where the properties have been demolished – and extending onwards to Radstone. The current powerlines are noted in red. Currently, the overhead powerlines are 132 kilowatts and looked after by Western Power. They are not really high voltage lines looked after by National Grid, for example. I think the point we would like to address is particularly in a sense that the dogleg that was put in when these powerlines were installed in 1968, I think, to the best of our knowledge which I could gather from Western Power, effectively do not cut across the village and certainly do not cut across the playing field because the playing field, as I said, has been there since 1936.

129. As to the deviation which has been proposed, I have to say that when we received the Environmental Statement and the draft Environmental Statement and in our first consultation to say that we were shocked is probably an understatement. The proposal was, ‘The powerlines are being diverted. Temporarily you will lose 40 per cent of the field while we do construction. We will provide you with a temporary facility but what we will then do is reinstate but, by the way, the loss of land might be about 8 per cent’ – that is what was put in the Environmental Statement – ‘but effectively the powerlines will continue to go over the playing field, and by the way that may restrict ball games, cricket, football and flying kites.’ The scouts use the facility and they actually do fly kites. So, you can imagine we were somewhat perplexed by the fact that they could consider diverting the overhead powerlines across the edge of the playing field.

130. Next slide, please. This is what I think the Select Committee visited when they visited the actual playground which we installed in 2002 for the Golden Jubilee and it is an extremely well-used facility. It is not affected by the amount of land required during the construction period, and this is the view across the playing field to the corner. You can see the existing powerlines running behind the playing field and down the back of the village. The loss of land that would now be incurred is across that corner where the cutting comes across there. As I said, the estimation is that we will lose 8% of the land.

131. Next slide, please. I do not want to go through a blow-by-blow account of what we’ve gone through in terms of the bilateral meetings, what was being proposed and how the new playing field came up as a possibility. Suffice it to say we were very open minded in March 2014 when the promoter said, ‘We may be putting into effect the possibility of considering the use of blighted land’ – a blight notice had been accepted – ‘for the possible permanent replacement of the playing field’, and being open minded we said, ‘Well, yes, we’re very happy to listen to what you’ve got to say. Come back with the options’, and we reinforced that with subsequent messages. Suffice it to say that not until, in fact, February 2015 did we actually get, in a sense, formal notification that they were intending to put in AP2 provision and hence what came into AP2 for the moving of the playing field to the new location here.

132. At that point we were very clearly focused. We had already signalled to them in January 2015 to say, ‘We get the inclination’, or ‘We gather locally’ – being a village, people talk – ‘that this may be a potential location’ and we signalled very clearly that we had great reservations, or reservations, about the use of this site. Subsequent to that and prior to our bilateral meeting in April 2015 with the promoter we met with Fields in Trust and drew up a specification or the reasons why we didn’t feel happy at all about the potential use of this field, not least because in terms of the part of the Glebe property, this is quite a slope with mature trees. It is rough pasture land and, importantly, it is part of the protected views of the conservation area, hence the arrows in the corner.

133. In terms of conservation areas, certainly the local council policy is all about protecting the whole of the conservation area. I think that the promoter’s response document seemed to suggest that because it wasn’t anywhere near our 19 Grade II listed buildings or our two Grade II* listed buildings, and they were shielded, that there should be no problem in putting a playing field there. However, we would maintain that this is very important to the whole setting of the conservation area and I think if you wanted to look at the slide in the promoter’s pack, which is 8755, it shows the cross-section of the amount of work that would be required in order to bring that field into use. That is the replacement playing field here. Looking at it, I think that that is a sizeable levelling out. It implies the slope. I think that the edge here, if you look at the scale on the side, is something like a four metre high levelling of the field. To us that is really not

acceptable. The village were absolutely emphatic about that, that it would destroy the view, but also to provide a field in terms of the test that the Fields in Trust do, which is quality, accessibility and size, it appears it is a larger plot. It is narrower. We like our current field because it’s not quite square but it’s pretty level and at the thought of moving to this site, with the villagers’ support we clearly made up our mind in the summer and communicated that to the promoter.

134. The next slide, please. All I want to summarise in terms of the Environmental Statement is that we got to the point of actually persuading the promoter in our bilateral meeting that they should provide us with costings for diverting the powerlines but putting them underground and this is what they provided us with. These are not our drawings, whatever ‘fit for condition’ there means, but the diversion of the powerlines coming off the existing route you saw on my sketch or on Google Earth showing diversion of the powerlines clearly going straight across the corner of the playing field, or not even the corner. What they gave us costings for – I will summarise those in a minute – shows the undergrounding of a short section but they’ve also done a costing for the deviation of the line right back to where they were going to originally move the powerlines to facilitate the cutting.

135. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: Would that be done by moles or would you need to dig a trench?

136. MR RICHARDS: You would need to dig a trench to take the powerlines, 132 kilowatt lines. Fields in Trust have produced an example for us in Worthing where that has been done on one of their recreation grounds, so it is not uncommon. In fact in urban areas a lot of the power cables were put underground. I had discussions with Western Power and then it was decided by the promoter that it was best that it was all coordinated by them. The view I got from them initially was, ‘We can do this. There will be extra cost’, and this is what the promoter has provided us with, if we could have the next slide. These are not our estimates. These are the promoter’s estimates. The cost of overground deviation, as in the Hybrid Bill Scheme, was just over £2 million. If we undergrounded the entire diverted section we are talking about £4.5 million. If we underground the shorter section under the playing field, we are talking of just under £3 million. We focused on the incremental costs versus what is in the Hybrid Bill, so about £1 million for the shorter section and round about £2.5 million versus the entire

diverted section.

137. What they also undertook in our meeting in April this year, at the end of April, was to do a table of cost benefit versus how much is it going to cost them to move us to the new site. If we could go to the next slide, this is construction of what we are talking about. So, the entire diverted section would be £2.5 million. This is the saving for not moving the playing field – in other words, to re-establish all the facilities, all the levelling and all the construction work that is necessary versus the resale value of the Glebe being enhanced because, of course, it would not have the playing field on a great portion of its land, and it would be worth about £1.2 million. Looking at the net cost or saving in terms of the short diversion, it would actually be cheaper, taking into account, of course, that they haven’t included these; they haven’t provided us with those. Maybe they have a view on what those would be, but we don’t think it would be as significant as the cost of undergrounding powerlines – than the cost of doing the whole deviation of about £1 million. So, we could be in a situation where maybe for the first time we have the possibility of reaching the conclusion where we are not necessarily saving money against the original scheme but getting into a position, certainly on this aspect, of a cost- neutral space.

138. We would very much like to push for the total deviation, not least because it would provide added protection for the visual impact on the conservation area, which is all very important, I think, for the electricity industry because they observe what are called the Holford Rules, which were instituted in 1959 by Lord Holford, or who then became Lord Holford. They are the key rules for powerlines being put up, which was obviously a big expansion. They basically indicate that one of the key points is that you do not take them across sensitive areas, you don’t affect conservation areas and I would have said, clearly, you don’t put them over recreational land. So, this just does not make sense to us at all. So, that is enough of that.

139. The next slide, please. In summary, what we would very much like the Committee to support us on is that we would like those powerlines undergrounding for us to be able to assure that we stay on the existing playing field and we are hoping that you will make that recommendation to the promoter, maybe to further discussions with us so that we can resolve this issue.

140. A small item is scouts’ storage but we have to look in detail at the plans. This is the storage unit for the scouts in which they store all their camping equipment and in fact they use the field quite extensively. We just need an assurance or some comfort that, because it includes the construction land, they will still be able to access their building. Perhaps the solution is that you can move it, or temporarily move it, or whatever. That is a small point, but it is obviously important to our very active scout group.

141. The next slide, please. I sent in a letter of support that we received very late from the Fields in Trust and maybe I missed the cut-off date but it very much backs what we are asking for. They are really saying very much that, because we are the managing trustees they as the Fields in Trust under the patronage of the Queen and the president, the Duke of Cambridge –

142. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: Is it just straight, unvarnished support for you?

143. MR RICHARDS: It is straight unvarnished support for our decision, yes. Obviously, as I have said earlier, we have involved them from the beginning because we are not the owners of the land and they have to report back to their board.

144. Perhaps I could just focus finally on construction traffic, again to indicate the narrowness of the roads coming in over the Great Ouse coming from the Brackley North end. As I said, this is where a lot of the construction traffic from the camp would be coming in up past our pub, the Stratton Arms, into the village. This is coming to the village green where you would have come down. The Select Committee on their visit came down this road and turned right. This is the village green. It would be turning left. We have a picture of Hazel and two dogs and another resident, just indicating the size of the roads. Effectively, this is a pedestrian route used not least by the village. Hazel will now talk a little bit more about that.

145. MS MORRISON: The issue of no construction traffic through Turweston was discussed last week with Buckinghamshire County Council but we understand that they have not yet had an assurance from HS2 on this. So, we would like to add some of our local knowledge here to seek to achieve what we are looking for here.

146. CHAIR: Is construction traffic going through the village?

147. MR MOULD QC (DfT): No heavy construction traffic. That is going along the road to the south. In a moment – I can do it now – I am able to offer an assurance as regards cars and light goods vehicles. The essence of that is that the Secretary of State is willing to assure that he will require the nominated undertaker, as part of developing detailed travel plans under the Code of Construction Practice, to take steps to discourage HS2 construction traffic from using roads through Turweston village other than for essential purposes.

148. CHAIR: That is about as good as you get. Essentially, they can’t say ‘never’ because otherwise the one vehicle that goes the wrong way suddenly becomes a big issue but they will do all they can to avoid construction traffic.

149. MR RICHARDS: I gather that that is still in discussion with Bucks County Council.

150. MR MOULD QC (DfT): It is on the record now.

151. CHAIR: It is on the record now. That is an assurance given.

152. MR RICHARDS: Okay. We did a little bit of research into all the assurances that have been given. In 443, referring to Burton Green Church of England Primary School, there seems to be an all-encompassing assurance that has been given on Hobbs Lane – that may be one road; we only have one road – by HS2 associated light goods vehicles and heavy goods vehicles in connection with the works, so we are not trying to set a precedent but there has been an all-encompassing assurance which has already been granted.

153. MR MOULD QC (DfT): To give you an example, if I can step in here, let’s suppose that we end up changing our proposals for taking the electricity lines across the playing field. I am going to come back on that in a moment, but let’s suppose, for the sake of this point. That would undoubtedly at least potentially involve the need to bring some HS2 construction traffic into the village to undertake some works. If we were to give an assurance that we would bring no HS2 construction traffic whatsoever into the village, short of some as yet unknown means of achieving that, we would find ourselves unable to deliver the railway in accordance with this Bill and that is not a state of affairs that I think is in the public interest.

154. MR RICHARDS: Can I respond to that in terms of what is already effectively the works that they are requiring, whether it is undergrounding or overgrounding?

155. MR MOULD QC (DfT): That is precisely the point.

156. MR RICHARDS: Yes. Hazel?

157. MS MORRISON: Just very briefly, to get a view of the sort of organisations and people that are using the road, could we go on to slide 20? This just underlines the fact that we have the support of Aylesbury Vale, Bucks County Council, the town council in Brackley and South Northants on this question of no construction traffic. The Brackley masterplan which was drawn up in 2011 notes a lack of leisure facilities in Brackley and specifically seeks to create safe inner tracks of pedestrian linkages to the countryside acknowledging the value of the Turweston loop. If you remember, one of the earlier slides showed that Brackley, although it is the other side of the county boundary, is very much part of our community and Turweston is used as a leisure route for many of the people from Brackley. The slide also reminds us that there are a lot of cycling, walking and equestrian events. We have seven riding establishments in the area which regularly exercise their horses around the village and use the bridleways to Turweston Airfield and the Westbury circular ride. If you look, the thing about Brackley is that you can come either under or over the A43 safely in order to visit Turweston. You can visit the pub or the river or picnic on the playing fields, as David said earlier. Also, by going through the village where you came off at the playing field, if you continue along the rights of way from there you can access a whole network of rights of way stretching over towards Silverstone and via the long-distance footpath called the Palladian Way which takes you on to Stowe and Buckingham.

158. On the logos here, obviously John Bercow is petitioning tomorrow and will be able to also speak on our behalf. Walking for Health is a particular interest for me. It was set up by Macmillan Cancer Support and the Ramblers to offer people who perhaps wouldn’t walk on their own the chance to walk with others and to make social contacts in the community. I am a walk leader for them and we are based in Brackley. Our Turweston walks are really popular. They offer reasonably traffic-free roads through the lovely village. This Wednesday, for example, we will be walking from Brackley through Turweston up to the airfield where we have coffee and cakes for the walkers.

There are often 30 or more walkers. Some are in their late eighties but, with the threat of increased traffic volumes I do not believe that we could safely choose these sort of walks for groups of this size. I think that is all I have to say on roads.

159. One other small point which I would add is that in our original petition we spoke at clause 53 of the impact of HS2 on Turweston Manor grasslands. This remains a great concern to us but it is going to be covered by the Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust in their petition yet to be heard. So, I just wanted to make sure that that wasn’t forgotten. Thank you for your time. Let me know if you have any questions and if not, back to David for the final slide.

160. MR RICHARDS: The final slide is our list of asks. We would obviously like support for retaining our Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Playing Field rejecting the new location. To preserve the maximum usable space we dispense with deep bore tunnels. We have dispensed with extending the green tunnel or moving the green tunnel and we are literally back to saying what is an absolute must for us, which is the undergrounding of the cables. We would like those cables undergrounding back to where the deviation starts. Relocating the scouts is a small issue but we have that comfort from the E6 Information Paper and, as we now gather, we have a commitment to no construction traffic apart from maybe essential traffic. Thank you very much.

161. CHAIR: Thank you. Mr Mould?

162. MR MOULD QC (DfT): There are two or three points, if I may. First of all, I have been asked just by way of context to update the Committee with regard to Radstone. You will recall that when I last spoke to you about Radstone we were reviewing whether there was a case for moving the line away from Radstone and I reported that that would inevitably involve moving the line closer to Turweston. The proposals that have recently been published in AP4 for Radstone do not involve any horizontal movement of the line. It remains on its alignment as shown in the Bill, but what we do propose is to provide a 5 metre high noise barrier which will extend some 800 metres along the eastern side of the line as it passes by Radstone. Our assessment of that predicts that that will achieve a significant improvement in the noise environment for a number of properties which were shown as being affected by the railway. More of that, no doubt, later because those who live in Radstone will obviously be reviewing the

additional provision carefully to see whether that satisfies their concerns or whether they want to raise further matters.

163. The second point is that I was asked by the petitioners today if the promoter would acknowledge the community impact on Turweston of the coming of the HS2 railway. I am very happy to acknowledge that and to make two points in response. The first is that the Secretary of State’s package of compensation measures, including initially the Exceptional Hardship Scheme but latterly the Need to Sell Scheme and other components of that package are designed to ameliorate that impact. One of the ideas, as you know from earlier petitions, is that it is a means of trying to persuade people that they do not need to go.

