The Secretary of State has considered carefully all the representations before him.  On the basis of the submissions received, he is of the view that there are no substantive issues which require the Inquiry to be re-opened and he has therefore decided that he is in a position to re-determine the appeal on the basis of all the evidence and representations now before him… The Secretary of State will issue his decision in this case on or before 5 April 2012.

This is the bald wording of the official letter just received by me as one of the witnesses at the most recent Public Inquiry into the Helioslough proposal to build a lorry terminal at Park Street.

So yet again we are in an end-game and one that looks pretty final.

It all now depends on one man, Eric Pickles, and the advice he receives from his departmental lawyers.  Will he uphold his previous decision to overturn the Inspector’s recommendation that the terminal should be allowed? – which was then challenged in court by Helioslough on a legal technicality.

Or will he cave in?

I was pleased to see in the bundle of final representations included with this letter that the St Albans Civic Society had endorsed and underlined the previous representations from David Parry and myself about the impact of motorway widening on the local road network and also the alternative opportunity offered by Sundon north of Luton.  Our view remains that these matters could have been best explored in a re-opened Inquiry but that is not to be.

The Secretary of State took his previous decision on the basis that there is an alternative better site at Colnbrook on the Great Western mainline near Slough with better rail connectivity in terms of access and loading gauge than our own Midland Mainline.

For now the residents of Park Street and south St Albans – and the Thameslink commuters who will be massively impacted by the alteration works to the Elstree Tunnel – can only hope that Mr Pickles stands by this judgment against the flurry of competing lawyers’ letters.  The waiting will be over in less than nine weeks.

But we need more than the various parties sitting in trenches and lobbing legal mortar bombs at one another.

There are new arguments which deserve examination but they will only get credence if they can be tested and cross-examined.  This will only be possible if the Inquiry is re-opened.  It’s not a third Inquiry, it is simply a re-opening of the last one to allow the new material to be introduced.

It is clear from the submission from Helioslough and the comprehensive rebuttal of their arguments by St Albans District Council and to some extent by STRiFE that there is little agreement as to the importance or relevance of particular changes in circumstance since the Public Inquiry, or indeed of the effect of ongoing changes in planning policy.

For David and myself, we want an up-to-date picture of the impact of M25 widening on local traffic flows and an understanding of the implications of the recent joint decision of the two local authorities to the north of us to back a freight terminal at Sundon.  They want one, we don’t, it’s the same railway line, that must count for something in the brave new world of localism.

Submitting the various new circumstances to the glare of open inquiry would also minimise the chance of continued legal claims at the end of the process.

It may seem to prolong the agony to local residents.  There have been suggestions that some of the participants want to avoid further cost.  But the cost to our district of allowing the Helioslough scheme to proceed by default would be even greater.  I hope the Secretary of State is listening.

PS If you want to catch up on the history, see previous blog-postings at http://bit.ly/rJt6R0

Margaret Scissorhands, as Iain Sinclair memorably described Margaret Thatcher in his book London Orbital, cut the tape on 29 October 1986.  The deed was done within St Albans district, close to where the River Colne flows under the motorway.  The site, now within the St Albans parliamentary boundaries, was then part of Hertsmere, represented by Mrs T’s favourite Cecil Parkinson.  Perhaps that was why the site was chosen rather than at Junction 1 south of the Dartford Crossing.

A marquee was set up on the Radlett Aerodrome, since then restored to agriculture and now under very real threat from the Helioslough lorry terminal application – see various postings in this blog.  Mrs Thatcher arrived in a bullet-proof car with security outriders, snipped the ribbon and then mingled with the invited guests, including my old friend David Parry, there as the then Chairman of Planning at St Albans District Council.

It is hard to remember life before the M25.  But as Stephen pointed out in a most interesting discussion on public transport last night at the regular Drinks for Democracy at the White Hart on Holywell Hill, it has played a major role in increasing car dependency as office and retail parks have sprung up from Blue Water to Leavesden.

