• The public inquiry continues
• A wanted man                                                                          
• Some highlights from past sessions                                      
  

The public inquiry continues                                                        

Inquiry last session - Monday 20th of March 2006

The public inquiry into the appeal of London Concrete application is drawing to a close with the last day of the inquiry to take place on Monday 20th of March 2006.

On that day there will be a final discussion into the issue of conditions and closing arguments of all parties will be presented in reverse order this time: Park side residents association first, then Green N4&N15, GreenN8 followed by Haringey and concluded by London Concrete.

Needless to say we would like to see as many people as possible in the public gallery on that day to demonstrate that the public is still very interested in this case and very much opposing this development. The day would start at 10:00 and will end at 5:00.

It is still possible to submit your views in writing on this last day.

I hope many of you can make Monday 20th of March 2006 and show your opposition for the last time.

A wanted man                                                                          

We are looking for the man in the picture. We very much like to talk to him about the following story.

A story came to our attention on the last day of the inquiry, about the time Chettle court was build and how during the construction of it, building work had to stop for 18 month due to major subsidence of the hill it is built on.

This story was told by a man who attended the public inquiry on the day our MP gave evidence.
I was told by Clair from Rathcool Gardens that she heard this mystery man tell David Lammy this story on that day. Clair approached me on Fri (Feb 17th) during the inquiry to tell me this story and asked me would this have any relevance to our case? At the time I was not sure and I said I will have to think about it.
About an hour later while Casey was crossed examined by the inspector he was asked the following question:

Would the land be able to support the weight of the plant and storage bins?

When I heard the question I immediately understood the context of the information Clair was passing on to me earlier on and I leaped out of my chair to her to make sure she heard the question.

Since this happened we found out some information about this area, the hill the ridge some of which appeared in an article in the Hornsey Journal,

http://www.hornseyjournal.co.uk/search/story.aspx?brand=HCEJOnline&category=News&itemid=WeED23%20Feb%202006%2010:28:57:390&tBrand=HCEJOnline&tCategory=search

We would still like to talk to the man who have first hand information on this and was the one to bring this story forward.

We know he is Irish and lives in the ladder area and work on the construction of Chettle court.

We also know he attended the Transport shadow minister site visit demo which I do have pictures of. I showed them to Clair and she thought this is the man.

So if you know who this man is? and have a way to contact him please let us know ASAP he must be on some mailing list otherwise he would not know to come to the demo I just mentioned

If if you have any more valid information on this story we want to hear about it.


Some highlights from past sessions                                      

A lot has happened over the week of the 13-17 Feb 06. And I would love nothing more then write to tell you all about it. But it probably take me more then a week and would be a very very long email...
I will try my best to do it justice but please bear in mind I will not be able to cover every thing here.

The first 2 days were devoted to a site visit.

The site visit as explained by the inspector at the beginning of the day was still a formal part of the inquiry and when we want to say something we need to have every one present and hearing it. We were instructed that this is not the place to give evidence but can we can point things to him. This took some getting used to as it is not always clear when pointing ends and evidence begins and it took a while to get the hang of it.
  
The first day focused on the proposed site, Cranford way, Chetle Court, houses on Uplands Rd Rathcool Garden, Whiteman Rd and the new river path.

On the second day we visited LC plants in Battersea and Wembley and visited another proposed site in Tolworth. A tour by driving in our local roads was also included but not followed to the letter because of lack of time.(I will explain shortly)

When visiting Wembley we were taken to the siding into the the shed where the raw material are discharged into a system of conveyor belts, which deliver the raw materials from the wagons to the storage bins and from there to the plant itself.

We were there to witness this operation and see for ourselves how noisy and dusty this might or might not be. On arrival we were shown how this works when surprise surprise SAND was scheduled to be discharged. Needless to say that discharging SAND was not very loud and it was pointed out that we would like to witness the stones used for concrete do the same thing. Saying this might be misleading too, the movement of the train and wagons is very noise and as we spent more and more time there it became very apparent: As the guy operating this was less and less careful and the banging of loose metal bits attached to the wagons against the wagons themselves can be heard in great distances.