164. The other point I would make is a reference to the local Environmental Management Plans. I have made clear on previous occasions, not least in the context of Brackley Town Council’s presentation to you before the General Election, that the promoter expects that the nominated undertaker will engage with parish councils in the development of those local Environmental Management Plans. They are designed to enable local knowledge and concerns about the impact of the scheme, particularly during construction on local areas, to be taken into account in the development of detailed proposals under the Code of Construction Practice. There are other matters too but I shall not take trouble to delay you by rehearsing old ground.

165. Turning then to the issues that are before you, I do not think I will say more now, unless you want me to, about the issue of construction traffic. I am very happy to confirm that the relocation of the scout hut will be something that we will look to do in a way that meets the reasonable requirements of the local community.

166. In terms of the playing fields themselves, I wonder if we might just put up P8753. I will set out the choices as I see it and then it is really for the Committee, obviously, to decide whether it shares the view that I put in my submission. On this plan you see shown in orange the playing field in its current location and you see in pink the replacement playing field that has been put forward and is being promoted under additional provisions. As you can see, a proportion of the existing playing field is required for the construction of the railway. Then there is a proposal to route a high voltage wire between two re-positioned pylons over another section of the playing field.

167. No one is arguing today that the area of the playing field that is required for the railway itself is able to be avoided. The dimensions I am instructed are as follows. the area of the playing field in its current form is some two hectares. That reduces to some 1.5 hectares if one takes the land required for the railway in the north-eastern corner. If you then exclude the area over by the powerlines it reduces to 1.55 hectares.

168. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: Could you back up a bit? If you just take the land that is needed for the cutting for the railway –

169. MR MOULD QC (DfT): That is 1.85.

170. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: It is 1.85? We misheard it as 1.5.

171. MR MOULD QC (DfT): I need to be clearer in my exposition. I do apologise. No, it is two: 1.85 and 1.55. And, of course, it would be strictly inaccurate to regard that area of some 0.3 hectares, which is additional land which is required if one is… It would be wrong, inaccurate, to assume that that ceases to be available because of course the land itself will continue to be available. Those using it will need to be careful that they don’t do things that are likely to cause health and safety problems.

172. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: Such as flying a kite?

173. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Yes, exactly. The balance of the land is unaffected by the railway. We do not take powers to acquire it. Whether or not HS2 comes, it will remain in the ownership of those who presently own it and use it. We propose, therefore, to add to the open space resource available to the parish of Turweston the entirety of the area of the purple land which is shown on the plan so there would be a net increase in open space that is available. That is an area that amounts to some 2.67 hectares of open space which, as you saw, we would grade and make available for use.

174. There was a concern raised about the impact that that might have on the historic setting of the village. However, it is important to bear in mind that although there would be a degree of regrading, that would be a matter in itself for discussion as to how far that was required by the local community, but it will, of course, remain open land. There is no suggestion that it will be built upon so any effect that making that land available for sports and recreation would have on setting would necessarily be relatively

limiting in that respect, and it would be made available to the local community at no cost.

175. So, the net result of the scheme proposals in their current form is a very substantial net increase in the open space and playing field resource that is available to the community balanced against the fact that there would be some 0.3 hectares of the existing facility that would have a powerline. In terms of cost, as I think was fairly pointed out, if one was to assume that one sought to reduce the costs of the alternative to that which is the minimum, that is to say to assume that one kept the undergrounding to that which was strictly needed to avoid the playing fields, if one makes an allowance for those extra over costs that were not included in the costing that was shown to you, I think the sensible assumption is that the cost balance would be neutral.

176. So, for a neutral cost balance our proposal would leave the community, certainly in terms of area, with a substantially enhanced open space and playing field resource. I do not seek to avoid the point but that would of course involve a loss or diminished usage of some 0.3 hectares of the existing field, but I would ask the Committee to consider whether in fact that solution that we have put forward on balance is the more attractive one. I say that knowing that the preference of the local community at the moment is for the undergrounding. However, that at least, in my submission, explains to you the reasons why we feel that the proposal that we put forward is, on balance, the right one.

177. CHAIR: Mr Richards?

178. MR MOULD QC (DfT): I would just say one other point. Our proposal also enables a playing field of at least the size of the current field to remain available to the community without interruption through construction of the HS2 project.

179. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: Just to be clear in my mind, I think the area of the football pitch is about 2.6 or 2.8 hectares. If what we are hearing is that the promoters think that offering the replacement playing field is better for the parish council and the village, that is something about which I am sure they can go on having discussions with them. From our point of view, given that our job is to hear petitioners and listen to the promoter’s response, if following those discussions the parish council and those who speak for the village say that they would still prefer to have a slightly diminished

existing playing field having lost 0.15 hectares with the cable powerlines going underground at least by the playing field, I am not sure that the promoters would agree to that but maybe that is a matter that we ought probably to leave for continued discussions and then someone could report back to us.

180. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Yes. One often wonders whether these matters will be quite in the way that one puts them, but the way I put it is the way in which I would certainly invite the parish council to consider it. Certainly, many people might suggest that that involves in fact a net gain.

181. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: It clearly has a net gain of land.

182. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Yes.

183. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: Whether it is a net gain of cost to the parish council where a considerable proportion of their income goes on it, is a separate issue. I think, Chairman, we have probably got to the stage where private discussion between the parties might be better and someone could then report back to us.

184. MR MOULD QC (DfT): I am very happy with that.

185. CHAIR: You said that £2,000 worth of your rental value goes on the current playing field?

186. MR RICHARDS: We spend roughly £2,500 per year. One of the main reasons for not accepting the new field is because we will return. Fields in Trust will not be moving us from the existing playing field and we will have to continue to have the responsibility to maintain it. Our reaction was, the first time we heard this proposal, that from the villagers’ perspective we are talking about probably using at least 70 to 80 per cent of our current budget trying to maintain these two fields. That is one of the reasons we rejected it. We are very happy, as we said in our mandate, which has been agreed by the villagers, to accept a smaller existing playing field but under the condition that the powerlines are underground.

187. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: There is a road between the two fields isn’t there?

188. MS MORRISON: Yes, the narrow road where the bus went up.

189. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: The other question in my mind is whether it might be possible for a small part of this purple mauve colour to make up for the small part of a hectare which will be cut off for the cutting, which might then become a small playground for younger children. It may be that some compromise agreement could be possible, which would allow the promoter to keep most of the land with that property.

190. MR MOULD QC (DfT): I had not understood that there was concern about the ongoing maintenance costs of the area we were putting forward. We thought that an area at least the size of that which was presently available would be a sensible thing to do, but clearly, if a smaller area would be preferred because of the cost of maintaining a larger area, we can certainly have a conversation about that.

191. CHAIR: Are there any final comments, Mr Richards?

192. MR RICHARDS: We are very happy to have a conversation, but our fixed view – we have made up our mind – is that we want to retain what we have, and we think the easiest way to achieve the maximum is by putting the cable underground. As to the thought of adding extra land, we may choose not even to partake in that as a parish council. As a managing trustee, we may well say we reject any involvement in looking after that land.

193. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: You are the managing trustee. I would be surprised if the actual landowners took a view different from yours, but we have to recognise that they have a standing.

194. MR RICHARDS: Yes, and they very much agree with the managing trustee, but, as you say, if there are further discussions to be had we would like those to be resolved as soon as possible.

195. CHAIR: A few more gifts like that and you will go bust. Thank you very much.

196. We now move on to 1540: Westbury Parish Council

Westbury Parish Council

197. MR BANKS: My name is Jeremy Banks. I am here to represent Westbury parish as a resident, parish council member and head of a school within the village community.

I intend to deliver my main arguments in a passage I have in front of me while this slide is on the screen and, following that, use a PowerPoint to drill down into those points a little to try to give a little more colour to our relatively modest thoughts on the matter.

198. We are a small community of 550 people and 160 houses. The village dates back to Saxon times. Our village is situated on a ridge with the valley stretching out to the south and east where the Great Ouse winds its way through patches of plantation and fields. You will see in due course that the particular geography of the area with these three valleys is particularly significant with respect to our requests and consideration for wind direction.

199. The most popular leisure pursuit of our inhabitants in our 2012 village survey was walking for the young, old and those in between. On any day of the week you will see many walkers heading into the valley on the south east side of the village where HS2 is planned to stretch across 400 metres from the village, including a 250-metre long stretch and a viaduct across the valley.

200. Our objections to HS2 are laid out clearly in our petition. Despite numerous meetings with HS2, the only concession we have gained is keeping open Featherbed Lane during construction. I acknowledge a letter received dated 18 June 2015 from Roger Hargreaves in which all of that was outlined, plus some little points regarding limitations on software and concerns we have because of that.

201. In addition to ensuring areas of planting not directly on the line are protected, finally we also would like to discuss no net loss in the habitat that is there today.

202. Our asks are neither big nor unreasonable; they are modest in light of the loss. We consider the losses to include the following: heavy traffic problems during construction; dust and dirt carried in the prevailing winds damaging buildings and paintwork; sound nuisance; loss of informal footpaths and safe cycling routes.

203. People have already been affected by property values. One family in Westbury has been unable to move; another two have been unable to remortgage their homes; several are approaching retirement age in the next 10 years and are concerned about their ability to sell property and downsize, their property being a key part of their pension.

204. Added to that is the loss of the quality of life. The landscape for many is part of their recipe for well-being: the joy of the abundance of barn owls hooting in the evening and groups of hares boxing in the field, set to become a concrete material store for HS2. The route of the roe deer and their young in the spring is also important to us. These things are a source of both joy and comfort to people, compared with those who live in these parts who listen to the toll of Big Ben. This is something we will miss enormously. We are not asking for much, just to be treated fairly so we do not indirectly pick up the true cost of HS2 on top of the loss of our existing quality of life.

205. Turning my attention to the slide, I hope to be able to colour your thinking a little with some images of the village which I hope will help. The slide on the screen is the central village, with the main street at the top. It is important to note that Westbury is not a Cotswoldesque pretty little village; there are a number of small and affordable houses in the village as well, as you see on the left and right.

206. Westbury’s needs are as follows. We believe that more bunding, planting and retention of existing plantation is required; the extension of sound barriers on the flood plain and the west of Featherbed Lane; the avoidance of net loss of amenities and leisure pursuits; and the protection of our existing wild life.

207. Moving on to some specifics, the image you see here is important. To the east of the village you can see the valley coming in from the south east. The arrow depicts the route of HS2 south of the village where planting and bunding is requested. If you look at the paperwork provided on the operations, in P8776 you will see that that photograph is taken just beyond the limit of the parish boundary in Westbury looking out across to the south and south west where it says ‘The Bridleway’. No elevation is shown, but you can see that that cuts straight across.

208. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: Point to it with your finger.

209. MR BANKS: The image is taken from up here, and it is looking out across this area here. One point we will come to shortly is that, while you can see a great deal of plantation here and here, with respect to the prevailing wind from the south west we are concerned that the noise will be coming in through here, with a complete lack of plantation there. Exactly the same request was made by Mixbury Parish Council who were in attendance at one of these sessions not so long ago. This leaves the village and

villagers very exposed to the prevailing wind from the south west and subsequently more noise from HS2. The current proposal for bunding does not stretch that far.

210. Moving to the next slide and trying to illustrate this for you, we are now moving further west of the village. The blue line is HS2. The black line represents a number of points. The main black line that you see is a footpath along the banks of the Great Ouse, but, most importantly, it shows the plantation already in place. One of our requests today is that we have an assurance that as little as possible of that plantation is removed so it can continue to do the job it currently does.

211. Moving on to the next slide, we are now in a valley to the south west and west of the village on the way back to Brackley. The blue line depicts HS2 and the black line depicts a popular footpath used by many of the parishioners within Westbury. As to the blue arrow, although there are lots of emotive stories, this is an area where many parishioners have been delighted to see hares, roe deer, muntjac and their young, and that spot is destined to be a concrete and material storage area. We are seeking reassurances today that in due course that habitat will not be lost. Noting the commitment already made about owls, for instance, we want further assurances about these populations as well.

212. Going to the next slide, we are now closer to the village of Westbury and the larger of the two arrows on the left depicts the edge of the village. We want the plantation left to help with the environmental screen you can see in the background. The important point about the south-westerly wind is worth raising. I want to talk in a moment or two about the noise identified through the surveys that have been completed. I seek answers as to why it would appear the prevailing wind has not been given any consideration with respect to noise levels predicted in this part of Buckinghamshire. We require more bunding, planting and extensions to the sound barriers. Ideally, we would like barriers to be in the Japanese style. I was not an expert in these until a colleague in the parish council showed these to me. They appear to be exactly what we need, noting that the viaduct will be seen from quite some distance.

213. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: What does Japanese screening look like?

214. MR BANKS: I believe it is screening in which plants are allowed to grow up it so it blends into the background. With the lovely rural setting, our preference is that this is

included. The upper thin blue line is more personal to me as that represents the corner of the games fields of Beachborough School which are also used by Westbury Cricket Club.

215. Moving to the next slide, the topography you see there is even closer. This is very much on the edge of Westbury; it is the western corner of Westbury. You can see those pitches more clearly. The blue line shows them. The lower part, just on the left, shows the gardens of Westbury residents in Mill Lane. The far right blue line is HS2, and the black line is a popular footpath. All of these are between the track and the western side of the village.

216. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: The maps I am looking at show part of the Great Ouse clearly and in some parts not. How close to Westbury does the Great Ouse get?

217. MR BANKS: The Great Ouse goes through the school grounds and part of Westbury.

218. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: It obviously runs under the viaduct to Westbury?

219. MR BANKS: Correct.

220. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: And we have all of those mills there.

221. MR BANKS: Yes; all of that is intrinsically part of the village.

222. Moving to the summary, a colleague in the parish council prepared this PowerPoint for us today. Her opening bullet point in the summary was that we were a forward-thinking community. I asked her to elaborate it a little. There are few services in the village these days. We have a national lottery project being built with a new village hall. We are a community where the school is the largest employer. Within the village we have those who commute to London, all the way through to those who have stayed in the village and are becoming increasingly elderly.

223. However, it has also been a hotspot for development. Forty per cent of new homes growth in the village has occurred in the past 10 years. All of these are on the western side of the village and are very significant in terms of the mitigation I am asking for today.

224. We will sustain significant loss to our rural way of life with the building and development of HS2, and we need fair mitigation and support to maintain our existing wildlife. We want more bunding, planting and barriers to protect us from sound and visual pollution. I look forward to any questions that may be raised on the matter.

225. CHAIR: Thank you.

226. MR BELLINGHAM: We will hear from Mr Mould in a moment. How many of your requests have been answered so far? Have you found your discourse and liaison with HS2 productive?

