PUBLIC SESSION MINUTES OF ORAL EVIDENCE taken before HIGH SPEED RAIL COMMITTEE On the HIGH SPEED RAIL (LONDON – WEST MIDLANDS) BILL Tuesday, 24 February 2015 (Morning) In Committee Room 5 PRESENT: Mr Robert Syms (Chair) Sir Peter Bottomley Mr Henry Bellingham Ian Mearns Mr Michael Thornton _____________ IN ATTENDANCE: Mr Timothy Mould QC, Lead Counsel, Department for Transport Witnesses: Mr Simon Marinker, Radstone Residents Group Mr Murray Brown Mr Simon Harris Mr A. M. and Mrs R. J. Herring Mr Robert and Sally Drummond-Hay Mr Tim Smart, International Director for High Speed Rail, CH2M Hill _____________ IN PUBLIC SESSION INDEX Subject Page Radstone Residents Group Parochial Church Council for Helmdon with Stuchbury and Radstone Introduction from Mr Mould 3 Submissions from Mr Marinker 4 Mr Smart, examined by Mr Mould 17 Mr Smart, cross-examined by Mr Marinker 23 Murray Brown Submissions from Mr Brown 26 Submissions from Mr Harris 27 Submissions from Mr Mould 34 Simon Marinker Submissions from Mr Marinker 40 Mr and Mrs A Herring Submissions from Mrs Herring 44 Response from Mr Mould 49 Further submissions from Mrs Herring 53 Robert and Sally Drummond-Hay Submissions from Mr and Mrs Drummond-Hay 57 Submissions from Mr Mould 71 Closing submissions from Mr Drummond-Hay 73 Hugh Smith Submissions from Mr Smith 77 Submissions from Mr Mould 80 2 (At 9.20) 1. CHAIR: Order, order. Welcome, good morning everybody to the HS2 Select Committee. It is nice to see such a large audience of interested people. Radstone Residents Group Parochial Church Council for Helmdon with Stuchbury and Radstone 2. We start off this morning with Radstone Residents Group, With Parochial Church Council for Helmdon with Stuchbury and Radstone, which sounds like an impressive organisation. Well done for getting together. I know that we have been there but can we have the map up, please? 3. MR MOULD QC (DfT): Yes. It is 4743. I can also show you the fly through if you would like that. 4. CHAIR: Let’s have the fly through for a change. 5. MR MOULD QC (DfT): All right. As always we are approaching from the north, the best place to approach from, and we are now just approaching Radstone to the left or to the east of the railway. If we stop there, we have the village of Radstone. I think you can just make out the church to the west of the village. The railway is running through here in a false cutting, so we have embanked earthworks to either side and you can see balancing ponds, and then to the south west in the distance we are beginning to get into the further reaches of Brackley, an area which is subject to development just beyond the arrow. 6. Perhaps we will just show you the area that has been shaded in white. That is an area that is owned by Mr Murray Brown, who I think is the second petitioner in the list this morning. It is part of his agricultural holding and an area that under the Bill scheme was identified for ecological mitigation planting, but more of that later. So, that gives you a rough idea of the environs. I suppose I just ought to show you, if we pull the cursor down, that you can see a road which runs obliquely in a south-westerly alignment across the railway. That is the Radstone Road which goes over the railway on an overbridge. Then there are overbridges to serve public rights of way, which are being pointed out to you now. So, that is a swift summary of the features of the route through 3 this area. 7. CHAIR: Mr Marinker? 8. MR MARINKER: Thank you very much. I am Simon Marinker and I live in Radstone. On my right is Murray Brown, a farmer who also lives in Radstone. Murray is here just to offer me some support while I do some presentation. I am here representing all of the Radstone residents – all the eligible ones. They all signed the petition and are part of the Radstone Residents Group. I am also going to be covering the points raised in petition of the Church of St Lawrence as they have an interest in voiding the petition if we could drop their petition as their points will be covered in ours. So, that would make sense. 9. I think the first thing to say is that Radstone is significantly adversely affected by HS2. It is probably worth putting up a slide but our main request of the Select Committee today will be to ask the promoter to create a slight deviation of the rail line past Radstone. But before I go into the detail I would like to very quickly remind you of Radstone’s setting, to explain the issues and then discuss our proposal. 10. The next slide, please. That is slide 2. Radstone is two and a half miles north of Brackley. We have 18 properties and 40 residents. We have a farm and two other businesses in the village. Six people from the village actually work in the village. The vast majority of our residents have lived there for well over 20 years. I am a newcomer at eight and a half years, actually. We are home to our 12th century Grade I listed church, which we are very proud of, and home to some very rare bats. I think everyone will agree that Radstone is a very tranquil, rural and beautiful village set in the South Northants countryside. 11. The next slide, please, number 3. 12. CHAIR: How old is the village? 13. MR MARINKER: How old is it? 14. CHAIR: Yes. Do we know? 15. MR BROWN: The church tower is the second oldest church tower in 4 Northamptonshire. 16. MR MARINKER: And that was 14th century, but the church is 12th century, so I think it probably goes back as far as the 12th century. I know that most of you visited Radstone. The picture on the top left is where you got off the coach and walked up the footpath, so that is a view down the road to some of our houses. On the top right there is a view from the village which overlooks where the railway line would be. The bottom left is the view from the proposed rail line to the bottom part of the village. Although you cannot quite see it here, there is about 14 of the 18 houses in that area alone. The bottom right is the church of St Lawrence, which you walked past on your walk through. 17. The next slide is a Google Earth map, so you have seen the fly through anyway, but basically this shows the proximity of the line to Radstone. All properties are between 220 and 400 metres from the centre of the line. There are no natural structures between the line and the village, just the field, and an important point, I think, to make here is that at the closest point to the village the line is now at ground level. In addition to all of that there is a proposed overbridge to accommodate the Radstone Road, which is within 250 metres of the village. You can see from that slide that everywhere around Radstone is covered in beautiful countryside. 18. I think we can skip the next slide because that is just a close-up of the line again, and go to slide 6, if that is okay. You will be familiar with this map. It is the official map of the area. Here you can see that the rail line goes from a cutting away from the village then comes up at ground level in front of the village where the ponds are. The yellow indicates the village of Radstone and you can also see the position of the overbridge as well. 19. So, that again is just to orientate yourself. The next slide, please. The big issue for Radstone is what are the consequences for the village. Clearly, we are significantly affected by the rail line. The Environmental Statement actually states that 15 of the 18 dwellings will experience major adverse noise effects and they consider this to be significant. It goes on to say that the forecasted increase in sound from the rail line is likely to cause a major effect on the acoustic character of the area surrounding the dwellings close to the line. Along with Thorpe Mandeville, which is in the area CFA15, 5 Radstone is the worst affected village in terms of noise in South Northamptonshire. 20. Could we have the next slide? I do not want to dwell too much on the technicalities of noise. You have just heard a couple of comments I have made from the ES which are quite explicit about the fact that we have a noise issue and that is despite the currently proposed mitigation. Even HS2 have agreed that Radstone does have a noise issue as described in the ES. The readings go from 45 dB to 65 during the day and from 35 to 55 at night, ahead of the LOAEL’s guidelines, and that is if you average it out. If you take the extremes it goes up as high as 78, which I have been delightfully informed is the noise of a washing machine going off every 10 minutes in your bedroom. 21. So, I think the point I want to make here is a big issue. We are concerned about what the mitigation will be.