The inspector asked Casey how long before we can hear the aggregate discharged? Casey after conferring with his employees on site came back with the answer of - one and a half hours, probably hoping this would put and end to it and because of lack of time we won’t be able to see it. But he was wrong! The inspector made a quick decision - we would go back to Haringey, do the driving tour and come back to Wembley to see and hear the stones being discharged! And so we did.

On our return to Wembley not surprisingly the stones wagons were not ready. And we have witness once again a very silent operation of, get this ‘DUST’ being discharged. Dust? We were astonished what is dust?
Casey explained nothing to worry about... This is not used in the making of concrete, it is only used in the creation of tarmac and it is called dust but it is really very fine sand... Ok when is the stones due we asked? 10 minutes or so we were told... So as you can imagine we were there for a while looking around noticing more and more damning things...

While waiting for the stones I see Casey and Nick having a rather animated discussion on their own, I am thinking to myself shell I come closer extending my ears to catch some of this conversation? And as the thought crosses my mind I see Vilna from Firstplan rushing to separate the 2 so I leave her to it. It is then that I noticed a huge hummer sitting on the floor about a meter a way from the wagon discharge bay... I grab Nick and say to him: Nick I would like to know what this sledge hummer is doing here and what do they use this for?

Now at this point I was not aware of the topic Nick and Casey covered in their animated conversation.
But for the context of this story I will tell you now what it was although I only found out what it was at the end of the day.

In a nutshell – Casey took Nick a side and said: This (the inquiry) is taking too long and you are too thorough and I am going to sue you for cost! Nick responded by saying: I am astonished you bring this up now! and if you think you can intimidate me you are very much mistaken!

Following this conversation and my question on the hummer I walked out of the shed to hear the noise of the wagons rattling from a distance, At this point Nick approached Casey again and asked him if he knew what the sledge hummer was used for? Casey said he doesn’t know... So Nick asks: Do you mind if I ask your foreman what it is used for? Casey: If it pleases you... Nicks being very pleased indeed then approaches the man who operate the wagon discharge and repeats the question to him. The man said: we use it to hummer stuff out to fully dislodge it off the wagons...

I am sure Casey was not at all pleased, as during the inquiry when noise was explored it was suggested that they use hummers to dislodge staff and LC went into great length to poo poo our suggestions that this is common practice... Turns out we were right after all...

Next we are all called in again to witness the discharge of the stones... Finally! mmm... but not quite... The stones happened to be a lot louder then sand and dust but then (I think it was Cheryl) notices the the stones are 10 mil stones and Casey was asked: Are these the stones used for the creation of concrete?
No he says this stones are used for creating tarmac, the stones used for concrete are 20 mil stones.

By this time we all know from our direct experience that as the size increases so is the loudness of noise and it was agreed we would wait yet again to hear how the 20 mil stones will be sounding like when they are discharged. Needless to say louder still!

It is also worth mentioning at this point that it is not just the discharge of the stones that is louder, the sound of the conveyer belt carrying the stones to their destination increases with the increases of the size of the stones.

Also the shed is not fully enclosed and can not be fully enclosed for operational reasons we were told.
Conveyor belts too are NOT fully enclosed the excuse – the workers need to see what goes on.
Wagons are not covered reason being wagon company don’t wish to do it and that can’t be enforced... MMM.... Seems we right after all... Dust does escape and we could see it on the vegetation all around the siding!  

BR LC transport expert evidence

Thanks to our transport team and Paul great eye for numeric details it was proven and admitted to by their expert witness, that their calculation of traffic flow was flawed! It meant a great increase in % of HGV’s on the local roads.

It is interesting to point that those figures and tables were checked by many experts Haringey own officers Haringey commissioned report authors and so on. Non of those who were paid to scrutinize those figures recognised this problem...

But a resident who cared did!  The problem was simple those complex calculations failed to take into account that if LC HGV would go about it’s way delivering concrete to lets say north or south it will be then returning from that same direction!

The inspector asked BR to supply a corrected table and correct the tables that follow that one.