227. MR BANKS: Yes, very good.

228. MR BELLINGHAM: You have made some progress since the Committee came to the village?

229. MR BANKS: Indeed. The petition originally put forward included a number of items which were dealt with. For instance, I cite the closure of Featherbed Lane. That was resolved. We were delighted about that. Equally, there were some IT queries. It was implied that some paths and roads were closing, but they were not. It has been very useful, and the letter from Roger Hargreaves in June confirmed all of that. The dialogue has been very good. We are not asking a great deal. It is important for us to make the case that this is a service we are not going to be able to use ourselves. Many of us get it, yet we have to deal with the visual and sound effects. We believe that simple bunding, planting and sound barriers is not too much to ask for.

230. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Let me run through briefly what the scheme proposes and leave it there, if I may. First, we have pulled together on the plan the main elements of the environmental mitigation proposed under the Bill as the railway passes in the vicinity of Westbury. To take you through that very quickly, moving from south to north, at 1 you have proposals for landscape planting in the form of hedgerows for screening purposes; at 2 you have a belt of scattered tree cover within the valley, which is designed to filter views from Westbury towards the viaduct. I should point out that the area has been reduced as a result of an assurance we have given to a landowner to limit the land take to run along his field boundary on the line I am pointing out with the arrow. We are satisfied that that will not compromise the effectiveness of that element

of the mitigation proposals.

231. At 3 we have landscape earthworks and false cuttings in the conventional way to provide screening and landscape integration. At 4 we have landscape planting in the form of new woodland planting to seek to break up the mass of the earthworks alongside the railway line at this location and assist its screening.

232. At 5 we have landscape earthworks which are proposed to integrate the Westbury viaduct as the railway passes over the River Great Ouse into the landscape. At 6 we have further landscape earthworks for the purpose of integrating the design into the landscape. At 7 we have further planting. At 8 we have an area of habitat creation, which is part of the compensation for the impact of the scheme on ecological resources. This is part of the overall balance towards the no net loss objective which you have heard a lot about over the course of your hearings. That is the proposal.

233. The promoters’ position is that that provides the basis through detailed design for an effective programme of environmental mitigation to accommodate the village of Westbury.

234. Going to visual impact, you were shown briefly P8776 which is a series of cross- sections. I remind you of it fleetingly. Cross-sections 1 to 3 move southwards along the line, and the fourth cross-section is just to the north. That gives you a cross-section along the balancing points and so forth.

235. If you turn over to P8777, you can see the interrelationship between the western edge of the village and the railway as it passes along to the west. 1A, 2A and 3A go southwards. There will be some filtered views of the railway. Note the distance. We are talking about distances well above half a kilometre in relation to those views. Existing and proposed vegetation will help to screen and filter the views of the railway.

236. Moving to the north, at 4A you can see that the distance there is 800 metres. You can see that the topography is such that there is likely to be very little opportunity for views from the village towards the railway.

237. If I turn to noise, I pick up the point raised by the petitioner about the alignment to the south west. At P8791 we see the LOAEL and SOAEL noise contours in the

conventional way. You can see that under the proposed design, including the earthworks I showed you a few moments ago, by conventional noise barriers of some 1.4 metres to be provided along the eastern side of the railway, as it is on viaduct through this location, we are able to keep the LOAEL contour well away from the western edge of the village. Therefore, the design objective has been achieved in that respect.

238. To pick up the Japanese design, I do not think that is one we intend to incorporate within the detailed design of the railway – that is to say, incorporating planting into noise barriers – because there is a concern that it can compromise over time the effectiveness of the noise barrier, but you can imagine that, where you have a 1.4-metre barrier that is built into the structure of a viaduct, the idea of accommodating planting into that structure is not necessarily a desirable design solution. I think that is unlikely to be deployed in this location, but the barrier’s effectiveness in keeping down noise levels and well away from the village is apparent from this predictive map.

239. If we go to P8792 to see the way in which the degree of noise change diminishes as one gets towards the village, here even in terms of the low degree of noise change we are able to keep the contour well away from the western edge of the village through the design of the railway in this location. That applies to the line that the petitioner drew broadly on the south-westerly alignment across to the area where, because of the elevated nature of the railway at that point, the noise contour bulges out a little further than elsewhere in this vicinity, even allowing for that.

240. The question was raised whether we had built the prevailing winds from the south west into the noise model. I think this has been covered before. Just to confirm it, yes, we have. The model assumes the prevailing winds from the south in keeping with the prevailing position in the British Isles.

241. Finally, on P8783 the petitioner began with concerns about impacts on footpaths and rights of way. This shows you the construction phase. You are familiar with this because a lot of this was raised by the parish of Mixbury. You can see that there are some localised temporary diversions while the railway is being built. They are denoted by the crossed and dashed notation here, but they are relatively localised even during the construction phase.

242. If we turn to P8784, we can see that when the railway has been built and we are

returning, as far as we can, to the pre-existing position as far as connectivity is concerned the degree of diversion on a permanent basis is very localised. Broadly speaking, we are able to maintain that. I know that is important to this community because, for example, the Westbury Ring is a well-known local public right of way.

243. All in all, there will be some impacts. We are not pretending that the railway will be noiseless; we have said that people will hear trains, but our position is that in terms of environmental mitigation, both visual and landscape, and the impact on local wildlife, amenity and the community the scheme is achieving an acceptable outcome, and there is no case for any change.

244. CHAIR: Do you have any brief final comments?

245. MR BANKS: Can I return to the proposed environmental mitigation slide that the promoters used? For the record, I acknowledge that Westbury is delighted with the points that have been identified, but we disagree on the extent of the coverage along the track north and south. To repeat, in area 1 plantation is completely absent in comparison with the areas beyond those we have already seen. I simply do not see how plantation cannot be extended to the area identified at 1. Westbury is here; there is a clear visual effect from the photograph I showed you earlier all the way across here to the track. It strikes me that, while this is great, there is a need for plantations in the area at 1, and I do not think that has been fairly considered.

246. With regard to the cross-section that was shown – forgive me, I did not jot down the reference – may I have that on the screen? I acknowledge the distance of half a kilometre which will stretch out across here and along, but that is not really our point. We have not focused too much upon the village centre; our petition has been focusing on the impact on the countryside and the area within that half-kilometre in the photographs you have seen today. Therefore, I put it to you that it is in these areas where we need greater consideration of bunding, barriers and so on. I do not deny that the plantations to be put in will be good, but I do not think it can be fairly said that the village is half a kilometre away and therefore it is not an issue. It is very much an issue in terms of how parishioners are making use of the land.

247. With respect to the noise effect, probably the sound level slide is the best one to go to. If the software used is designed to account for the south-westerly direction, I

cannot see how the western and eastern side of the railway is responding differently, which, if the wind was coming from the southwest, it certainly is. Let me draw a comparison. To the north of Westbury is Silverstone. When the wind is in reverse there is not a Sunday when we are not sitting at home listening to the noise of cars going round the track. As the crow flies, that is about 10 to 15 miles away. Therefore, one assumes there should be some recognition within the software that wind from the southwest will have a greater effect. I cannot believe that the software is correct in this instance.

248. I acknowledge the bulge which accommodates the village. Great. Of course, I am delighted about that, but our parish extends to this eastern side. As with plantation, there is nothing to stop the noise coming straight over. Therefore, I disagree that adequate provision has been made.

249. CHAIR: Thank you very much for putting your points, Mr Banks. We move on to petition 1221 of Melissa Laing, who is in person

Melissa Laing

250. MS LAING: Could we have slide 4163(1)? Good afternoon, Chair. My name is Melissa Laing. I am the sole proprietor of MCL Fitness based in Hyde Heath. MCL Fitness teaches Nordic walking and outdoor workouts in and around the Chilterns. I have in excess of 250 clients, with an age range of lower teens to 88, exercising regularly.

251. I believe that my professional role means my situation is entirely different from any other petitioner. As far as I am aware, no one else teaches as many outdoor classes or leads as many Nordic walks in the area of outstanding natural beauty of the south Chilterns.

252. I am well aware that the Committee has heard on numerous occasions why an extended tunnel to Wendover is needed. However, what I hope to do in the next few minutes is make you aware of the massive impact HS2 in its present form will have upon my clients and the health and well-being of them and the community in which they live.

253. May I have the next slide, please? MCL Fitness is about bringing the community together through fitness to improve the health of my clients. I have run this business for seven years, focusing primarily on Nordic walking and also outdoor workouts within the area of the south Chilterns. As mentioned earlier, I have over 250 clients participating in regular exercise. I also volunteer and lead walks for the Chilterns Society and a group of adults with learning difficulties.

254. I started teaching Nordic walking at the request of Bucks County Council as it wanted to offer more accessible forms of exercise for the community. This also suited my love of exercising outdoors. It is not an exaggeration for me to say that Nordic walking has changed people’s lives.

255. I have continued to grow the business of MCL Fitness due to the need for the physical and mental well-being provided by exercising in this area. I also receive referrals from doctors and other professionals to encourage exercise to support their patients.

256. All of my classes take place in the AONB which has a massive impact on the health and well-being of my clients and has been critical to the success of my business.

257. Next slide, please. If HS2 goes ahead in its current form MCL Fitness may cease to provide these classes for hundreds of clients within the community of the Chilterns. This will have a detrimental effect on the physical and mental well-being of the surrounding community. As you may be aware, 80% of people in the UK do not do enough physical exercise. More than 60% of my clients fell into this category and were not exercising before joining sessions with me. My clients are not made up of Marathon runner, cross-fitters and people who regularly go to the gym; they are people who did little or no exercise before joining the sessions.

258. The country is desperately trying to deal with a population that does not do enough exercise, resulting in obesity, diabetes and mental health issues, of which you are no doubt aware. My concern is that HS2 in its current form will be significantly detrimental to the health and well-being of my community.

259. You have been shown so many pictures, but a picture tells a thousand words. Therefore, the next slide shows some pictures to give you a flavour of my sessions. This

is all Nordic walking. My Nordic walks take place all year round. In seven years of teaching up to 10 classes a week I have never had to cancel a session due to weather. Should HS2 proceed in its current form the Nordic walks pictured here will cease to exist. They all exist in the valley between Little Missenden and Great Missenden to the south west and The Lee, Potters Row and Amersham to the north east. These footpaths are all impacted by HS2 in its current form.

260. Hills are a vital part of Nordic walking and the valley between Amersham and Wendover is where most of my walks take place. This valley will no longer be accessible to my clients as its place will be taken by the route of HS2 and the associated construction disruption will have an impact on this.

261. The next four pictures show a variety of different Nordic walks, but I draw your attention to the photograph in the top right. These are my high-risk clients. Some may have issues with Parkinson’s; they may have had recent hip replacements. With these clients I have to be aware of ground conditions. I often use smaller roads for these clients. My concern, as you have heard from many other petitioners, is that these roads are likely to become rat-runs and will no longer be safe for me to use.

262. The next slide shows the age ranges of clients. We are all aware that children these days are keen not to spend much time outdoors. My sessions have been very successful, and I am proud that I have been able to get children and adults to exercise together. The photograph on the right is of grandparents and grandchildren exercising together during summer holidays in front of Shardeloes Lake. The age range in this class was between six and 79.

263. The final pictures demonstrate the variety of fitness levels. As you can see, they are all getting the benefit of exercising outdoors. Even the Chair is photographed here having a go. Using Nordic walking poles is an extraordinary form of exercise.

264. The next slide shows the locations of my sessions, with apologies for the poor quality. My locations are mainly Hyde Heath, Ballinger, Great Missenden, Amersham and Prestwood. The footpath I regularly use for Nordic walks will be diverted either temporarily or permanently. It is not as simple as re-routeing from one footpath to another. Cutting one footpath can disrupt the whole network, and it is not as simple as just choosing another route. Parking may not be possible; dangerous roads may need to

be crossed; unsuitable styles may need to be crossed; and it does not take into account the aesthetic impact on the area.

265. Going to the next slide, as to the effect of HS2 on MCL Fitness, my routes and locations provided for Nordic walking and outdoor workouts will undoubtedly be impacted by construction traffic. Many of the footpaths if not rerouted will no longer be suitable. My clients are not people who naturally love exercise. They do not get out of bed in the morning and rush for their trainers to go on a long run. They will make excuses not to exercise. The risk of not being able to get to a location on time and going to a new location will put them off. These clients are the type of people who need organised activity, and this is something that I may no longer be able to provide. I am concerned that clients will be put off classes due to the excessive construction traffic.

266. An important point, which I know you have heard from other petitioners, is that the response times for emergency vehicles reaching clients in cases of accident may be extended. More than 26% of my clients have serious underlying health risks. I lead clients in outdoor exercise. Unfortunately, the likelihood of cardiac issues is not insignificant. Critical response time is key in this sort of medical emergency.

267. What concerns me is that 250 clients will not be able to undertake exercise and that will damage a vital community service which continues to grow. In addition to that number, there are voluntary walks which I lead for the Chilterns Society and the work I do with adults with learning difficulties.

268. I would now like to show you a video. This was a video I took on Monday 5 October at 9.35. It shows a group of my clients crossing footpath LM17, which runs down to Little Missenden.

269. MR BELLINGHAM: It was vile day.

270. MS LAING: It was a horrible day. Even though it was raining I got them out. Footpaths LM17, LM16, GM2, GM12 and GM13 all have crossings like this. What this shows is that when people are in a group they tend not to look for themselves when they cross, so I have to act very much like mother duck and manage the crossing. You will see in a moment that it is very difficult to cross, even with the traffic as it is. What happens in a moment – this was not staged – is that a white van stops to let us pass. All

the other traffic came haring along. Luckily, there was no accident, but as you watch this imagine construction traffic in addition to it. This was at 9.35 on a Monday morning. It was not staged. The vehicle is stopping. You can see a bend. All you need is an HGV going a bit fast. Unfortunately, there have already been numerous fatalities involving walkers on this road. These routes are very popular with the Chilterns Society, ramblers and Simply Walk. You can watch that one if you want to learn about Nordic walking and how to ski.

271. MR BELLINGHAM: Maybe next time you should have high-vis jackets as well.

272. MS LAING: You probably did not notice but my jacket is very high-vis. If I have more than 10 people I am back marker with a high-vis jacket, and I have recently done child safety in crossing roads.

273. I come to my request for mitigation. My passion in seven years’ work has been to improve the fitness of my clients. My aims have never been financial. I care deeply about the well-being and health of my clients in the community. I ask you to be instrumental in thinking about how HS2 is damaging people’s lives through preventing exercise within the community. I do not believe the short tunnel goes far enough, and in my opinion the only option is to have a long fully-bored tunnel. I believe that a minimum requirement is that defibrillators should be placed in all villages between Hyde Heath and Wendover to deal with emergencies. I would also like the issue of crossing the A413 to be studied more deeply and suitable crossings to be put in place where these footpaths cross the A413.