The volumes of traffic have increased far beyond the planners’ imaginings, thus the relentless widening of the original six-lane road, but without any concomitant improvements to the local feeder network.

We are already seeing the impact of the recently completed widening of the Watford to Bricket Wood stretch in more queueing on the A414 and A405.  This is why David and I think a new traffic count on these roads is vital before any final decision is made on the Helioslough proposal – see my previous post here.

The letter posed some technical legal questions which were more a matter for the council lawyers, but we were also asked if there were any new matters or change in circumstances which we considered material to the Secretary of State’s further consideration of this appeal, and also whether the Inquiry should be re-opened.

I sat down with my old friend David Parry, who also gave evidence at the last Inquiry identifying in particular flaws in the methodology used to calculate likely lorry traffic from the Helioslough project.

Together we have identified two substantial changes in circumstance warranting a re-opening of the Inquiry.  The M25 widening is now an actuality but we do not have any evidence as to the impact this has had on local feeder and distributor roads.  And Luton and South Bedfordshire have formally endorsed Sundon quarry as an alternative site, which again has happened since the Public Inquiry closed.

Traffic was a  key issue in determining whether the Park Street site could accommodate a huge lorry terminal.  We just don’t know how much additional traffic is being generated on local roads because of the widened M25.  It seems obvious that there should be new traffic counts which could be presented as evidence to a re-opened Inquiry and allow this issue to be properly considered.

As for the Sundon quarry site, I have written previously in this blog how it is a far better place for a strategic railfreight terminal.  Now the local planning authorities in Bedfordshire  have confirmed that they want it, but this was only after the close of the Public Inquiry. The argument made at the previous inquiry that Sundon was not sufficiently advanced to be a viable alternative has now been blown out of the water.

The new coalition government is promoting localism.  Well this local support in Bedfordshire for a different, better option is another significant new circumstance.  It must be taken into account.

On the basis of these significant changes in circumstances, David and I have jointly written today to the Department calling for the Public Inquiry to be re-opened.  Watch this space.

Essentially the council has passed everything back into the lap of Secretary of State Eric Pickles and is hoping that he will come up with improved substantive grounds as to why Colnbrook is a better place than Park Street to site a railfreight terminal to serve the north-west quadrant of London.

My niggling doubt is that we saw the Conservative-controlled county council refuse to stand up for local residents in the second public inquiry, leaving it to the District Council and to STRiFE.  That was a dereliction of duty of their part and must have played a part in allowing the Inspector to recommend approval of the project,  leading to the Secretary of State having to over-rule him, and so this most recent legal challenge by HelioSlough.

I hope the new Conservative-led district council administration, which is in St Albans but not of St Albans, is not wobbling in resolve to stand up for residents in the south of the district.

After the second public inquiry into St Albans District Council’s second refusal of the scheme in late 2009 – see this blog for lots of previous entries particularly on the disappointing failure of the Conservative county council to back local residents – the planning inspector who heard the case recommended it should be given the go-ahead.

So we were all relieved then the coalition Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government Eric Pickles overruled him on the grounds that a similar proposal in Colnbrook, Slough, could meet the need for the site with less environmental damage.

Now a high court judge has sided with HelioSlough in their argument that Mr Pickles had failed to understand the importance of the so-called Strategic Gap between London and Slough in his findings.  The judge said that it was “not clear” whether the minister had misunderstood the Strategic Gap policy, and that his decision letter had been “silent” about whether he had understood his own inspector’s reasoning on the potential impact of the Colnbrook proposal on it.

Along with other observers, I had reservations at the time as to whether Mr Pickles had mounted the most robust explanation for his decision but it was the right decision and there are all sorts of reasons including rail capacity why Colnbrook makes more sense than a field  south of St Albans.

The new Conservative administration in St Albans and the Secretary of State have until Monday to decide whether to appeal the judge’s decision.  Or I guess Mr Pickles can resubmit his decision with a clear statement on the strategic gap issue.

It’s not over till it’s over.  I hope this is a temporary setback and not total defeat, so that sheep may continue to safely graze as they were when we went to the site this week.