There was also disagreement on the statistics of accidents caused by those HGV’s. We have provided a GLA document which puts LC figures is question. BR tried to dismiss this source of information but at the end the inspector asked BR what was the source of his information on it since he does not reference it in his report?
BR after a laps in memory had to finally admit his source was also a GLA document and the inspector asked to see it.

Derek Casey evidence

After Derek Casey evidence if chief, Haringey barrister JM spent a while questioning Casey on his evasive manoeuvres and point blank refusals to disclose any real and verifiable information about his company operation particularly with regards to private collections and their frequencies... Casey was told few times by the inspector to answer the questions he is being asked!

JM had taken Casey pain stakingly in his meticulous way through the email correspondence he had with Haringey requesting this and other information and illustrating Casey’s reluctance and straight forward refusals to cooperate and provide the information requested...

NF GreenN8’s lawyer in his X examination of Casey, gave him every opportunity to come clean about the issue of private collectors too...

Bear in mind that at the bottom of our bag of surprises we had some prior knowledge on that:

• Thanks to Lorna and Eleni who spent a day in Gerrard Cross counting both London Concrete and non London Concrete ready mix lorries, we discovered a company by the name ‘Hardcrete’, which operate a fleet of ready mix lorries.
  

• Investigating further we found out that Hardcrete supply and deliver Concrete from 4 different LC batching plants (delivery locations and lorries size and type are outlined on their own website)
  

• We knew we had to find more concrete evidence then that on the connection and business relationship of the 2 companies. Thanks to Eleni, that came about  in the form of the licence granted to hardcrete by VOSA - THE TRAFFIC COMMISSIONER, http://www.vosa.gov.uk to operate their HGV’s from 2 different London Concrete plants.
  

• The implication of this information, if it did not leap at you by now, is that LC by having such an arrangement with companies like Hardcrete can overcome any conditions put on them with regards to the number of vehicles they are aloud to operate
  

Remember that LC have tried to understate that part of their operation all the way and had lied about it on a number of occasions...

Armed with this information we wanted to give Casey every opportunity to come clean or lie as he wished.

So the line of questioning went a long those lines:(this is not an exact transcript)

NF: Can you describe a typical private collector?

DC: small operators who need concrete for small jobs. Average of 2.5 collections a day

NF: Can you describe the type of vehicles they use?

DC: Small tipper trucks.

NF: Only small tipper trucks?

DC: Yes

NF: Can you explain what is your business relationship with those private collector?

DC: They buy concrete when they need it, no special relationship...

NF: Can you tell us about Hardcrete a company who operate small fleet of concrete ready mix trucks?

DC: They operate small ready mix lorries and can deliver only 1 ton of concrete at a time

NF: Have you visited Hardcrete web site?

DC: No

NF: According to their website their trucks are not that small they are
And can deliver up to 8 tons of concrete?

DC: (having an amnesic attack on the witness stand all of a sudden) I wouldn’t know.

NF: OK, can you explain your relationship with Hardcrete

DC: We have a business arrangement.

NF: Can you describe it to us please?

DC: They come and collect concrete from us

NF:Do they only collect the concrete?

DC: Yes

At this point we hand out the licence document from Vosa (mentioned above) to all parties including the inspector which state:

OF1010119 SN
HARDCRETE LTD
Director(s): FIONA JANE HARDING, JAMES RICHARD HARDING.
49 GRAVEL HILL TERRACE, BOXMOOR, HEMEL HEMPSTEAD, HERTS,
HP1 1RJ

Increased authorisation at existing operating centre: GERRARDS CROSS PLANT,
OXFORD ROAD, GERRARDS CROSS, BUCKS, SL9 8TE
New authorisation at this operating centre will be: 3 vehicle(s), 0 trailer(s)

New operating centre: LONDON CONCRETE LTD, ORPHANAGE ROAD
SIDINGS, OFF REEDS CRESCENT, WATFORD, HERTS, WD1 1LZ
New authorisation at this operating centre will be: 2 vehicle(s), 0 trailer(s)