274. Finally, thank you very much for listening. I hope that some of you might follow the example of the Chair and join in Nordic walking soon.

275. CHAIR: Thank you very much for going through that. On our visits we saw a number of your groups going through various woods. They seemed to be enjoying themselves. Do you have any comments to make? I presume that in relation to matters like crossing points on the A413 and other things Buckinghamshire County Council will be talking to you.

276. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Exactly. The majority of the points you were shown on the plan a few moments ago will be less affected because of the proposal to extend the

tunnel, as the Committee is familiar with in light of its recommendation in July.

277. The only other point I was going to make relates to the disruption to businesses. Paragraph 5.1.4 of the draft code of construction practice, which you know will become a binding code as and when the Bill becomes law, places an obligation on the nominated undertaker and their contractors to give advance notice of works to, among others, local businesses and residents affected by the proposed construction works. The draft code requires in paragraph 5.1.1 what is known as a stakeholder engagement framework to be prepared which will provide the basis upon which a scheme of advance notice is put in place, so the idea is that people will be able to find out in advance of the works beginning what is going on in their area. I hope that businesses such as Ms Laing’s will have at least some opportunity to adjust their activities. Therefore, if a particular route is going to be less attractive, or perhaps is subject to a degree of disruption due to construction, the opportunity will be there to think of an alternative that might be available while the works are going on. That is the thinking. It has worked very well on previous projects and we hope it will also work well in this case.

278. MS LAING: If I may respond to that, on the first point about the footpaths being less affected due to the proposal to extend the tunnel, the opposite is true. I think that footpaths GM2, GM12 and GM13 – I can confirm the exact numbers – are on the other side of Great Missenden, so they will still be impacted; indeed, the construction traffic will be more significant.

279. MR MOULD QC (DfT): That is the Chair’s point: we are working with Buckinghamshire County Council.

280. MS LAING: But it is not true to say they are not impacted. As to the stakeholder engagement framework, I appreciate what is being said, but my point is that some of my clients look for excuses, and I can tell you from experience that changing locations does not work. If I move a route to Hampden I get fewer people. There is one very important population which I touched on only briefly. I volunteer with a group called the Gateway Club. They are adults with learning difficulties. For this type of individual, any change in plan means they will not do something. They need to know that if the taxi is picking them up at 7.45 for a session at 8 am it will take 15 minutes. Suddenly saying that because of construction traffic x, y or z roads may be impacted means that they are

likely to stay in their rooms and do not exercise.

281. CHAIR: You raise the important point that most businesses HS2 will be dealing with are static and in one particular location. Clearly, in the area of outstanding natural beauty there are one or two businesses like yours that provide a service both to local people and those who come into the area to walk. That needs to be on the radar of HS2. Thank you very much for going through your slides.

282. We now move on to Philip Gaskin and Lesley Taylor who are dealing with petitions 1111, Charndon Parish Council; 1804, Calvert Green Parish Council; 1583, Philip Gaskin; 1112, Lesley Taylor; 1566, Jolyon Brown; 1567, Andrew Eggleton; and 1578, Sandy D’Amon.

Charndon Parish Council and Calvert Green Parish Council

283. MR GASKIN: Before we start, I would like to point out that initially there will be a joint petition on behalf of Calvert Green and Charndon Parish Councils. Following that, we will do the individual petitions separately, but we want to spare you repetition and we will be covering only those points that are either unique or are not covered by previous petitions.

284. Our petition is based on the original environmental statement. Although we are aware of the recent additional provisional 4, at the moment we have not included that in this particular response. We support Buckinghamshire County Council’s mitigation plan for Calvert and its surrounding area.

285. I make the preliminary point that both Lesley and I are extremely grateful for the support we have had from John Bercow, the Speaker. Given his situation as Speaker, he is working behind the scenes to support us.

286. I am Philip Gaskin. I am on the parish council at Calvert Green. Calvert Green as a parish is a relatively new development. It has existed for approximately 15 years. We have just over 400 properties, with well over 1,000 parishioners.

287. MS TAYLOR: I am Lesley Taylor and I am responsible for the petition tabled by Charndon Parish Council. I was on Charndon Parish Council and from the very beginning I have been working on all the problems associated with HS2. Although I

have stood down, I have maintained my contact and I take this petition forward on behalf of the parish council.

288. Charndon Parish Council area includes Charndon village, School Hill and Calvert. They are all impacted, but Calvert is impacted the most severely. We included a parish map for you, which is on the slide. You can probably see that Charndon parish does not come right up to the line. Our parish stops half-way in the middle of the road at Brackley Lane. It is Steeple Claydon that is impacted, but because the effect on Charndon as a whole is so severe we have both decided that we would take it forward for Steeple Claydon too. I hope that is clear.

289. MR GASKIN: For those members who visited Calvert during one of the two trips earlier in the year, I am sure you will be familiar with the iconic signpost which for us demonstrates the total impact on our community of the HS2 scheme. There is also a quote in 2010 by Philip Hammond, Secretary of State for Transport. I will not read it out, but we are sure that it stands true today.

290. MS TAYLOR: I think that when some of the members made the first visit we had a signpost but there were bits attached to lamp posts. You stood on the bridge and looked at north, south, east and west of the hell we were having. There is a little joke I would like to tell you. It is not very funny; it is very black humour. It was told to me by a gentleman from the south of the county. He said, ‘You live in Calvert, don’t you?’ I said I did. He said, ‘When we’re sitting in a meeting with our heads in our hands despairing over what is about to happen to us with HS2, somebody always looks up and says it could be worse; we could be living in Calvert.’ I feel that sums up generally how we feel, too.

291. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: It is worth a smile.

292. MS TAYLOR: It is.

293. MR GASKIN: Can we have the next slide, please? This slide set out the area and scope of our petitions. Calvert Green is equidistant between Birmingham and London, so it is where the route is at its fastest point. To excuse the expression, we get all of the pain but there is no gain for us living in the middle of the route. When we refer to Calvert or Calvert Green throughout this presentation I would like you to consider that

as just being the Calvert area to avoid any further confusion. The yellow line shows the proposed HS2 route. We talked in the previous exhibit about the parish boundaries. Calvert Green parish includes Sheephouse Wood, which is to the right of the slide. That is an SSSI. We are very lucky to be surrounded not just by the SSSI but lots of ancient woodland, including Decoypond Wood and Calvert railway station, a local wildlife site, and also Calvert Jubilee Nature Reserve. That is also a local wildlife site.

294. I would also like to draw your attention quickly to the two lakes you see at the bottom left. There are three of them. The third one is quite small, but they are former clay pits from brick works.

295. MS TAYLOR: I was going to follow that by saying that quite clearly you can see how close Werner Terrace and Brackley Lane are, but I cannot point to it on the screen. If you look at the Calvert Jubilee Nature Reserve and move up to where the yellow line is, to the right you see a terrace of house. That is Brackley Lane, and that is Werner Terrace. You can see exactly how close we are to it.

296. If you go down from Calvert to the crossroads and then cross over, you will find School Hill, another part of our parish. You might hear HS2 Ltd refer to where I live on Werner Terrace as School Hill. It causes great confusion because people live on School Hill. I have ascertained that it is School Hill to Brackley Lane. I will be calling it School Hill to Brackley Lane. So you are absolutely clear, it is from the crossroads up to us. Further down is the other village of Charndon, which all forms part of our parish.

297. MR GASKIN: Could we have the next slide, please? We have petitioned on many points. Although all of them are huge in their own right, it is the cumulative impact on everything in our community that makes up the majority of this petition. We are also conscious that further specific petitions that will cover some of the elements within this list. We are not going into detail on these; we just want to be able to explain to you what the impact of these elements is on our community.

298. We do not feel that we need to prove this cumulative impact, because the severity is quite clear based on the number of petitions, some of which you have seen and some of which are to come. We do not feel that HS2 Ltd offers any real solutions to the Calvert area. Although we will cover each of the items as we go through the presentation, we will put together a summary at the end which hopefully will help.

299. Going to the next slide, we start off with the cumulative impact. This photograph highlights the idyllic rural setting in which we live. To the top left you see Steeple Claydon, which is the biggest village in Aylesbury Vale district within Buckinghamshire. That is really our lifeline. You see Calvert marked at the bottom of the slide. All of our amenities are in Steeple Claydon. That is where the post office is located.

300. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: We had that described to us in quite good detail last week, so that keeps it in our minds.

301. MR GASKIN: What I should point out as a final point is that we also have a paramedic based in Steeple Claydon. That is quite a critical point to take into account. I would like you to keep in mind the image of where we sit at the moment.

302. Moving to the next slide, this demonstrates what most petitioners have put before you. It demonstrates the HS2 line and the impact on the countryside and community in which we live. It also demonstrates the proximity to the area of Calvert. For us it is not just about a railway line.

303. Could we have the next slide, please? This makes very clear what will effectively be an industrial wasteland that will scar this picturesque location. It is so big in scale that it does not even fit on to the slide. It really begs the question: why would you choose such a rural agricultural landscape in which to put so much of this heavy industrial project? We are convinced that, if this was not such a national infrastructure project, it would not pass first base. While the area of red shows the safeguarded land, what we hope it does is paint a picture of just how much blight we are likely to suffer in our area.

304. MS TAYLOR: As you can see, obviously Calvert is in the front line of this. It is on the other side of the track, but it is there buffering up to it. It is impossible for me to believe HS2 can say that only a few parishioners will be affected badly during construction. I do not see how that can possibly be so. I would very much like to make the point that we are a small community and we will all be suffering equally.

305. Can I have the next slide? You heard last week from Bucks County Council about FCC Environment and the siding and that FCC themselves are going to be presenting to

you. What you do not know is how it will affect residents in Calvert and Calvert Green. I will not take very long on this. If you look at the top of the slide, you will see the EfW incinerator. If you look beyond that, there is something not shown there. That is the new access road from the A41 to the incinerator. That was part of the planning for this business because of the roads that could not take all the heavy construction traffic needed to build it.

306. There is also planning consent for a number of vehicles that can use this access road for important ecological reasons. This has resulted in a lot of traffic being taken off our roads. Therefore, we have the EfW incinerator. The landfill is below that on the right. That is moving away from Calvert towards the incinerator. The ancient woodland is on the left. That is Sheephouse Wood, Decoypond Wood and another wood which has no name but is also now on Natural England’s ancient woodland register. As you can see, there are habitat throughways joining up all of these. Right at the point where you see the train is the local wild life site. It is part of our habitat; it is lovely; it has all sorts of things on it. That is the situation we have now. I now hand over to Phil who is much more technically-minded; he can, very briefly, tell you more about the proposal for the siding.

307. MR GASKIN: The siding shown on the front is the proposed location by HS2, and the road with the loop in the foreground is the one that will be used by the heavy plant vehicles to load and unload the trains. I would like to draw your attention to the proximity of this facility to the houses in Calvert and Calvert Green, and also point out that we have some form of screening in mature woodland that separates the current location of the wildlife site and our houses.

308. I want to paint a picture. The current operation of FCC which unloads these waste trains for the landfill, and soon for the incinerator, comprises a 10-metre high gantry painted bright yellow. That is about 30 metres in length. It can unload two trains at a time, and it handles eight trains a day. Each of those trains takes approximately three to four hours to unload. Their hours of operation are from 4.30 am to 11.30 pm. To facilitate the unloading, there is a diesel engine at each end of each train which is running for the whole unloading process. Each time one of the wagons is unloaded the train moves one carriage further up for the next one.

309. There are two types of unloading. The first is a waste container. That contains household and industrial waste. Those containers are lifted by the gantry and dropped on to the back of plant vehicles and driven to the landfill facility.

310. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: I think we saw this.

311. MR GASKIN: I want to make the point that this is in front of our houses. What is shown on there is an overbridge that needs to be constructed. That overbridge will cause the destruction of ancient woodland. That has only just come to light. It is visible over the treeline, and it will have a severe impact on the environment. There is a 5-kilometre round trip to unload the trains and take the waste to the landfill or incinerator.

312. The point I really want to get to is how it affects us. There is noise and vibration. We have talked about the buffers as the trains move forward, with the containers banging and clanking as they drop on to the back of plant vehicles; and the grabber which is grabbing waste material and dropping it into open wagons. We also have the plant vehicles themselves and the pollution and air quality we are likely to experience, not just the train shunting but plant vehicles queueing up. There is also light pollution given the hours of operation from 4.30 am to 11:30 pm. There is one thing that nobody really considers: odour. These are effectively huge dustbins that will be opened and emptied in front of our houses. They smell far worse when they are emptied than when they are full, because the air gets inside them. We know this because we live near a landfill that is moving further and further away from us. This scheme imposes something that makes it far, far worse than anything we have suffered before.

313. The operator of the landfill, FCC, tell us it is impossible to constrain the noise of a siding, and it will impact our community. We have a very sensible solution to this: locate that siding operation opposite the incinerator to the far side of the SSSI, which is Sheephouse Wood. This is supported by Bucks County Council, Aylesbury Vale District Council and FCC themselves. They own that land. If they moved it, it would protect the local wildlife site; it would also prevent the destruction of ancient woodland; and it would retain the wildlife links Lesley described a little while back. It also minimises the total environmental impact.

314. There are a couple of other things on the slide that I want to point out. You see the HS2 line. It will also include the east-west rail spur into Aylesbury, and later to London.

It is sandwiched between the ancient woodland and ancient landfill. We have grave concerns about the potential for contaminated material and leachate getting into the water table.

315. The final point on the slide is to point out that we know from recent bat surveys that the ancient woodland that is likely to be destroyed by the overbridge for this siding also has roosting bats. We believe that those bats roost in the local wildlife site. However, although we know that the sensible location of that siding at the far end may affect bat foraging patterns, it will not destroy any of their habitat, and, as you heard last week, already there has been much disruption in this area for the construction of the Energy From Waste incinerator. Thank you.

316. MS TAYLOR: The satellite maintenance depot and material stockpiles, please? Thank you.

317. MR GASKIN: So hopefully, you’ve seen why we really so strongly don’t want that siding operation in front of our homes. Even if that siding is moved, which we really would ask you to consider, HS2 still wants to locate a satellite maintenance depot and a material stockpile on that same local wildlife site, on our doorsteps. The purpose of this depot and this stockpile is to support the construction of two overbridges, which are shown, the one right next to it at Calvert overbridge, and the second one, Addison road, which is right on the land which is taken by the infrastructure maintenance depot. I also point out that this set of compounds, and stockpile is also to facilitate the construction of the line itself, yet, according to all of the documentation, the infrastructure maintenance depot has to have a connection to both the HS2 line and the existing rail network, to allow for the construction of the line. So, we really struggle with why this particular maintenance depot and material stockpile has to be put onto Calvert, on a local wildlife site, when there is already such a massive infrastructure maintenance depot less than one mile away.

