2500. MS LIEVEN: They would assume a date.

  2501. CHAIRMAN: Yes, they would assume a date. There would be interest payable as from that date and fees would be assessed in accordance with whatever the fees are in the Lands Tribunal Office.

  2502. MS LIEVEN: Yes, and there are scales. There are whole books about fees, as I understand it, and it is all fairly standard stuff. I should say there was originally a dispute about the level of fees. I think the current position is that there probably is not a dispute about the level of fees; the dispute is entirely about whether they are paid in advance.

  2503. LORD BROOKE OF ALVERTHORPE: In a sense this relates back to the dates which eventually will be determined on which the settlement should be made. I wonder if you could respond to the allegation made that in 1996 the City Corporation were ordered to refuse planning permission. Do you know anything about that?

  2504. MS LIEVEN: Yes, my Lord, I do know about that. That is because the site fell within the safeguarded area. Mr Smith can give you more detail on this if you want it. There were long negotiations between Mr Saunderson, the company and London Underground as to whether or not it would be possible to grant planning permission allowing the Farringdon East ticket hall to be subsumed within the permitted scheme because by 1996 the first Crossrail Bill had been rejected by Parliament, so the scheme was safeguarded but not about to go ahead. There were negotiations about whether or not Mr Saunderson could build out a scheme but, as it were, keep what we described the other day as passive provision within it for the ticket hall if and when Crossrail came along. Those negotiations ultimately did not get anywhere because the engineering problems, to put it in a nutshell, were just too great. In order to safeguard the Farringdon East ticket hall the Department for Transport—I am not sure whether it was technically the Department for Transport or London Regional Transport—directed the City to refuse planning permission, so it was a safeguarding.

  2505. LORD BROOKE OF ALVERTHORPE: Am I right in assuming as a layman that the value of the property went down once planning permission was lost?

  2506. MS LIEVEN: My Lord, that is a tricky question. There were two things going on here at the same time. One was the property recession and the other was the impact of Crossrail. There is no doubt that the value of the property went down very substantially. I think it would be foolish to deny that some part of that was Crossrail, but certainly Mr Smith's evidence would be that this scheme would not have been capable of being developed even without Crossrail at that time in the property market because of its location and the very, very severe property recession at the time.

  2507. LORD BROOKE OF ALVERTHORPE: Am I right in assuming that normally a property, even if there are problems in developing it, is worth more with planning permission than without?

  2508. MS LIEVEN: My Lord, I am not sure you could make that as an absolutely generalised statement because if there is no prospect of the planning permission --- I am not trying to be difficult but if there is no realistic prospect of that planning permission being implemented because there is no demand for commercial property at that location then the fact you have got planning permission might actually make very little, if no difference. In most cases your Lordship is entirely right, but I think I would have to bow to Mr Smith as to whether on the facts of this case it would have made much difference.

  2509. CHAIRMAN: Ms Lieven, I see in the Petitioner's bundle that full planning permission was granted in February 1990.

  2510. MS LIEVEN: That was for Hayne Street, my Lord.

  2511. CHAIRMAN: And it had a condition that it had to be started within five years in the normal way.

  2512. MS LIEVEN: Yes.

  2513. CHAIRMAN: Therefore, by 1996 there was no planning permission.

  2514. MS LIEVEN: That is right.

  2515. CHAIRMAN: What one would normally do in those circumstances if you had a compulsory purchase or a blight notice is you would apply for a certificate of alternative development which would deal with the point that has just been raised by my colleague, Lord Brooke, what would have been able to have been built on it if it had not been for the fact that it was being taken away by a public authority. Is that not the way in which it works?

  2516. MS LIEVEN: That is right, my Lord.

  2517. CHAIRMAN: It would then be valued on the basis of the certificate of alternative development .

  2518. MS LIEVEN: Yes, absolutely.

  2519. CHAIRMAN: At whatever date.