It is the proper reward for years of hard campaigning.

Had this awful development gone ahead, it would have irrevocably destroyed the character of our city and district and would have reduced our roads to gridlock.  Of course it is disappointing that the Inspector did not accept the powerful arguments put forward by the council, by STRiFE and by local residents.

But at a political level, the new Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government has shown that it understands the importance of Green Belt and that there are alternative sites for railfreight terminals where much less damage would be caused.

Three cheers for a government which shows common sense.  And congratulations too to STRiFE, to St Albans District Council, to all the local political parties who were genuinely united on this issue, and most of all to local residents and interest groups who gave evidence, put up posters, wrote letters, raised money and delivered leaflets.  It is their well-deserved triumph.

The county council deserves a good kicking for its abject failure to mount a challenge on highways grounds – that allowed the Inspector to ignore the evidence presented by David Parry and myself that the traffic generation formulae were flawed (see earlier blog entries here).  My own belief is that we have identified a serious issue which will alter the way that traffic models are constructed in other similar applications.

One final thought.  12 months ago, our City and District had the twin threats of a wholly inappropriately sized Tesco in London Road and this terrible proposal for a gigantic lorry terminal to the south of the district.  In both cases, determined campaigning by local residents, a firm stance from the council, and a blessedly united front from the political parties have seen the respective Goliaths off.

We now have to take our city and district forward with appropriate developments which go with the grain of our ancient and wonderful community.

I spoke second and flagged up the potentially fatal flaw identified by David Parry and myself in the way that Helioslough’s traffic experts had calculated the likely HGV movements in and out of the terminal (see more below).  I then went on to comment that while the proposed terminal had forfeited any right to be described as strategic, St Albans’s strategic place in British history was assured and any destruction of the crucial southern approach to the city based on a “dodgy dossier” of highway evidence had to be weighed against that.

Other speakers included Eric Roberts and Peter Trevelyan of the Civic Society.  Eric in particular gave an absolutely bravura performance on the rail issues, drawing fully on his 27 year career as a railwayman.

The final witness of the morning was David Parry.  It is he of course who first identified the possible flaw in the HGV calculations because of a traffic generation formula based on warehousing comparative floorspace rather than comparative volume.  It is quite clear that we have struck a real nerve with Helioslough.  Their counsel seemed quite hurt at the press coverage we have achieved – well bless.

He went at David hammer and tongs, trying to get him to wobble, and emphasising that all highway forecasts are done in this way.  As David pointed out, that does not make them right and 20 metre high warehouses as proposed here are a relatively new phenomenon.  Their lawyer then said how did David know whether the part of the warehouse higher than 12 metres would be as intensively used as the lower 12 metres.  David, who runs his own architectural design practice, said that he did not design a three storey house on the basis that the top storey would not be used.

Rather than trying to beat up on witnesses who are not paid, who have to take time off work, and who don’t have massive resources at their disposal, it would be far better if Helioslough simply got a signed statement from their professional traffic advisers confirming that they did take into account the greater storage volume per square metre of floorspace at Radlett compared with other sites.

I suspect that is a question they don’t want to ask – I wonder why not…

For the first time for a long time, I feel slightly more optimistic about the final outcome.  St Albans District Council and STRiFE have done a magnificent job.  They and we have provided more than enough ammunition  – in the end it all depends  on the Inspector.

Finally the full text of my speech this morning follows -

I am Sandy Walkington, Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Candidate for St Albans Constituency.  I am an independent Communications Consultant.  I was previously a senior manager for Texaco, BT, and up until 2006 I was the Director of Public Affairs for Transport for London.  I have also been a member of the CBI National Council.

The St Albans constituency is bounded by the A1(M) in the east and the Grand Union Canal in the west.  The A414/A405 dual carriageway is effectively the spinal cord of the area defined by the parliamentary boundaries.  I live at the eastern end of this road and drive along it in both directions on a daily basis at all times of the day and evening, entering and exiting at all the major junctions.  So I am very familiar with its patterns of usage.

