6705. CHAIRMAN: Mr Pritchett, the normal procedure is that the Promoters will say a few words to put this into context and then it will be over to you. Mr Mould?

  6706. MR MOULD: Thank you, my Lord. Mr Pritchett's Petition relates to a four-bedroom flat, a residential premises that he owns and occupies at St Anne's House, 3 Diadem Court, Soho, W1. Perhaps we could put up a location plan and we have put a red line around the property within which his flat is situated.[1] I think I am right in saying that it is a ground-floor and basement flat at that location and the Committee will be familiar with this part of the West End. We have Dean Street running down from Oxford Street just to the east and then further to the west is Wardour Street and Soho Square of course, which is very well-known, a little further to the east than Dean Street.

  6707. Mr Pritchett has owned his property, as he states in his Petition, for about eight years and it forms of a block of properties bounded by Fareham Street which is the street running through Great Chapel Street and Dean Street just to the north of the Petitioner's premises. It is bounded by Fareham Street, Dean Street itself, Great Chapel Street and Diadem Court, so it is this block here (indicating) which is required for the Crossrail works to construct the western ticket hall and emergency escape and ventilation shaft facilities for the Tottenham Court Road Crossrail Station. I will put up two plans from the Environmental Statement, firstly, of the permanent works.[2] The Crossrail station is shown in the light blue notation and you see the two running tunnels as they pass through the station at Tottenham Court Road. The western ticket hall complex is seen here. The block that I showed you a moment ago is the southern part of this dark grey hatched block and Diadem Court forms the southern boundary of that block, so this is the area within which the Tottenham Court Road western ticket hall and associated plant will be constructed, and the Petitioner's property is just at this point here (indicating), so that will have been demolished in order to enable those works to be built.

  6708. If we go to the construction phase, this is the plan showing the construction arrangements and here again we have the same block.[3] Here is Diadem Court (indicating) and this area is cross-hatched and that notation, as your Lordships will recall, indicates that this is a Crossrail worksite, so, during the construction phase and while the construction of the western ticket hall is being undertaken, this and other land within this block here will be taken for a worksite.

  6709. The property has been safeguarded for the purposes of the Crossrail scheme since 1991 and, as I have indicated, the powers are to be conferred by the Bill to purchase Mr Pritchett's interest compulsorily, demolish the block within which his flat is situated and other buildings in the area, which I have shown on the plan, for the purposes of the station construction works that I have mentioned.

  6710. Now, turning then finally in this brief opening to Mr Pritchett's compensation rights, if we can put up the letter please, we wrote to Mr Pritchett, I think, on the 20th of this month just to draw together the strands in relation to his rights under the land compensation provisions and you should have that letter in front of you, but, in summary, what we have said there is that he will receive the full open-market value of his leasehold interest which will be assessed at the appropriate valuation date, disregarding the devaluing effect of the Crossrail works, and the valuation date is provided for by section 5(a) of the Land Compensation Act 1961; it is stipulated by statute.[4] The programmed date for possession of Mr Pritchett's premises is late 2010/early 2011, so, if one assumes that possession of his property is taken at that time, then that would ordinarily be the valuation date at which the open-market value of his leasehold interest would be assessed.

  6711. He is also entitled, in addition to that, as you will recall from Mr Smith's presentation at the start of these proceedings, to reimbursement of costs by way of disturbance payment, and we have set out those that we will expect to be relevant in the Petitioner's case towards the bottom of this page of the letter. Then, if we turn to the next page, he would also be entitled to a statutory home loss payment under the relevant provisions of the Land Compensation Act 1973. The way that is worked out is that the dispossessed homeowner is entitled to 10 per cent of the market value of his property, but there is a maximum limit of what is currently £44,000. That is set from time to time by statutory instrument, and the most recent cap of £44,000 was set by the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government by Order last year, in 2007.

  6712. So those are the basic components of his land compensation entitlement. As the owner of a property required for the purposes of the Crossrail works, he is entitled to serve a blight notice, and we have dealt with that in the second paragraph on this page. I do not think there can be any reasonable doubt that his property will have been significantly devalued by the shadow of the Crossrail scheme; it is clearly required for that scheme and will be taken for that purpose. He could serve a blight notice now or indeed at any time in advance of the programmed date of possession in late 2010/early 2011. As you will recall from Mr Saunderson's Petition, that effectively provides for advance compulsory acquisition and the basis for the assessment of land compensation is essentially the same and it is in the event that acquisition takes place when we acquire the land for our works, and that point is made clear in the letter to him.

