Leeds Trolleybus Enquiry Day 4
May 2 2014
Friday May 2 2014 was the last day of the first week of the Leeds Trolleybus Public Enquiry and the witness in the hot seat was Dave Haskins, Project Director for NGT.
The morning was spent with his own statement, followed by a cross examination from Neil Cameron QC for the Applicant (NGT).
Leeds Trolleybus Public Enquiry Day 4: May 2 2014 First Morning Session.
Leeds Trolleybus Public Enquiry Day 4: May 2 2014 Late Morning Session.
The cross examination from Objectors began after lunch with Gregory Jones QC for First West Yorkshire.
Leeds Trolleybus Public Enquiry Day 4: May 2 2014 Afternoon Session.
A major part of Mr Jones cross examination is focussing on the relation to the Supertram project which was cancelled some years ago. My own memory of this is a bit hazy, so it is extremely helpful for me, and doubtless many of those following this enquiry, to have some very detailed examination of it. (I used to watch Look North in those days, and I really don’t recall much coverage if any of that very important matter other than someone occasionally sounding excited about it.)
A major fact which emerged was that the costs of
Supertram were underpredicted by a massive 40% in the opinion of the then
Secretary of State. However Mr Haskins
would not agree, even after being repeatedly asked the same question, that
extreme caution had to be exercised in managing the predicted costs of such an
infrastructure project and claimed that he believed that he had effectively
done so. He referred to a letter which
his team had apparently written to the then Secretary of State in November 2005
contesting the suggestion that the costs had been underpredicted. This assessment of underprediction was based
on the bids that were made for the project, which were in the region of almost
40% higher than the cost claims made by the then promoters. The letter in response to the Secretary of
State has not been included in the evidence as yet, and will be produced later,
probably when the questioning resumes on Wednesday 7th May. There does not appear to have been a reply
from the Secretary of State to Metro at the time.
This was quite a complex cross examination to follow
and I was really glad of being able to listen back to my audio recording to be
able to properly understand it in order to write this blog. (It can be found from about five minutes
onwards on the audio from the afternoon session linked above.)
Two matters from this immediately come to mind. Firstly the obvious one that while Mr
Haskins does at least appear to have some knowledge of the Supertram, unlike
his boss Mr Farrington who had made no review of it, he seems complacently
overconfident that he can bring this £250 million pound infrastructure project
in on budget, and will not make a concession to humility and acknowledge that
extreme caution must be applied on budgets of such an immense size. (I’m looking into when this figure dates
from, as it may be some years old.)
The second is that this is a debate which it seems
Leeds City Council and Metro would rather was not made in public, since they
have refused to put in place any audio or video recording or streaming
facilities, despite that request being made by Cllr John Illingworth (Lab,
Kirkstall), amongst others.
The BBC too have almost entirely ignored the Leeds
Public Enquiry into the Transport and Works Act Order for the NGT
Trolleybus. Clearly the tragic incident
which occurred at a Leeds College at the beginning of the week has had a lot to
do with this. While that is a major
occurrence for the City, the trolleybus scheme is the largest potential infrastructure
project since the late sixties and would have an immense impact on the lives of
hundreds of thousands of people.
One can’t help being reminded of that assistant in
the Labour Party who suggested in an email on September 11, 2001, that it might
be a good day to bury some bad news.
Even the Yorkshire Evening Post, which has given more
coverage to this than the BBC, has not to our knowledge had a reporter down to
the Enquiry.
When I began making recording of the Public Enquiry
it was just as a kind of personal project, but it is now emerging as an
important document which is in the public domain. Council members may well have their own stealth recording going
on as I have heard rumour that the project management team are taking a feed
from the microphone system. I don’t
object to this for the management team, as it would primarily be for the
Inspector’s use I should imagine, and I think it essential that he should have
such a copy. But there should be
multiple sources, and one of those should be from the Council as the drivers
for this exercise and responsible to the citizens of Leeds for openness of
information. I am most grateful to the
Inspector, Mr Martin Whitehead for not standing in the way of objectors picking
up this responsibility.
The cross examination continued in much detail,
raising issues such as the massive overrun on the costs of Edinburgh tram and
the Atkins report. I am presently
somewhat impressed by the encyclopaedic knowledge of the subject which Gregory
Jones QC is demonstrating of the subject and his ability to take apart the
pretensions of the NGT project. I shall
have to write a piece on the way the Enquiry is working at some point, as it is
a fascinating experience to see such skill at work.
The Enquiry continues on Wed 7th May at
10am in the Regus Suite at Wellington Place in the city centre.
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