At the previous Inquiry I expressed my concern at the carrying capacity of the road infrastructure and whether it could cope with the predicted lorry movements put forward by the applicant.  My concerns were of course widely shared by others opposing the application but as we know the Inspector concluded that in his opinion the local road system would be able to handle the predicted lorry numbers.

That is why the proof of evidence presented by my friend and colleague David Parry and particularly the appendix to his proof is so important.  He suggests that the agreed forecasts for lorry traffic appear to be based on a wrongly founded calculation.  He has noted that the likely traffic generation figures for Radlett have been generated by extrapolation from actual vehicle movements at Daventry International Railfreight Terminal (DIRFT) in 2005 and at Magna Park in an undated survey.  I accept that all the parties involved in highway matters appear to have accepted the calculation, but there seems to be something very odd about the quoted formula.

As Mr Parry has noted, they state that they have used recorded HGV movements associated with the warehousing floorspace in square metres at Daventry and Magna Park to derive the forecasts for vehicle movements into Radlett by comparing the proposed warehousing floorspace in this application.  But  on the face of it the fact that the proposed Radlett warehousing is designed to accommodate considerably more storage volume per square metre of floorspace than is the case at DIRFT and Magna Park has been simply ignored.   The Radlett warehousing with a planned height of 20 metres is 50 percent higher than the older 12 metre high warehousing at DIRFT and Magna Park.  In addition warehousing of the height proposed at Radlett requires automated rail guided loading and unloading systems rather than conventional fork lift truck stacking.  This allows internal storage stacks to be placed in a much denser configuration than in older warehouses.  The combination of both gives Radlett a far greater storage capacity per square metre of floorspace than at the comparator sites used to generate the forecast.

The only conclusion that I can draw as a layman in these matters is that either  Helioslough is committing deliberately and as a matter of ;policy to under-utilise its built storage space (which seems unlikely in the real world of competition) and/or to they are committing to only have low turnover  warehouse operations as tenants (which also seems unlikely).  Or they have contrived – quite possibly accidentally –  to underestimate by a very considerable margin the likely HGV traffic into and out of the site.

I have additionally had sight of the statement submitted to the Inquiry by Mr Chris Brown of STRiFE.  I note that he has taken forward Mr Parry’s insight and has produced a very useful table which inter alia compares forecast lorry movements per cubic metre of storage at Radlett versus those predicted per cubic metre of storage for Kent International Gateway and Colnbrook.  His table of figures starkly illustrates that there does indeed seem to be something very amiss with the forecasts for lorry movements at Radlett, where lorry numbers are predicted to be half the number per cubic metre of storage as at the other sites.  In short the sums do not add up.

The previous Inspector’s conclusions were not based on there being huge surplus capacity on the local road network.  He simply concluded that the additional lorry numbers were manageable.  But if in fact the actual daily figure for HGV movements in and out of the site is up to or even greater than 6,000 compared with the figure of just over 3,000 on which the Inspector’s conclusion was based, there must be a good chance that we will have reached a tipping point where the roads local to the Park Street site will be overwhelmed and the concerns of the Highways Agency about the impact on key strategic junctions will be further magnified.  All the assumptions about highway capacity must be re-examined from scratch.  Moreover such a huge increase in HGV movements without a commensurate increase in train traffic will make Radlett far more obviously a road to road distribution site with a few sidings attached rather than a genuine railfreight interchange.  It seems to me to open up a whole series of questions which must be answered.

Turning to the rail element of the application, I agree with the other parties to the Inquiry about the impact on commuters, which has already been well rehearsed at this Inquiry.  When I worked at Transport for London I was closely involved in the early negotiations to create TfL’s ambitious new London Overground programme.  This is taking over elements of the surface rail system and is designed to introduce more frequent metro style services to encourage ridership on these under-used lines.  I can certainly confirm on the basis of numerous discussions in that role the huge conflict in North London between the existing demands for freight paths and the ambitions for increased commuter rail into and across the metropolis.