  6713. The other point that we touch on in the penultimate paragraph of the letter is the way in which, as a matter of policy, the Secretary of State, the Promoter, can dispose of land interests following completion of the works. Now, in this case, as I have explained, that would essentially be an interest, or interests, which would be available in connection with the construction of the surface structures for the Tottenham Court Road western ticket hall and, in particular, on the land which is currently occupied by Mr Pritchett's block for the ventilation and emergency escape shaft. We have touched on that in Mr Smith's presentation as well and we have set out a little bit of the detail of that in this response to him. I do not propose to go into that now in any detail because I know he wants to say something about that, but what I will probably do, when you have heard his Petition, is ask Mr Smith to go into the witness box and just explain in a little more detail how that policy would work in the case of this particular block.

  6714. So that is the position. That was, I think, our most recent formal correspondence with Mr Pritchett. Unless there is anything else, I will hand over to him to present his Petition.

  6715. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr Mould. Right, Mr Pritchett?

  6716. MR PRITCHETT: Your Lordships, I am grateful for that helpful introduction. I was interested; it is the first time I have seen the most detailed plan that was posted on the board because it was not in the information exhibition they held in Soho Square, the most recent one they held, and it did not have details of the actual works proposed.[5]

  6717. As a little comment also about the safeguarding, in the 1990s there were some plans available for the development which showed quite an attractive building being built on Great Chapel Street adjacent to the place in which I live, and the presumption was that, although there would be some disruption in building that building, as much of the remaining area would be preserved as possible. Now, it turns out that those plans were withdrawn, although no letter was ever sent to local residents to explain that, and replaced by ones which had not, until I had seen that, been shown to people, planning to demolish all of the houses in the area, so quite a lot of the residents are still under the impression that there in fact is a chance that they will not be demolished. If you look at Westminster Council's draft planning brief, it mentions, "(a) that all the buildings on the site make a positive contribution to the character of the Soho Conservation Area", and there is a strong presumption against their demolition. I mention this purely because it might be inferred that I should have known this was coming from the comments about safeguarding in 1990, but what I am suggesting is that the position has developed. I am not, however, at any point going to suggest that the line should be rerouted or anything like that because I really do not think that that sort of comment is constructive at all.

  6718. The other thing that is interesting from the plan is that you will see that the proposed site is split in two by a road, and I think it is relatively difficult to move a road permanently. In fact, in terms of the local flows and the redevelopment, there might be some case for that or some case for it to go through the new development rather than just be there, but at the moment it is split in two, and I will come back to that observation later when we discuss the redevelopment and possible reacquisition in terms of coherence of the reacquisition of the land which has been referred to as a single site.

  6719. It is obviously relatively unusual to be able to be in a position to come and petition about a matter such as this, and it has been suggested to me that one should be happy with all of the rules as they are. However, I also feel that sometimes rules that only apply to a very, very small number of people are only actually looked at when in fact they do crop up and affect someone and people do not tend to look at them in the vacuum and, therefore, it is an appropriate time to have a look at them. I am aware that you have had a presentation on compensation, so I will keep my remarks short, but I am going to go through my various concerns now one by one.

2   Crossrail Ref: P47, Tottenham Court Road Station-Project Works and Permanent Impacts, Crossrail Envionmental Statement, Volume 4a, Map C5(iii) (LINEWD-ES16-027) Back

3   Crossrail Ref: P47, Tottenham Court Road Station-Construction Works and Impacts, Crossrail Envionmental Statement, Volume 4a, Map C5(ii) (LINEWD-ES16-026) Back

4   Crossrail Ref: P47, Correspondence from TfL (CLRL) to Mr Michael Pritchett, 20 March 2007 (WESTCC-12_04-002 and -003) Back

5   Crossrail Ref: P47, Tottenham Court Road Station-Project Works and Permanent Impacts, Crossrail Envionmental Statement, Volume 4a, Map C5(iii) (LINEWD-ES16-027) Back