318. I touched on earlier on about the road closures; we recognise that the road will need to be closed to build these bridges, by the way, but Steeple Claydon, which is that far side, that is where our local paramedic is. We have many people in our communities that have medical conditions that rely on fast response from the paramedic being stationed there. These bridges, although they won’t be constructed at the same time,

will mean closure of roads for up to two years and that is not just about considering a diversion, it’s about considering an alternative to provide that medical care and emergency response.

319. MS TAYLOR: The nature reserve, our little, little local wildlife site. Even if we get rid of the siding, we’ve still got these two things. They don’t need to be there. So, if they don’t need to be there, the wildlife site itself is just left, as it is, to do its own thing, and give us a great deal of pleasure. There doesn’t seem to be any point in creating a new biodiversity with its plastic tubes and sticks and things which take donkey’s years to grow, when you’ve actually got something here which is existing already and forms part of that natural habitat trail, if you like, up to Sheephouse and down to the nature reserve. For the life of me, I can’t see why you would want to spoil something that doesn’t need something, to create something that’s inferior in the first place; we are just – that’s all I can really say about that.

320. People are part of this landscape too, we’ve got so much coming at us, we really don’t know which way to look. Who’s going to protect us please? Thank you.

321. MR GASKIN: Next slide please? This better shows the scale of the infrastructure maintenance depot and its proximity to Calvert. I’m not going to say a great deal on this, but last week, HS2 council said there was no need to mitigate the south side, because there was little habitation, which, quite honestly, we find insulting; it’s as if we don’t exist because, for the record, that’s where Calvert is situated. Furthermore it’s separated by Calvert Jubilee Nature Reserve, which is an expanse of open water which offers no barrier to noise.

322. The Campaign for Rural England, also recognised our area as having the darkest skies in Buckingham, but with the infrastructure maintenance depot operating 24 hours a day, it will literally light up the area like a Christmas tree. No matter what type of lighting is used, it will still steal from us our darkness and we dread to think of the impact on the nature reserve, having it in such close proximity.

323. MS TAYLOR: I’d just like to add to that that I have sat and listened to last week’s Bucks County Council mitigation plan presentation, and I just despaired at the reason given to fudge the issue of the south side of the IMD mitigation; please don’t tell us Calvert residents won’t hear anything from the IMD or the rail head, it is patently

clear that we will. Werner Terrace residents face Jubilee Nature Reserve, we hear nightingales, the bitterns boom, the deers bark, the soft sound of Steeple Claydon church bells, and if we can hear the church bells in Calvert, you can be quite sure that we will hear HS2 and all the other problems that are associated.

324. These are all going to be replaced by the cacophony of industrial noise ringing through our parishes; we may be few but we really deserve far better than last week’s casual dismissal. Sorry to say that, but that’s my opinion.

325. MR GASKIN: Can we have the next slide, please? And, just for the record, I’m grateful for the assurance that was made earlier on about the actual moving of the sustainable replacement from Shepherd’s Firs Farm. Which would have been on the outskirts of Calvert, of course. So, the next slide please.

326. We’ve already gone into a great deal of detail the land take and the safeguarding of the area around Calvert itself. This shows the wider area of safeguarding, and we’re particularly concerned about two specific areas. Firstly, the access road which is shown at the bottom right; this was the road that Lesley mentioned which was constructed to drive vehicles through to the incinerator. Now, we have in writing that the safeguarding for that access road is only for transformer construction and installation. However, in a pre-petition meeting with HS2, they admitted that they may use that for other construction traffic. We got into such detail that is was also discussed that it may even exceed the permitted traffic volumes of that road which, as you see, is already single track.

327. When we showed our concerns, which is really, if you start using that access road, there is a danger that you could drive it all the way through and into Calvert, through Brackley Lane, and onto the infrastructure maintenance depot, which would mean that we would get the construction traffic on top of everything else.

328. When we asked HS2 about a potential exit route, should they do this, they said that they hadn’t really considered that yet and we have since received, in our petition response document, confirmation that there would be no access to Brackley Lane, but to be honest, we don’t feel that’s anything more than an assurance; we need more to basically confirm – an undertaking really, to guarantee that that road will not be used for construction traffic.

329. MS TAYLOR: Can I just add in there, in the top left, that is the top end of Brackley Lane that leads onto the main road to the bridge. the bit to the – can you point that out – to there, that is also safeguarded, for some reason we can’t quite ascertain; it is the track behind our properties, that is our parishes’ properties, in Werner Terrace and Brackley Lane, and just behind the house on the corner there, is where our Calvert play park is.

330. Now, this track, for some weird reason, seems to have been safeguarded half way down, which is a bit odd, because this is where people garage their cars and park their cars and it is the only access out of the back of the properties. So, so we have children, because it’s a nice, free, happy place, no traffic, who come scampering out of their back gardens, across the track, and into the playing field, where they can actually play quite well unsupervised because it is surrounded by the properties. Trades deliver back down there, we’ve got heating oil, coal, you name it, we’ve got it.

331. What we need to know is why it’s safeguarded, and can we please not have it safeguarded because our worry is that, in this part of the parish, people who are coming into work, will think it’s a very nice and convenient place to park and people who lived – park their cars on the track will actually be prevented from coming in or going out, and I would just like to draw you attention, while it’s up, that on the corner there, you will actually see a bus stop. Now, if traffic comes out of the old landfill site gates, and the school buses are stopping – you’ll see there isn’t a pavement or a footway or anything to stand on, and there’s a crowd of kids in the morning, it all gets very messy and jumbled and that’s – I just hope that I’ve given you some idea of the parishioners’ concerns. Thank you.

332. MR GASKIN: Would you like me to continue?

333. MS TAYLOR: Yes.

334. MR GASKIN: And it seems it’s not enough for HS2 – sorry, could I have the next slide? It seems it’s not enough for HS2 Limited to impose a high speed rail line, a railway siding, a maintenance depot and a material stock pile directly in front of our homes. They also want to install a pumping station, and effectively open up a permanent track to service it in front of our homes. This will open up a visual corridor and it will remove what little natural screening that we have. The promoter’s response

document states that it’s already open, and it wouldn’t be effecting it; if I just you’re your attention to the photograph on the top right, you’ll see that’s a picture that was taken two weeks ago which actually shows quite mature oaks and chestnuts, which do afford us, as it stands now, some screening to what may go on behind there.

335. The scheme will open this up, not just to the railway line, but to everything I’ve just described before. To cut down on the screening, for us, as a community, defies any logic. And if you look to the bottom image, you’ll see that the actual balancing ponds that the pumping station is to support, are on far side of the railway line, so we just can’t understand why you would position it on our side of the railway line and not on the other. And I might also add that there is a mobile phone mast that’s not far from where those balancing ponds are shown, which already has its own track, which is reasonably substantial, that could be used for access to a pumping station on that side of the line.

336. I suppose the final thing on that slide as well is just to ask why we have all of those strips of pink that are identified as safeguarding between our properties and the HS2 line; there seems to be no indication in any documentation, apart from this access track, what that is there for.

337. MS TAYLOR: May I have the next slide please? Phil’s going to go into bit more detail on this heading, but I would just like to give a general overview of the community’s fears. Residents; we have already had experience of the noise and vibration past their homes before the landfill trucks were diverted to the new EFW road. It’s a straight road up from the crossroads past Werner Terrace to turn round left into Brackley Lane, which was the route for the old refuse trucks. They would come harrying up the road, slam their brakes on then turn sharp in. Now, that creates, for us a buffer noise, just the pressure of the big trucks breaking, and the properties themselves are constructed with double fronted brick, single brick at the back with lime mortar – they sit on a slip bed so they are not exactly – they were built by the brick works for their workers, so they have been up for 100 years but they are obviously not built to today’s foundation standards.

338. If a siding, the depot, the stockpile remain in proximity the homes, the heavy vehicles will return, bringing pollution and vibration and noise in its many forms, will pour onto residents for 24 hours a day, so what cost really, to their health and wellbeing,

they know what’s coming because they’ve had it before.

339. MR GASKIN: Now, all of the noise statistics that are published for HS2 relate to railway noise and construction. What we’re talking about, as you’ve already now seen, is a siding operation and all the other industrial stuff we’ve talked about. Now, from a standards perspective, and I am, by no means, an expert, that is a completely different set of measurements that you would apply to a siding operation, an industrial operation, to that of a moving train, and all of the noise statistics relate only to HS2 and its construction, so we want that to be taken into account, because this is all being imposed on us and has a cumulative impact.

340. The statistics also don’t seem to take into account maintenance trains, which will run through the night. And the baseline readings that were taken from Brackley Lane, Cotswolds Way and Werner Terrace, are inaccurate, because they were taken when the landfill access was via Brackley Lane and Werner Terrace. It’s now only used by staff cars and this was a detail that was pointed out in community forums before the readings were ever taken and we were given assurances.

341. So what do we want? Well, basically, we want new noise and vibration readings to demonstrate what the true impact will be to our community as it stands today, and we also want detail on how HS2 will cover the cumulative impacts of noise in all of these different areas and sources, and what are they going to do to mitigate it for us?

342. MS TAYLOR: Next slide please, traffic. Now, I know you’ve heard an awful lot of what we’ve been trying to tell you before and I don’t want to go into huge detail for you, but again, it’s the impact with the Parish Council, we have to give the impact on our parishioners and their fears. So the main picture shows Perry Hill which is one of the main haul routes, through Grendon Underwood, it’s taken from the Calvert crossroads towards the main access to Calvert Green, which is on the left. This is the main construction route to the IMD and towards the depot at Calvert. As main roads go, you can see it’s not exactly wide and we don’t have a footway there either. This is also our main route, to just about everywhere, and it has a 50 mile an hour speed limit, which is unfortunately, generally ignored. This crossroads at Calvert has had many accidents and including at least one fatality. To walk to Charndon or the hamlet of School Hill, or Twyford, or Steeple Claydon, is very dangerous and only with only a rare and random

footway. Yes, we’ve got connecting footpaths across the fields but try pushing a buggy in winter or wet weather on sticky clay. And if you have a mobility problem, then you’re just stuck, full stop.

343. School Hill to Brackley Lane is designated construction route. The picture on the inset shows the congestion at the corner of Brackley Lane caused by just one lorry turning. Out of sight, but to the left of the picture is a bus shelter which is used as a school bus and set down point. Brackley Lane bus stop, as I’ve shown you earlier, is to the right and the kids need to cross both roads to get home, so they’ve got to cross the busy road from the bus shelter to where their houses are and they’ve got to cross Brackley Lane as well.

344. You can see how chaotic and dangerous it is. This was only one vehicle and quite honestly, we do shudder to think what will happen when these roads are chock-a-block with low loaders, cranes and trucks, all going to local wildlife site construction site. And I would just say that, at a stroke, most of this could probably be avoided if the local wildlife site is left untouched. Move things you’re going to put on it.

345. This is just one example of what will happen; Charndon village and School Hill hamlet are not on a construction route and Main Street, Charndon has no footway for most of its length, many of the houses are directly onto the road and it’s actually imperative on everybody, that the HGVs do avoid these villages too. Thank you.

346. MR GASKIN: Next slide please. This slide actually shows the state of the roads in Calvert during the construction of Calvert Green itself. Now, all large construction projects have a code of construction practice and this just demonstrates the consequences of a housing development, and that is really why it’s so critical that the HS2 Code of Construction Practice addresses how to manage all of these off site impacts.

347. MS TAYLOR: And this is what residents dread; that Werner Terrace, to the left of the picture where the car is parked – just as a little aside, one resident, when Calvert Green was being constructed, used to wash half of his car on the pavement side and leave the other side filthy, and it became a land mark, of just what was happening and how damaging the roads and what they were doing to the footways.

348. Residents have actually lived through this once, and they know what’s about to happen will be far, far worse. So we do need to the Code of Construction Practice in our parish, to really effectively monitor the roads. And just another point; the mud and dust that you see on the roads, a lot of it is actually, crushed bricks, because Calvert Green was built on a brick works site and all the – it just comes into this dirt, and it gets through your doors, your letter boxes. Thank you.

349. MR GASKIN: Could we have the next slide, please?

350. MS TAYLOR: You’ve heard a lot about this and we’ve got a lot of problems with it. The compensation, the property schemes available; because the railway side of Brackley Lane, within the compulsory purchase extended homeowner payment zone, that’s at least something. And this is within Steeple Claydon parish; our two parishes don’t. The 120 metre zone, rather helpfully for the promoter, stops just short of parishioners’ property. In our parishes, only one property is entitled to apply for the VPZ. All the other residents can apply for the need to sell scheme, or the homeowner payment, up to the 300 metre. And we absolutely reject the fairness of both of these schemes on our parishioners. How can it be right that someone, say in number one Werner Terrace, or Brackley Lane or Cotswolds Way, can be said to suffer more than someone in number nine or 19, because they’re a few metres further way from the centre of the railway line?

351. I know you’ve heard all of this previously, but they need to sell scheme is too intrusive into applicants’ private affairs and many people, particularly older folk, and I am one of them, are reluctant to expose their health and their finances to prove they have a valid claim; it’s clearly obvious that there is a problem in Calvert.

352. It’s obvious that Calvert and Calvert Green are seriously blighted, so why do we have to prove it? The rent back scheme isn’t something we can support really in its current form either; how would you feel, if you sold your house to those who were inflicting the reason you had to sell up in the first place, then found that you couldn’t afford anywhere similar for the same money, so you paid the money back to them in rent. It doesn’t help relations, I’m afraid.

353. We are unashamedly happy to back the property bond proposal, as we feel it’s the only real dignified way forward.

354. MR GASKIN: Calvert Green has got a mix of different property types; actually, over 30% are in social housing, and the rest is made up of home owners and private tenants. Calvert hamlet, to which Lesley refers, also has several private tenants, but there’s no compensation provision for tenants, especially those in social housing where they’ve really got no redress. These compensation schemes are only for a high speed rail line and they don’t consider the other blight impacts on our community.

355. When we raised this with HS2, we were told well, ‘That’s what part 1 is there as – to provide compensation for, but for us, that’s of course, that’s at least 12 years away and that’s only the point we can make a claim, and it leaves us completely stuck in the meantime, which is a clearly unacceptable position. Thank you. If we could have the next slide please.

356. So Lesley and I have taken you though the cumulative impacts on our community They are all extremely important to our parishes, but for this summary, we have concentrated on the area that’s closest to Calvert which has the worst of the HS2 effects. Because we feel that – well, we know that we can’t remove the railway line, but we can at least, try to remove some of the worst impacts from our parishioners’’ health and wellbeing and to offer some protection for our parishioner’s environment.