I also agree with other witnesses on the implications of the known restrictions of rail access and loading gauge.  A maximum W9 gauge and rail connections only to and from the south fatally undermine this site’s pretensions to be a Strategic Railfreight Terminal – and if it is not strategic, then the destruction of Green Belt and impact on local infrastructure cannot be justified.

But if the proposed Freight Terminal has forfeited any right to be described as strategic, the strategic place of the city of St Albans in the history of this island is certainly assured.  Other witnesses have stressed the risk to an irreplaceable view of national significance from the Midland Main Line.  My own still memorable first sight of St Albans was across the flat expanse of the Park Street site – then empty runways – to the city on the hill with its remarkably preserved skyline of Cathedral, Clock Tower and St Peter’s Church.  St Albans stood out as distinct and separate from the outer London sprawl.  It is impossible to put a value on this kind of view – and it is not just the view from the south towards the Abbey and St Albans’s historic conservation area which will be irreparably compromised by the inappropriate bulk and massing of the proposed warehouses.  The crucial view southwards when exiting from the Abbey’s west end will be changed for ever by the sight of these huge warehouses in the distance.

Further along the M25 to the east, historic Waltham Abbey has been lost in a clutter of tin sheds with only occasional glimpses of the abbey tower.  This is the church where King Harold was reputed to have been buried after his death at Hastings.

St Albans is immeasurably more important than Waltham Abbey in historical terms.  We are talking of a city which has played a significant role in some of the greatest milestones of our nation’s history – the Roman invasion and Boudicca; the conversion of this island to Christianity and the great story of Alban, Britain’s first Christian martyr and strong contender to be the United Kingdom’s patron saint; the drafting of Magna Carta; key moments in the Peasants Revolt; two great battles in the Wars of the Roses; the foundation of modern scientific enquiry with Francis Bacon.  What will future generations think of us if we wilfully allow great slabs of warehousing to dominate the southern approach of this truly historic city and create the visual coalescence with other communities which Green Belt policy is precisely supposed to prevent?

St Albans is special.  As the internationally respected American architect and planner Andres Duany  (a huge admirer of this city) said in a recent talk in this very chamber, there are few enough places in the world which are genuinely special and we have to work ceaselessly to stop them being vandalised and reduced to conformity with other less special places.  We appear to have a dodgy dossier of highway forecasts.  It is a foundation of this application.  Until we get a full and proper explanation of the apparent discrepancies the appeal should be rejected and the applicant instructed to come back with an accurate forecast of lorry movements.  Otherwise we will have the unnecessary destruction of the southern approach to this great city, a complete breakdown of the highway infrastructure as up to double the predicted number of lorries access the site, and future generations will simply rub their eyes at our carelessness with history.

I joined the demonstration organised by STRiFE beforehand and then we all crowded into the council chamber to hear the opening submissions – so many of us that the council’s head of legal services joined other council staff in pulling out more chairs so everyone could sit.

In his opening remarks the Inspector, Mr Mead, specifically referred to a letter I had written to him at the end of last week.  In this letter I had asked him to consider an adjournment of the whole Inquiry.  I had not made an external song and dance about this request.  It was not a stunt.

But following Hertfordshire County Council’s recent abject decision not to oppose the Helioslough application on highway grounds, my old Liberal Democrat friend and colleague David Parry decided to review all the highways data.  He then phoned me up and asked me to come over to see if I agreed with his discovery of what looks to be very dodgy arithmetic in the calculations used by Helioslough’s “experts” to predict likely lorry movements in and out of the terminal.

This is of crucial importance since up until now all sides have accepted the Helioslough lorry movement forecast.  The discussion at the last Inquiry was simply whether the local road network could cope with this additional volume of traffic.  The Council, STRiFE and other objectors all argued it could not, the Inspector eventually ruled that the road network could cope.  But if the number of lorry movements has in fact been hugely under-predicted by Helioslough, then the Inspector was basing his decision on false data, all bets are off and the whole basis of the application should be re-reviewed.

