4880. MR ELVIN: I suppose Lord Young it means the lorries are not passing any one property twice in any one trip.

  (Mr Berryman) That is right. If you consider this section of the route here, if our original proposal had been sustained, it would have meant vehicles go backwards and forwards along here and the Council felt that would be better to spread the load. This area up here is not residential at all, whereas the area down here is more residential (Indicating).

  4881. CHAIRMAN: How is your voice getting on?
  (Mr Berryman) Not too bad, my Lord, but I feel when I finish this I shall probably collapse, like a balloon.

  4882. MR ELVIN: Perhaps we could touch on a few things. The noise impacts of lorries, such as reversing alarms, are also matters within the Construction Code, section 5.
  (Mr Berryman) That is correct.

  4883. And the air quality issues, as Lord Young touched upon, are in section 6, which includes matters such as ensuring that engines are not kept running unnecessarily on sites and the like, using low emission vehicles, ultra low sulphur fuels—all those sorts of matters which minimise impact on air quality.[21]

  (Mr Berryman) That is correct.

  4884. LORD YOUNG OF NORWOOD GREEN: Other than ensuring they have a current roadworthiness certificate, is there any attempt by the site inspectors to look for possible contravention of emissions precautions? In other words, you have all these lorries coming to you at optimum performance, and if they have been properly maintained they should not be emitting any terrible particulates. How do you verify that?
  (Mr Berryman) They should have all the necessary certificates to demonstrate that they have been recently tested in accordance with the various qualifying criteria that will be set out in the contract and which, indeed, are set out in the low emission zone which now applies to this part of London.

  4885. MR ELVIN: The conditions which can be imposed in relation to lorries and lorry routing in schedule 7, paragraph 7 of the Bill, are conditions which should be imposed not only for safety purposes but for environmental and local amenity purposes as well.
  (Mr Berryman) That is correct.

  4886. So the local authority would have control over issues so far as they impact on matters such as emissions and those sorts of considerations.

   (Mr Berryman) For all practical purposes the local authority has complete control over matters such as lorry routes and so on.

  4887. BARONESS FOOKES: Mr Berryman, at one point you indicated part of the route and said there was not much in the way of residential occupation. I thought I noted a certain dissension from the back of the room at that point.
  (Mr Berryman) On one side of Spital Street is a cash-and-carry warehouse and on the other there is no residential property.[22] There is a block of flats which is set back somewhat from the road. Down here (indicating on map) there are flats and residential properties which are quite close to the road.

  4888. LORD YOUNG OF NORWOOD GREEN: We went down that road, I think.

  4889. MR ELVIN: You stood next to some.

  4890. CHAIRMAN: The cash-and-carry warehouse has no parking.

   (Mr Berryman) Very little, my Lord.

  4891. And everybody just leaves their car in the road.

   (Mr Berryman) I would not put it quite as strongly as everybody, but a lot of people do certainly.

  4892. BARONESS FOOKES: What happens when the lorries come trundling down?

   (Mr Berryman) Lorries use this road already. There is quite significant lorry movement along here on a normal day. I do not have the numbers at my fingertips, but we did a count and there was a significant number of lorries going down that road in any event, irrespective of ours. In fact, I think our increase is only about ten per cent of the total even on busy times.

  4893. CHAIRMAN: Mr Elvin, where in schedule 7 is the provision about emissions?

  4894. MR ELVIN: It is schedule 7, paragraph 7. In the tables, you will see that the control of the route to be transported by large group vehicles is, firstly, one of the matters which is dealt with. It is the routing which can be exercised in terms of local amenity. In part, it is in the Construction Code, section 6, page 31. Section 6.2 sets out a number of requirements for vehicle and plant emissions: up-to-date certificates, up-to-date testing, and the availability and maintenance of regular certificates showing that those matters have been complied with, and commercial road vehicles must meet European emissions standards during any works.

  4895. CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much. If I could get any of these pages to turn over, I would keep up with you. The file is fairly unwieldy.

  4896. MR ELVIN: I am afraid I have re-photocopied mine in a very environmentally friendly way. Traffic management plans and lorry management plans are covered, as I showed you, in section 4.2; noise is covered in section 5; air quality emissions and the like are covered in section 6 of the Code. The dust control procedures, which are the other aspect of emissions, go on for several pages. They go well beyond sheeting and the like.

  4897. LORD YOUNG OF NORWOOD GREEN: They are not carrying soil on this route, are they?

   (Mr Berryman) Yes, they are, my Lord. From the excavation of the shaft only.

  4898. MR ELVIN: It is not spoil from the tunnel.

   (Mr Berryman) No, it is not spoil from the tunnel. The shaft is sunk from the surface, so the ground which is excavated from the shaft goes out by road. It has to. From the tunnels, the material all goes out by conveyor. I think Mr Thornely-Taylor slightly misled you yesterday.

  4899. CHAIRMAN: We thought the result of what he said was that the shaft was all going to be excavated from underneath and taken out through the tunnel.

   (Mr Berryman) No, my Lord.

22   Crossrail Ref: P23, Proposed lorry routes to Whitechapel Sites (SCN-20080313-018) Back