357. So, I am sure it comes as no surprise, we want FCC sidings to be moved to the much more suitable location alongside the incinerator, to move the satellite depot and the stockpile from our local wildlife to the infrastructure maintenance depot and to relocate the pumping station and track to the far side of the track, where the balancing ponds and track already exists. And, of course, we’ve already covered the fact that the landfill has to have capacity for the tunnelling spoil too.

358. MS TAYLOR: If items one to four were actioned, Calvert and Calvert Green would benefit significantly during the construction and operation. Of course, we wouldn’t be able to – we would still be badly affected by the IMD and the spaghetti junction of the HS2 east-west rail, the bridge demolition, the road closures, but so much of the cumulative effect would be removed. The local wildlife would stay more or less undisturbed, surely more beneficial than creating a replacement, our ancient woodland would remain undisturbed and wildlife would continue to use the continuous habitat from the nature reserve to Sheephouse Wood and beyond, and residents would be free

from the nightmare of the commercial siding operation with its noise, its smell and its vibration. So, at a stroke, many of our traffic issues would significantly reduce with less heavy traffic coming through Calvert. The children would be safer crossing from the bus stop, so our crossing to the nature reserve, walking on the roads, because there are no footways would be less terrifying, surely that must be worth doing?

359. MR GASKIN: The nest slide please?

360. MS TAYLOR: I’m not going to read it out, it’s there for you to look at, but we aren’t asking the impossible of the promoter, we’ve shown sensible, and we firmly believe, easily applied alternatives that would make the lives of residents, and the wonderful flora and fauna, that much more tolerable. If a project is in the interest of the while of the nation, surely those who are to ensure most for its creation, shouldn’t have to pay for it with the loss of their own habitat, health and happiness?

361. MR GASKIN: And it’s now five years since Philip Hammond made the quote that you saw at the start, we believe it still holds true today and should be taken into consideration. And that concludes the petition on behalf of the two Parish councils. Thank you for your attention.

362. CHAIR: Do you want continue through the rest of the slides?

363. MR GASKIN: Yes, okay, so if we could have the next slide then, please? So, this is my own personal petition, and as well as being a parish councillor, I’m also a husband and father, I’m married, I have two sons of school age. We moved to Calvert around 11 years ago. I live in three storey detached house which you see on the photo there and it currently overlooks open countryside. Both my wife and…

364. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: When was it built?

365. MR GASKIN: It was built in 2004 – 2003, we moved in – my wife and I both grew up in cities, and we were desperate to escape the hustle and bustle of city life and to move somewhere a little bit more peaceful. My job’s very stressful, it involves extensive travel and I’m out of the country quite significantly. So really, our home is for me, a peaceful escape, and it offers a respite from the rat run of modern working life.

366. It goes without saying that I support the parish council’s petitions; I’m not going

to duplicate those, but I’m going to focus on two topics; noise and vibration and the impact on my family’s life. So, if I could have the next slide, please.

367. My property faces the proposed railway line, around 130m away, just outside the compensation zone that Lesley referred to. But of course, it’s not just a railway line, it’s the siding, it’s the depot, it’s the stockpile and the photo at the top, which you just see underneath the orange strip, actually shows my house on the far right. I’ve also identified on there this track to support the pumping station as well, which really just opens up a visual corridor to my property, making living here, virtually intolerable.

368. To make matters worse, my property is of a three storey construction and my bedrooms are on top floor, actually in the roof. Now, the image below, the main image on the slide, shows how a noise barrier and planting will deflect noise to roof level. But of course, this is a two storey house and that roof height is actually where our bedrooms are.

369. Now, at this point, I would like to refer to an exhibit but I notice that we haven’t actually been given all of the exhibits in the pack. It’s actually the PDF file which is exhibit gaskin_07, if I could have that, please? It’s basically a cross-section which – it was in your exhibit that was supplied last week.

370. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: What does it show?

371. MR GASKIN: It basically shows that – no, it’s basically showing the line, my property and everything between it, and it actually still, even though my petition…

372. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: Is this a cross-section?

373. MR GASKIN: Yes, but the reason I wanted to just identify it is because my petition, from the start, the very start, has made the point that this is a three storey property yet even with the latest exhibit that’s been provided, it shows noise and vision impact to approximately five metres. That doesn’t even take it to my second floor.

374. MR MOULD QC (DfT): I’m afraid you’re not the only person who doesn’t seem to have this exhibit. Because I don’t have it either.

375. MR GASKIN: Between Lesley and myself, we received 160 of these exhibits.

376. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Right.

377. MR CLIFTON-BROWN: What is the height of that proposed noise barrier?

378. MR GASKIN: Sorry, what’s the height of…?

379. MR CLIFTON-BROWN: That proposed noise barrier?

380. MR GASKIN: The noise barrier?

381. MR CLIFTON-BROWN: What is the height of the proposed noise barrier?

382. MR GASKIN: Okay, so the railway line directly opposite my house is supposed to be approximately four metres below ground. There is some confusion as to what the barrier is on top of that because four metres still isn’t sufficient to cover all of the train but clearly, there will be some barrier, but of course, the impact is the fact that on the second floor of a property, you’re looking down diagonally towards that, and I question whether that is adequate, based on all of the documentation that has been provided by the promoter.

383. MR CLIFTON-BROWN: Which is why I asked what the height is because that’ll have a critical effect on your upstairs windows.

384. MR GASKIN: Yes.

385. MR CLIFTON-BROWN: Do you know what the height is?

386. MR MOULD QC (DfT): I can help you with that. It’s five metres.

387. MR CLIFTON-BROWN: Can it be taller?

388. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Very difficult. I think Mr Thornely-Taylor has said that anything above five metres becomes extremely challenging in engineering terms, and also five metres is generally sufficient to provide a barrier, both to the rail related noise, and to the aerodynamic noise, which comes from the catenary part of the moving train.

389. MR GASKIN: If I might also point out, the elusive exhibit also shows a lot of planting between my property and the railway line, but of course, as you’ve seen on previous slides, the track to support the pumping station is directly opposite my house,

which will afford me no screening whatsoever, even though it’s still shown on the exhibit.

390. The second part of this relates to vibration. Now, after we moved in, we experienced severe ground borne vibration to our property, which, at the time, was caused by heavy goods vehicles accessing the landfill site. In 2005, I paid for a vibration assessment from a specialist firm and they concluded with their readings that vibration levels in my property of this order of magnitude, which was up to four times the maximum level which is described as satisfactory, when regularly repeated throughout the day, would be disturbing and considered to be unacceptable.

391. So, I then paid for a detailed structural survey, which identified no structural defects with my property. The conclusion, it seems is, the vibration is the consequence of a three storey house, built on a concrete raft foundation on top of heavy Oxford clay.

392. Now, there are no HGVs that drive past my property now, so we don’t really suffer any adverse vibration, but very occasionally, Network Rail use ballast trains, somewhat similar to the maintenance trains proposed by HS2. These trains cause our property to sway, and when I discussed it with HS2 two years ago on a site visit, they accepted to refuse that a railway could impact property over 120m away. However, I was promised at that time, in April 2013, a vibration survey and, from all of the documentation, I see that is still to be carried out. Next slide please.

393. So, as I referenced before, we moved to Calvert Green because it was quiet and tranquil. My two sons love the outdoors, they are active members of the Scout Association, and are now at the age where they can be left – they can go out to play on their own, and because of the safe environment in which we live. The scheme will severely impact them, not just for getting to school and playing with their friends but by the destruction of this idyllic setting that we moved to Calvert Green for.

394. We’re fortunate to have regular visits to our garden, the garden you see pictures in this slide, from deer, pheasants, badgers, foxes, rabbits, field mice, even the occasional grass snake and glow-worm, and while red kites and buzzards fly overhead during the day, woodpeckers, finches, robins and tits frequent our garden. At night, we have regular visits from common and soprano pipistrelle bats, brown long eared and noctule bats, and regularly hear the call of barn owls. We even had a baby bat fall from a roost

into the garden during the day, and the dawn chorus is really something special and precious to us.

395. In the summer, we love being in the garden and we enjoy barbecues with family and friends, but the reality is that this will be almost impossible. Not just because of the deafening sound of HS2 trains, and the equally startling clonking and banging and clanking of trains being unloaded, but from the stench of diesel fumes and the stomach churning over odour of the huge waste containers being unloaded in front of our property.

396. And what about the hot and humid summer nights when we’re forced to sweat inside behind sealed windows, in a desperate attempt to grab some sleep, while the maintenance trains rattle by, shaking our house? Don’t for one minute think that we are in the same situation as everybody else; please, because clearly this is not the case. We’ve heard several solutions today which could significantly improve our situation by removing some of the effects on our lives and I really urge you to give these the consideration that they deserve. So, if I could have the final slide please.

397. So, really this is nothing more than summary to say that, you know, I support the parish council petition, but I really need some mitigation for the impacts of noise and vibration on my property, and again, the compensation to fairly reflect the impact on our life, not just because of a railway line, but because of the infrastructure that’s being enforced on us. Thank you.

398. CHAIR: Are you doing the last one?

Lesley Taylor, Jolyon Brown et al.

399. MS TAYLOR: I’m doing – yes, I am Lesley Taylor and I am the Roll B agent for Jolyon Brown, Andrew Eggleton and Sandy D’Amon. The two gentlemen can’t be with us today, but Sandy is sitting in the back there, and she is now the new chair of Charndon Parish Council, so I’ve got to behave.

400. Because our individual petitions will cover the same issues and because they are pretty much the same as the parish council petitions, I am going to respond as if they are one, so what applies to one – perhaps there’s a difference with a Brackley Lane or a

Werner Terrace, but – so I am going to try and keep from too much repetition because I should think you’ve heard it all before.

401. We all live in Calvert which is a small community with a happy mix of young and old, young families and singletons, and we actually still have some of the brick workers from the brickworks, still there, so they are right old boys with lots and lots of tales of how it used to be. We all chose to live here for various reasons, but all of us share its proximity to the nature reserve, its rural tranquillity, its quiet freedom from the towns. Jo, Sandy and Andrew have all chosen it as a safe and happy place to raise their families.

402. Briefly, well, we’re unutterably sad that we are to lose the sounds of our natural environment to the imposition of an IMD, a railway siding, a satellite depot and a spoil dump, and have our lives put on hold for the next eight odd years of construction. We’re all shocked at the extent of the destruction of our little community; none of us understands why HS2 won’t accept anything we’ve pleaded for – getting a bit emotional here – we have been to all the road shows, responded to all the consultations, talked face to face, all to absolutely no avail. We will never be able to avoid all the effects of HS2 running past our doors, but if we could succeed in saving the Calvert station local wildlife site, so many of its most destructive consequences would at least prevent us from descending from our little bit of heaven, into a great bit of hell.

403. MR GASKIN: The next slide.

404. MS TAYLOR: The next slide, please – this is Warner Terrace which you saw from the bridge and you drove past on your way to Grebe Lake, the sailing club. Jo and I live in Werner Terrace and we look directly onto Jubilee Lake and the road in front of these houses leads up to the Calvert overbridge, which then, in turn, leads to the satellite depot, the stockpile, the FCC siding on the Calvert station local wildlife site. The next slide please?

405. This is Brackley Lane and this is where Andrew and Sandy live, and their houses are the second one down, and the end one in that group of houses. And they look towards the railway line, in fact, they look towards the other side of Brackley Lane and the houses there, and then there as the railway…

406. CHAIR: Which railway line?

407. MS TAYLOR: The existing east-west and to be the – I beg your pardon. They look towards the railway line and beyond that, to the local wildlife site and they abut the safeguarded track to the garages and the play park, which is just to the bottom right of the picture. Next slide, please.

408. The Parish Council petition mentioned the traffic hazard at the corner of Brackley Lane and the impact on the children. Well, this shows just what happens when a very large vehicle tries to turn out of Brackley Lane, which would happen, if the safeguarded road was used for HS2 construction vehicles. The little building that you can see beside the blue cab is actually the bus shelter. And the cab – so the vehicle itself had actually mounted the kerb. This happened at the same time as the school buses were arriving and there was a great deal of chaos and confusion.

409. As you can imagine, these petitioners and other residents who have children, who go to school from that bus stop, and the one on Brackley Lane, are absolutely terrified of what might happen to their children. You can just see also the bridge of the railway line behind the white truck at the turn into Brackley Lane. We will have construction traffic coming up past Werner Terrace to the Brackley Lane junction, to the entry over the bridge to the local wildlife site, and I’ve noticed that there seems to be a traffic route to the IMD as well. This is an extremely worrying situation for residents. Can I have the next slide please?

410. That’s just to show you the actual bus shelter, because it was pretty much obliterated by the vehicle. As you can see where the children get off the buses, they have to cross the road to the footpath to Warner Terrace and into Brackley Lane and the access to the nature reserve is just to the left of the bus shelter. You might be able to see, I think you can, the damage done to the kerb – just behind – where vehicles have had a problem turning in the sharp bend. Next slide please.

411. And I’ve just titled this, ‘A lorry-free zone’, because this is the Brackley Lane leading down to the landfill site. In fact, you can just about see Phil’s house there. When the brickworks started, it built properties for its workers, part of which was obviously Werner Terrace, and later Brackley Lane. Now, I was talking to an old gentleman and he said that during time of the brickworks, Brackley Lane never saw any

commercial vehicles at all, apart from on a Saturday when the baker’s van came, so to try to imagine, if you can, vehicles exiting the old landfill site exit, across – it’s a completely different road set up to that which it was intended to be.

412. The playing field.

413. MR GASKIN: Next slide, please.

414. MS TAYLOR: Sorry, I beg your pardon. The inset actually shows you better where our playing field is, that’s Brackley Lane and that’s Werner Terrace, and the safeguarding, as you can see, is the grey, and it comes halfway down the track to behind our properties, and there’s the little playing field. Now, it looks like there’s another little track running round but that goes nowhere; the only access and exit from where the cars are parked and the kids play, whatever, is out of Brackley Lane. There aren’t many places with a safe play space just beyond your back garden where the children can play pretty much unsupervised, and we want some assurance please from HS2 Limited, that the safeguarding at the back of the properties will not be used for anything other than, I think they did say it was for, if they had to re-site a pylon, or something, but we would really need an undertaking that it wouldn’t be used for anything other than that because it is such a sensitive place for our children. Next slide please.

415. So, again, like Phil, our petition summaries are that we support the Charndon Parish Council petition obviously, because our petitions are based on it too. Which include, obviously, the sidings re-location, the leave the local wildlife site alone, relocate the satellite depot and the material store, no HS2 traffic to Brackley Lane from the Energy From Waste access road and please rethink the compensation to fairly reflect the impact on Calvert.