When David says something about planning, it is always worth listening to what he has to say.  When he was a member of St Albans District Council, he was chairman of the planning committee (the then equivalent of Planning Portfolio Holder) and he led the successful campaign against the then Conservative government’s wish to see massive retail development on the “golden triangle” formed within the crossing of M1, M25 and A405.  David now runs a local design practice.  He knows his stuff.

So this is what I wrote to the Inspector once I was confident that Helioslough had a case to answer:

Dear Mr Mead
As Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate for St Albans, I have registered my wish to speak during the days reserved for members of the public in order to express my reasoned opposition to the proposed freight terminal on the former Radlett Aerodrome.
In preparing my statement of evidence I have been reading the material submitted by others and particularly that from Mr David Parry, chairman of the St Stephens Liberal Democrats.  As a result of reading his statement, I am writing to you without delay formally to request an adjournment of proceedings since he would appear to have exposed a fundamental flaw in the calculation used to generate lorry movements into and out of the Radlett site.
He has noted that the likely traffic generation figures for Radlett have been generated by extrapolation from actual vehicle movements at Daventry International Railfreight Terminal (DIRFT) in 2005 and at Magna Park in an undated survey.  Indeed all the parties have accepted the calculation.
But if you examine the reasoning, it is the relative square footage of the warehousing at Daventry and Magna Park which is used to compare with the proposed square footage at Radlett in order to calculate vehicle movements from Radlett.
However the Radlett warehousing is proposed to be 20 metres tall with a likely internal storage height of 18 metres whereas DIRFT and Magna Park both consist of warehousing mostly of no more than 12 metre internal storage height.  So already we have fifty percent more storage volume for the same internal square footage.
18 metre high storage stacks require automated rail guided loading and unloading systems, which in fact mean that the stacks are much closer together than in conventional warehouses using standalone forklift trucks.  So not only will Radlett have higher stacks than at DIRFT, they will also be closer together.  On this basis Radlett could have double the volume of storage for the same floor area.
This makes all the predictions of lorry movements totally understated.  Assuming Radlett is in line with modern norms in terms of turnover, we have to presume up to twice the number of lorry movements as predicted in the Helioslough submission.
Since these were the figures used in the previous Inquiry – without argument I admit – this implies that the Inspector’s decision that the local road network could cope was based on false information.  The local roads will be overwhelmed and the balance of movement between road and rail will be radically altered making it far more obviously a road distribution site.
I agree it is extraordinary that nobody has noticed this before.  I am only a layman in these matters.  But I do note that all data about warehousing talks in square footage rather than volume – it just seems to be taken for granted.  The elephant has been in the corner and nobody has noticed it – until now.
Mr Parry will be talking to his evidence on Public Day.  I will also be referring to these matters.  But the flaw seems so profound that I am formally writing to ask for an adjournment to give all parties the opportunity to re-examine the data.
I look forward to your prompt response.

The Inquiry Programme Office had contacted me on Friday to say that the Inspector had asked that the letter be circulated to all the parties, that is Helioslough, St Albans District Council and STRiFE.  STRiFE certainly received it and they believe there is a real issue which Helioslough must address.

Martin Kingston QC, lead counsel for Helioslough, said he knew nothing of my letter and was clearly taken aback.  Well he knows now.

Today the Inspector told us that he was not going to adjourn the Inquiry at this stage but that my letter clearly raised issues which will need to be addressed.

There are of course many other reasons for opposing this awful proposal and I will be rehearsing many of them when I give evidence at the Public Day on December 3rd.  But we just could have dropped a depth charge into the whole process.  Lets hope so.

It is not even a case of being stabbed in the back – it’s a knife in the stomach.

There were perfectly sound reasons for the highways issues to be revisited at this Inquiry.  Patterns of road usage are always changing, for example there is the potentially significant impact of Butterfly World.

The fight against the terminal will continue of course.  The rail capacity arguments remain powerful reasons for the application to fail yet again.  But it is quite shocking that the Conservative ruling group on Herts County Council have decided to put narrow financial interests above those of the residents of St Albans.