416. That’s it really. I can’t say anything more than that, than please consider this for us. Thank you.

417. CHAIR: Thank you very much indeed. Mr Mould?

418. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Thank you. I’m going to ask Mr Miller to deal with the sidings issue, and then I’m going to ask Mr Smart to deal with the use of the satellite compound and some utilities works that they are planning on Brackley – to deal with on

Brackley Road. So, Mr Miller. Can I just say, whilst he’s joining the fray, can I just say, there seems to be a misunderstanding as to something I said last week about the impact of the lighting and construction and operation of the maintenance depot on properties to the south. I think the Committee was quite clear, but can I just make clear, I wasn’t at all suggesting that Calvert and Calvert Green would be free from any effects from the construction and operation of the railway. The focus, if you remember, was on that area of countryside which lies to the south of the east-west rail line, where I think there are a couple of farms, so I was dealing with area which is on other side of the Aylesbury link line, rather than Calvert and Calvert Green. I think that was clear to the Committee but I just thought to say that in deference to the petitioners.

419. MS TAYLOR: It was the noise from the railhead, because there was no mitigation proposed on the south side of the IMD.

420. MR MOULD QC (DfT): On the south side of the IMD, adjacent to the east-west railway line, that was the point we were focusing on.

421. MS TAYLOR: But the point is, there would be no mitigation so even if you didn’t say anything in a straight line across from the railhead Calvert and Calvert Green are too –

422. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Well, we’ll come to the noise and the noise contours in a moment. I just wanted to clarify what seemed to be a misunderstanding of what I’d said. Okay, so can we put up please slide A1461(2)? Mr Miller, I think to get our bearings, do you want to just talk us through what’s going on here in environmental terms?

423. MR MILLER: Yes, I think it’s worth just understanding – I think the petitioner’s already outlined the various land uses which have taken place over the years. There’s no doubt in the Calvert area that this is a landscape that has changed through time, and some aspects of that past industrial use have reverted back to a better amenity and ecological kind of advantage in this location.

424. Clearly, we’ve got Grebe Lake Sailing club, which has been pointed out, which is on the former brickworks site, and similarly, Calvert Jubilee nature reserve; that’s the site that we visited when we came to Calvert and we wandered a long and had a walk

over the water there. I think, in fact, we visited the sailing club as well. Then you’ve got Calvert – the old part of Calvert, the terrace there, Werner Terrace, and then Calvert itself, which, as the petitioner said, is placed over the former brickworks. Then, to the south, you’ve got FCC, that’s the big landfill site which, I understand, is not being gradually restored, and then you get the FW energy for waste incinerator further to the south, which is a new feature in the landscape.

425. So, we come a long, and where the yellow line is, that’s the route of High Speed 2, but what that does, is it takes up the existing railway corridor through here and what we’ve done is we’ve endeavoured to avoid land take into important features along the line of the route and I think last week, I was talking about the bats and Sheephouse Wood, the SSSI further to the south. I think where it says, ‘Preferred location for sidings’, that’s a site which Martin highlighted as a possible FCC alternative for their facility. Decoypond Wood, which has an interesting decoy pond in it, it’s all overgrown, but there’s an historic feature in there, there’s a range of footpaths through this landscape, a little triangle of woodland has been designated, as the petitioner has rightly pointed out, as ancient woodland and is now on the ancient woodland inventory.

426. And it is true that the railway will take up the vegetation along the line of the route and where we stood on the bridge there and we were all looking out and back down towards the FCC sidings, I think we could all grasp that the existing railway corridor I think is about eight metres, eight and a half metres in depth as it passes Calvert itself. And as the petitioner’s pointed out, from that cutting, although it goes back southwards, to a more surface route, less of a cutting, but it is in cutting as it passes Calvert and, as has been pointed out, the woodland and the various utilities which are within that woodland, provides a degree of a buffer between that and Calvert Green, the new housing in that location.

427. In our plans, and we talked about this last week, about ecological connectivity, there was concern about east-west connectivity, and what you get from High Speed 2 is a green bridge at the School Hill, you get another green bridge a little bit further along, and then there is a – my current plans, there’s a plan for the waste transfer station to cross over the line, because we’re putting in new sidings, and there’s another green bridge or two back towards Sheephouse Wood.

428. So, east-west, we’re taking account of connectivity for wildlife and those new features will – and certainly on the School Hill bridge, will provide a wider bridge in that particular location, so the bridge that you come across at moment, the bridge we all stood on, that will be a wider bridge and it will have a green element to it. And then we’ve got a range of woodland and hedgerows on to connect up each of these woodlands, Decoypond, Sheephouse Wood, back to the remnants of what will be left of that ancient woodland, where the sidings will be located, and the idea of all of that where the green bridge is, is to link this whole area up and that will be ultimately better for biodiversity in this location.

429. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Can we go onto the petitioner’s slide 7 please? Now, this is –?

430. MR MILLER: This is a screenshot from the video I believe, and you can see in the foreground the green bridge that I’ve just been talking about, so you’ll get a take…

431. MR MOULD QC (DfT): That’s School Hill, isn’t it?

432. MR MILLER: That’s right, yes. So you’ll get a totally different feel.

433. MR GASKIN: No, it’s not School Hill.

434. MS TAYLOR: Yes, it is, yes, it is.

435. MR MILLER: That’s Werner Terrace there. And then those are the few houses which are closest to the line and I think your property is there.

436. MR GASKIN: Yes.

437. MR MOULD QC (DfT): And Brackley Lane is the road that…

438. MS TAYLOR: That’s Brackley Lane there.

439. MR MILLER: Yes, that’s right. You can see there that we’ve greened over and that bridge will become – essentially, it’s a new bridge but it will be wider and it will accommodate the wildlife connectivity. And then you can see, in the lighter green, you can only just about pick it out, all of the sort of woodland and hedgerow replanting that we’re picking up through here, and you can see that that steps across the landscape and

the idea of that is to link up each of those woodlands, which are all ancient woodland and they are the remnants of the former Burnwood forest. So, what we’re doing is we’re sort of playing our role in all that to bring back all of that ecology into play and to support the bats and the ancient woodland that we’re taking in this location. What that gives you…

440. MS TAYLOR: May I interrupt there, I beg your pardon – may I interrupt?

441. CHAIR: No. The promoter asks questions, then you get the opportunity to ask the witness, so, if you have any questions, if you write them down, then you can come back.

442. MS TAYLOR: Thank you, sorry.

443. MR MILLER: It talked about the sidings and the sidings are shown on this diagram and you can see them and the facility here where you…

444. MR MOULD QC (DfT): This is the proposed sidings, isn’t it?

445. MR MILLER: That’s right, and this is the sort of run around, the access road. Now, that facility at the moment is located and we visited that particular location; it’s on the other side at the moment, and I think there’s a switching crossing kind of arrangement which labels the waste trains to come in and then the wagons to be offloaded and then onto lorries and then off to the landfill site, well I guess some of it might end up in the incinerator.

446. Our facility pushes that and puts it in a different location, pushes that across the line to the other side so it’s on the eastern side. It does push the road route further south, it does go across a bridge over into the landfill site which is over here, so what’s happening is, the facility which is currently in this location, just to the north of that lorry, that’s being pushed over to the east and it’s being pushed back to the south a little bit, but it does go across on the bridge...

447. MR MOULD QC (DfT): And the access arrangements for the existing sidings, do they extend further north than our proposed access bridge? In other words, are they closer to the settlement that would be the position with the HS2 proposed re-locations?

448. MR MILLER: Yes, we saw it when we drove down there in the bus, and we – it’s just tucked behind these trees here, so yes, it’s a little bit further north from the road which goes over on these here.

449. MR GASKIN: Sorry, that’s south. South is –

450. MR MILLER: South’s that way. North’s this way.

451. MR GASKIN: No, north’s towards us.

452. MR MOULD QC (DfT): North’s towards us.

453. MR MILLER: North’s here.

454. MR MOULD QC (DfT): You’re in agreement but you’re just –

455. MR MILLER: We’re in agreement.

456. MR MOULD QC (DfT): The existing tree belt that you mentioned in relation to the earlier slide, Mr Miller, that’s being pointed out now, do we affect that with our works, to any significant degree?

457. MR MILLER: Not the full width of it; I think that we might have to take some from the existing railway cutting in there and that would just be to get all of the new railway formation in. We do have a policy in the Code of Construction Practice to avoid taking trees wherever possible, but some of those do get quite close to the railway corridor there and that corridor will operate in a slightly different way, but the bulk of it won’t be effected. The petitioner pointed out the number of sort of pink lines that cut across on our plans in this location and those pink lines are in there for taking care of existing utilities, thinks like phone connections, and I think there is a low voltage power supply on an overhead line route, which cuts over the railway corridor at this point, so all of those things will necessarily have to be taken into account with our railway going along, east-west link going along, and also the siding track and the lorry run around there.

458. So, there are a number of things that have to be taken into account. They are the sorts of things that are in to protect those facilities which are obviously important to the likes of Calvert Green and Steeple Claydon and others in the vicinity, they are domestic

kind of facilities, and that’s why you see these odd fingers of pink on our diagrams because we need to connect things into existing utility runs and to make sure that that all works for people.

459. MR MOULD QC (DfT): I just want to pick up a couple of specific points and I’m mindful that we’re going to be going from FCC shortly, so I don’t want to go too far into the detail, but, first of all, we all know that FCC is an existing growth management disposal operation which operates in existing rail base siding facility, that’s right, isn’t it?

460. MR MILLER: That’s right, yes.

461. MR MOULD QC (DfT): And you’ve reminded the Committee of where that is and the proposal to shift it to the other side of the HS2 line?

462. MR MILLER: I have, yes.

463. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Now, that is a scheme that is consented, that is an operation that is consented and operates under certain operating conditions which are specified in planning permissions and so forth, yes?

464. MR MILLER: Yep, all these sites have their sorts of consents and conditions associated with them.

465. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Are we proposing that under the aegis of the Bill, those operating conditions should be replicated under the re-location of the site?

466. MR MILLER: As I understand it, that would have to be maintained, yes.

467. MR MOULD QC (DfT): One of the things that the Committee knows is a feature of that existing operation regime is that FCC are not allowed to use Brackley Lane to gain access to their facility, they have to come in through their dedicated haul road?

468. MR MILLER: Yes, that’s right; I think that’s one of the sort of benefits, or the sop that came along with EFW incinerator, the thing up here.

469. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Does the Bill relieve them of that obligation? Does it lift that prohibition on using Brackley Lane?

470. MR MILLER: No.

471. MR MOULD QC (DfT): No, so that would remain. In terms of the – we’ve dealt with the screening point, in terms of odour and noise from the operation of the sidings, we’ve provided an environmental statement in support of our additional provision 4 proposal which contains the current scheme arrangements for relocating that siding; does that cause any significant worsening of the operation of the sidings in terms of air quality, noise and disturbance, as compared to the existing situation?

472. MR MILLER: I don’t believe so, no.

473. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Thank you very much. Now, the final point on this is that the petitioner said that they were particularly – they made the point that the FCC alternative in the area, just adjacent to the other side of the line from the energy from waste plant, so here we are – made the point that that proposal wouldn’t actually involve any significant land take from the woodland, do you remember that?

474. MR MILLER: Yes.

475. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Is that concern that the project has with regard to the ecological effects of that proposal?

476. MR MILLER: No, the main issue in that location are the bat flight paths; I think principally, the Bechstein bat, which is the sort of leading bat in this area, if you will – there are lots of bats in this area, and as I understand it. that will cut across bat the flight paths in that location, as we understand that, from our information.

477. MR MOULD QC (DfT): So to sum up, the logic for our proposal is that it’s one that is operationally effective in the sense that it replicates in substance the operational aspects of the siding that exists at the moment, and it’s one which in environmental terms does not significantly worsen the impact of the existing siding on people who live in Calvert and Calvert Green, but it avoids a potentially serious impact on the statutory and internationally recognised ecological resource that is the Sheephouse woodland and other areas where bats live and forage, as it were.

478. MR MILLER: That’s right, yes.

479. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Okay. I won’t take it any further than that because you’ll be hearing more about this in a couple of weeks’ time. Mr Miller’s finished his evidence.

480. CHAIR: Would you like to ask a question of Mr Miller?

481. MR GASKIN: Obviously you covered there in detail about the ecology, and clearly we’re not qualified in terms of responding to that, and FCC no doubt will cover that. For us it’s all about community. We just want to make the point that as a community we live there and we want to protect the ecology as well, but it’s all about our community and us as part of living in that particular location.

482. CHAIR: Do you want to ask Mr Miller any questions before –

483. MS TAYLOR: No thank you.

484. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Then if I may bring Mr Smart in to just deal with a couple of construction points.

485. Mr Smart, first of all if we can just deal with the use of Brackley Lane and other safeguarded elements in and around Calvert. This plan shows the safeguarded areas that the petitioners are concerned about. They’re those strips of pink. I don’t know if we can blow it up a bit, but I think if we do we can see the now familiar notations that the Committee know about from petitioner hearings in relation to Ickenham and West End Road. We can see that a range of utilities-diversion works are required here in relation to medium-voltage overhead lines, sewerage facilities and telecoms facilities as well.

486. MR SMART: That’s correct. They’re shown on the plan here. We have a number of utilities that cross the route of the railway, some of which are existing utilities that go on the School Hill overbridge. We obviously are raising that, and we have to deal with the utilities in the change to the overbridge. During that, we will take the utilities across the line that are shown on here, across the inducting and through the bridge, so that the pink areas that you see here are really getting in to deal with utility diversions.

487. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Another point that we can pick up here is relating to the pumping station. Can you just explain that?

488. MR SMART: Yes. There’s drainage from the railway and water courses in this area and we have to get those under the line. I do take Mr Gaskin’s point about the pumping station there, but if we didn’t have a pumping station we’d have to have a sump, and we’d still need to have access to get to that sump, which would sometimes need to be cleaned out, etc. So, we do need access to that point to take the drainage water from the railway, under it, and then it’s discharged into a water course, which is effectively north-east of this plan. It’s about three to six months to get in there and have that pumping station in place. We do need an access road. I think you probably saw from one of the petitioners’ slides that there’s quite a lot of trees around there, and, as you’ve already heard from Mr Miller, as part of the Code of Construction Practice we will try to preserve all of that as much as we can. Access once it’s been constructed would only be for maintenance purposes. Since all of our electrical and mechanical equipment will be on some sort of electrical and mechanical information system via telemetry, it’s remotely monitored, so there won’t be a lot of need to get in there; it would be periodic maintenance access.

489. MR MOULD QC (DfT): If we could just take the cursor to the – here we are. This safeguarded strip here is the area that Ms Taylor was particularly concerned about, because it’s to the rear of the premises on Werner Terrace.

490. MS TAYLOR: Yes. And Brackley Lane.

491. MR MOULD QC (DfT): And Brackley Lane. I just want to confirm that the project simply proposes to carry out a utility diversion in that area.

492. MR SMART: That’s correct. It would be the sort of street works and utilities that you see frequently around the country from time to time, either putting in cabling for computer purposes or water diversions. That’s exactly what that is.

493. MR MOULD QC (DfT): If we just move the slide to the right, there’s a little table that just gives those various works that you’ve summarised very briefly, gives an indicative start time, duration, and then the number of light and heavy vehicles that are associated with them. I hope it’s fairly self-explanatory.

494. MR MILLER: Yes.

495. MR MOULD QC (DfT): So, that’s that. If we can just zoom out again, we’ll deal with another aspect of the petitioners’ concerns, which is these two construction facilities that are shown there. One is the School Hill green overbridge satellite compound, which I think was referred to as a maintenance facility, and the dark brown is the familiar notation for a stockpile area to serve construction. The suggestion is that these facilities could be relocated into the depot so that the community could be free from the presence of these facilities just the other side of the trace. Is that something that is going to work in terms of the construction of the railway?

496. MR SMART: No, not really, because you’ve got to have a site for materials close to where you’re actually doing the work. That satellite compound is not a maintenance compound; it is actually a compound for us to service all those utility diversions that we have to do, and the bridge and the construction of the bridge. Because of the existing configuration of the FCC sidings, that bridge-raise is done in two halves. We do effectively the north-eastern half first and then the southern half. This is necessary to support the construction in that area. You’ve got to have a site to have lay-down areas and construction materials close to the location of the actual work.

497. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Thank you. And I think the railhead wouldn’t come into operation during the early phases of construction in this area in any event, would it?

498. MR SMART: No, that’s quite right. Because of the complexities in this area of working with the east-west rail and FCC sidings, this is quite a complicated area and it’s on the critical path, that bridge; we need to build it in two halves.

499. MR MOULD QC (DfT): This links us into traffic. I wonder if we can just go to A8576 just to get a sense of the sorts of numbers that we’re now reporting on these roads. Again, it’s quite difficult. If we can just orientate ourselves, links A and B, that’s School Hill and Werner Terrace is just where the cursor comes down about half – there we go; that’s Werner Terrace there. Then we have the overbridge. Then if we can just see Perry Hill, C and D, we have the approach from the A41, I think. If we can just zoom in on A, B, C and D on the alphabet tables, we can see the sort of numbers –

500. MR SMART: Yes. A and B are fairly low level.

501. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Yes. And you can see that – although the percentages

for A and B in terms of HGVs look very high, we’re talking about HS2 lorries going into a fairly low HGV mix without the scheme.

502. MR SMART: That’s right.

503. MR MOULD QC (DfT): And then on C and D we can see there’s a relatively minor change in overall traffic flows.

504. MR SMART: That’s correct. And as the Committee has already heard in terms of cars and LGVs, that’s the credible worst case, which we will be bringing down via our sustainable transport policies as well.

505. MR MOULD QC (DfT): If we zoom out again, an important point. We keep saying these things are work in progress. Here, of course, we now need to take account of the point I reported earlier, which is that the promoter is no longer seeking to use Shepherds Furze Farm for the deposit of materials, either temporarily or on a permanent basis, so there is a need now to review the traffic flows to take account of that change in the proposals as well, isn’t there?

506. MR SMART: That’s right.

507. MR MOULD QC (DfT): But we can’t report on that today.

508. MR SMART: No. That will affect this local area around here, which we will review as part of the change to the sustainable placement.

509. MR MOULD QC (DfT): But what we can say, I think, is that – if you can just zoom in onto Calvert, we can just pick out Brackley Lane, which I’m just pointing out now. Remember that there is now, as we were shown by the petitioners, a dedicated haul route in serving the FCC facility, coming in from the south. We saw a picture of that.

510. MR GASKIN: From the south, yes.

511. MR MOULD QC (DfT): The concern about whether HS2, which is taking powers to use that route, would intend to use that, as it were, for a construction route linking School Hill all the way through to the south – we can say, can’t we, that we have no plans to bring HS2 construction traffic along that haul road from the south and on to

Brackley Lane?

512. MR SMART: Yes. We won’t be doing that.

513. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Thank you very much.

514. CHAIR: Do you have any questions, Mr Gaskin?

515. MR GASKIN: Yes. Could we go back to – I’m not sure if it was the previous slide or the slide before, which showed a zoom-in of the compound and stockpile.

516. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Yes. That was 8572.

517. MR GASKIN: That’s the one. Those yellow lines which are shown on both sides of the line, they’re access tracks, right?

518. MR SMART: That’s right. That’s what we call our haul road –

519. MR GASKIN: I’m just a little bit confused when you say that you have to put the stockpile and the maintenance depot there because it needs to be there when you’ve already got tracks that presumably go to the IMD.

520. MR SMART: No, we won’t have tracks. We’re constructing the trace along here, and we’re in a corridor in which we have the east-west rail alongside us, and they’re about five to six metres higher than we are in terms of alignment. So, there’s a lot of retaining-wall works that have to go in along this trace and, of course, the works to the bridge. All of this is before we have any tracks or anything through, so that’s why we have to have a compound that’s close to where we’re actually doing the bridge works and some of the retaining-wall works that are done along here as well. This bridge would need retaining-wall abutments and diaphragm walling, etc.

521. MR GASKIN: I’m just a bit confused. I guess for us it’s: why wouldn’t you use the trace? If you’re putting in tracks to facilitate this, why not use those tracks for the construction? If the IMD is a matter of 500 metres away from this point, you’ve got all that land and essentially a track that takes you to that land, why wouldn’t you use that rather than take more of our land and our wildlife site, really? That’s the question.

522. MR SMART: Because some of the traffic that has to service the compound can’t

come along the trace. Coming on the trace where we’re excavating is okay for heavy earth-moving plant but having deliveries of steel, formwork, falsework, etc., which we need close to the bridge – you can’t bring all that along the trace; some of that’s got to come in from the road. We will use the trace, as you say, Mr Gaskin, for some of the heavy earth moving, but we can’t service all the construction needs from the trace.

523. MR GASKIN: And the Addison Road bridge, which this was also designed to support – how come we don’t have this capability there? You want to put it here and not there when you’re doing both bridges from this one set.

524. MR SMART: It’s not on the slide, but if you go up to Addison Road, we can get closer from the IMD at that point. Also, there’s a timing issue of how we construct School Lane because of its complexity with the FCC sidings. There’s a different dynamic effect in terms of the construction that we’re doing. We always look to try to minimise the number of satellite compounds, but because of the intensity of work at School Lane and others it’s not always possible to do that and work from the trace, although we are doing, as I say, as much as we can with the earth moving and the heavy plant that’s associated with that from the trace.

525. MR GASKIN: My final question really is around the pumping station access. Obviously you’ve put the pumping station access in for the construction, but it’s there forever; it’s a permanent track. Does that track require vehicular access, or can it just be somebody walking up, given that Brackley Lane is only a few metres away?

526. MR SMART: No, it would require vehicular access from a van, where you would need to change filters on pumps and the like, but it wouldn’t be frequent, as I say. The fact that the pumps are working and they’re working to the correct duty, etc. would all be remotely monitored. You would have to go in there from time to time to replace bearings in pumps and if they did fail you’d have to go in, so it would require vehicular access with light goods vehicle types occasionally. Obviously, pumps do require to be renewed during the life of the 120 years of the railway, so that would be used for that, but that would be a matter of 30 or 40 years before you would be replacing any major components.

527. MR GASKIN: Could you not put a more circular route in so there is no direct corridor? That’s the problem; it’s a visual corridor as a straight line from Brackley

Lane. Why not loop round in a circle so that nobody gets the full impact of that corridor towards the railway line?

528. MR SMART: The access road design is a matter of detail, but we have to have a safe junction here and it’s a question of land take to loop round. But for maintenance and security purposes, that would be gated and we’d have access keys that would only be available for maintenance. I think we’d be able to screen that with – you can see here with the existing trees. I think this is a fairly small single carriageway, and that head there is to allow vehicles to turn, so it’s quite a limited amount of access width, and I think with the trees there it wouldn’t be very visible.

529. CHAIR: Okay. Mr Mould?

530. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Yes, thank you. I just need to help you with the noise point and then I’m done, if I may. For that I just need to show you P8709. This is a plan that shows you the LOAEL and SOAEL contours as we pass to the east of Calvert and Calvert Green. As you can see, there are indeed a number of properties along the eastern side of Brackley Lane, a number of the Werner Terrace properties, and a number of properties along the west side of Brackley Lane, including Mr Gaskin’s property, that are predicted to experience noise above the lowest observed adverse effect level and also to experience a change in their noise environment from the existing, which is either minor or moderate adverse on the key in the top right-hand corner.

531. Here we have a number of properties that are subject to the now familiar design objective under Information Paper E20 that we should take all reasonably practicable steps to try to limit the noise so that we reduce it to the LOAEL threshold. In this case there is already a five-metre noise barrier proposed along the western side of the railway line, as you heard earlier in response to Mr Clifton-Brown’s question, and so here the likely options for improvement are the general point that we are looking to achieve the most effective rolling stock through the maintenance and performance criteria for the railway, including the monitoring framework that I mentioned to you last week, but also, of course, the availability of sound insulation measures at the properties concerned. These are not properties where we have guaranteed that we will make sound insulation available because they are not above the SOAEL threshold; they’re in that mid-point between SOAEL and LOAEL, but clearly the promoter will be considering whether or

not, in those cases, it’s appropriate to offer sound insulation as part of the overall design objective and the commitment that’s given in E20.

532. So far as vibration is concerned, there is also, as you know, a design objective that the Secretary of State is committing to under Information Paper E21. In that case, insofar as this area is concerned, we are not predicting any significant effects from ground-borne noise and vibration for properties on the west side of the railway line in Calvert and Calvert Green, but in the event that, through design, we do find our assessment throws up any particular concerns or risks, then, as is made clear in that Information Paper and in the Environmental Statement, the promoter would look to design and maintain the track and the track bed in order to achieve the design objective that it set for ground-borne noise and vibration. We’re not predicting any difficulties here, whereas, as I say and you see from the screen, we are acknowledging that there are a number of properties, including Mr Gaskin’s, which are above the LOAEL contour in this location.

533. CHAIR: Okay.

534. MR GASKIN: Just a couple of things, really. First of all, you talked earlier about working in collaboration with east-west rail but I assume that all of this is based purely on HS2 and east-west rail will be about five metres higher up than the HS2 line. Also, I’m just curious to know at these particular readings what height the measurement was predicted to be at. As I mentioned in my petition, the bedrooms on my property are at seven metres high.

535. MR MOULD QC (DfT): I think Mr Thornely-Taylor said that generally speaking the measurements had been taken, or the prediction had been assumed, at first floor window height.

536. MR GASKIN: So it would be significantly more than –

537. MR MOULD QC (DfT): You I think said you have a second storey.

538. MR GASKIN: Yes.

539. MR MOULD QC (DfT): So obviously the predictions were in the intermediate storey so far as your house is concerned.

540. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: So they aren’t necessarily directly related to you, but whether they make much difference we don’t know.

541. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Are you asking?

542. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: No, I’m telling him.

543. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Yes.

544. MR CLIFTON-BROWN: They might.

545. SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: They might, but we don’t know.

546. MR CLIFTON-BROWN: So, who’s going to find out?

547. MR MOULD QC (DfT): The way our design objective works, as I said, is that we seek to produce a result, and that result is that in as many cases as we reasonably can, we achieve a noise environment for people living alongside the railway that is at or below the lowest observed adverse effect level. They will hear the railway line—they will hear the trains—but, based on the evidence base that Mr Thornely-Taylor reminded you of last week—World Health Organisation guidelines and so forth—it’s not one that hitherto has tended to give rise, in colloquial terms, to health or other annoyance problems.

548. Where we’re predicting that we’re not able to achieve that as things stand at the moment, what that tells us is that’s an area we need to work on, and the design objective of the railway is to work as far as we reasonably can in order to get those cases where we’re predicting them to be above the level down to the level. We’re not promising that we will achieve it in every case and, as you saw from the noise policy statement for England last week, certainly so far as noise policy is concerned we’re not required as the price of getting our consent to achieve it. It recognises that there will be some residual adverse effects. But our objective is to seek to do all we reasonably can to achieve it, and so in this case, as I say, one obvious thought is where—I don’t know whether Mr Gaskin has double glazing, but one obvious thought it that that might be a candidate for consideration. If double glazing was required on the third storey, then that might be a way of resolving it there. I’m not making a promise, because these are all matters to be worked through, but it’s how this policy is designed to work. It’s not dependent on a

case-by-case assessment at this stage, but the idea is that you seek a result and you then assess, based on tried and trusted techniques, to see whether you’re predicting that you’re going to achieve that result. Where you can, all well and good; where you can’t, then you need to focus on those areas as we take the detailed design forward to see whether we can bring those down into the desired envelope, if you like.

549. CHAIR: Final comments, Mr Gaskin?

550. MR GASKIN: You didn’t comment on the east-west rail.

551. MR MOULD QC (DfT): The east-west rail is a separate scheme that will need to be assessed in its own right, but we have taken account of cumulative effects. We knew about the east-west rail as a concept and so our proposals will have taken that into account and, to the degree that we can, have built in anticipated effects from that railway line. There is no substitute, I’m afraid, ultimately, for you keeping an eye on what goes on with east-west rail and when that scheme is promoted, as we’re told it will be in the very near future, looking at the environmental statement for that scheme and seeing what they’re predicting there. They’ll have to take account of HS2. We’re ahead of them at the moment, although I think we heard last week that they may be ahead of us when it comes to actually delivering an operational railway, so they’ll have to mitigate first.

552. MR GASKIN: But these noise figures do not take into account the siding operation or any of the other –

553. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Yes they do, and you’ll see on the AP4 Environmental Statement that’s exactly the point. We have sought to predict the effects on yours and other properties of the HS2 Bill, and the HS2 Bill includes not only the HS2 railway line in this location but also a relocated FCC siding operation. So, it’s treated as part of our scheme for these purposes. We do take that into account as part of our overall noise—if you like, this is the product of a noise assessment that includes assumptions about the predicted effects of HS2 on the HS2 tracks, but it’s an assessment of the operation of the Aylesbury link and predicted effects of the operation of the FCC sidings, relocated to the other side of the line.

554. MR GASKIN: Okay. I don’t believe that the measure that applies to a fixed

source can be included in a figure like that.

555. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Well, I’m afraid if you want more technical advice on it you’ll have to speak to someone who knows more about these things than I do, but that’s what I’m told.

556. MR GASKIN: Yes. We haven’t actually responded to AP4 yet, as it’s only just arrived in the last week.

557. CHAIR: They have to update the Environmental Statement with each Additional Provision, so you can petition against.

558. MS TAYLOR: You might see us again.

559. CHAIR: Well, maybe. Anyway, thank you very much for coming in and sharing your thoughts with us. That’s the end of today. Order, order.