“Bexley Council support the proposed Thames Gateway Bridge believing it will bring regeneration benefits. Evidence submitted by Professor Rosewell on behalf of TfL in document TfL/175 shows that the total increase in potential employment in Bexley, with the Thames Gateway Bridge, will be between zero and 700 jobs. Do you agree that Bexley residents have little to gain from this proposal when balanced against the detrimental effects on their quality of life?”

Councillor Ball replied that he did not agree with what Professor Rosewell had said because the figures that were being provided were notoriously fallible.

“Does the Council share our concerns that the Learning Skills Council are cutting jobs at the same time as local people are being told to learn new skills to remain in a competitive position in the future to take advantage of the new opportunities in the Thames Gateway area?”

Councillor Ball replied that he was always concerned to hear about job losses. Bexley had suffered a number of high profile ones - Ferndale Foods for example recently, but Councillor Ball believed there was also lots going on in terms of regeneration and job projections and enhancements over the next few years. Whilst he would like everyone who had got a job to keep theirs, and for Bexley to create new ones, the inevitable economic cycle did mean that from time to time people, including himself, were made redundant.

“Many supporters of the proposed Thames Gateway Bridge have a misconception that it will relieve congestion at the Dartford Crossing, the Blackwall Tunnel and the surrounding road network. TfL figures show that there will be less than a one minute saving on the Dartford Crossing and a six minute saving on the Blackwall Tunnel based on their own possibly underestimated traffic figures. TfL have stated quite categorically at the Inquiry that the Thames Gateway Bridge is not intended to relieve congestion. Does the Council acknowledge these facts?”

Councillor Ball replied that he acknowledged them as an opinion but did not necessarily acknowledge them as facts. Councillor Ball believed that everyone - Mr Grant, the Action Group and the Council - had been somewhat sceptical about some of the data and information provided previously by TfL, hence the Council’s position as an objector and its work to try and help clarify their facts and figures. That work was ongoing.

“It was recently reported that the M6 tolls failure showed that building extra tolled sections of road was not producing a solution to traffic growth. Could the Council comment on the implications to Bexley of the admission on a Department of Transport website that traffic growth is now expected to be higher than that forecast in the Government White Paper published last year and is the solution a congestion charge for Bexley as suggested by Mayor Ken Livingstone?”

Councillor Ball replied that there were a number of questions to be addressed. Certainly on the last one, he had written back to the Mayor of London expressing his reservations, to say the least, that a congestion charge zone was appropriate. In terms of traffic projections the professor had said that they were notoriously difficult. Bexley was working on those things. The bottom line was that nationally, including in London, the number of people who were affluent enough to afford a car was increasing. They were choosing to use cars, and Bexley was trying to encourage increased amounts of public transport - hence the public transport provision that was intended for the bridge, should it be built, was two lanes (one in each direction) not the six lane motorway that was being suggested.

Councillor Ball believed there were lots of misconceptions - misconceptions about the bridge, misconceptions about things like lorries trundling up Knee Hill which he understand would not be the case - there was a whole range of misconceptions and a whole range of information that was still needed. The Council remained an objector until the point that it was satisfied that all of the questions raised through appropriate mechanisms by both parties on the Council had been satisfied.

“The Mayor Ken Livingstone recently quoted that nearly 80% of local people support the proposed Thames Gateway Bridge. Results of a telephone poll in the October issue of the Gateway News, a newspaper distributed free to residents in Erith and Belvedere, showed that 69% of people are against the proposed Thames Gateway Bridge compared to 31% in favour. In the light of these results would the Council like to reconsider its position on this proposal?”

Councillor Ball replied that the Council continued to review its position, but its position in principle was clear and, as he had already said, as the process continued, new facts, new figures, new information came along. In terms of the article, the survey in the Gateway News based on the responses in September had been 51%/49% in favour of the Bridge and now it had gone the other way. Councillor Ball did not think a Council should make Council policy based on opinion polls in the local press.

“TfL’s rebuttal to Professor Kerry Hamilton, an expert adviser on consultation for objectors, stated and I quote “It cannot have come as any surprise to local residents that a new river crossing was still being pursued”. We believe that it has come as a surprise to local residents. Does the Council agree that Transport for London’s consultation process was flawed and inadequate and that this derogatory remark from Transport for London to local people is an excuse for their own ineffective consultation?”

Councillor Ball replied that everyone had accepted at the outset of the process that the methodology adopted by TfL was less than desirable and that was one of the things that the Council had picked up either directly through representations or through Counsel, so Councillor Ball believed there was an issue there. He was not familiar with the particular document that was being referred to, but was happy to look at it and give a fuller response. Councillor Ball stated that as it was a big, long-term strategic development that was being planned with all the controversy around it, should the Council still be considering it? Well probably. The figures and again it could be argued that they were only estimates and projections for 2016 (a bit like the traffic projections that were mentioned earlier on about congestion) but the suggestion of Thames Gateway was that there were potentially 180,000 new jobs on offer to people in the Thames Gateway region, which would be facilitated or assisted by having better transport infrastructure.

Currently, to get across to Newham was complicated and difficult, to Tower Hamlets to the Olympics redevelopments, all of those together would provide the opportunity of better quality jobs for people that live in Bexley. Whether or not thousands of new jobs were created in Bexley remained to be seen but there was that level of potential jobs - 180,000 (even if they were 50% out it was still 90,000) high quality jobs that were potentially on offer to residents of Bexley. That was why Councillor Ball believed Bexley should continue to look at it but it needed to be looked at in mind of the issues around traffic, environment, health and mitigation. Those were the things that had been discussed by Bexley’s barrister at the Inquiry stage. Those were the things that were discussed at a meeting that was being suggested was some sort of clandestine stitch-up between the Labour GLA Member Len Duval and Bexley. In fact the Conservative Member of the GLA had been present at that meeting as well. Bexley had negotiated with TfL directly to see if it could get a better set of promises and undertakings from them but at the end of that session they were not prepared to give Bexley what it considered were acceptable levels of reassurance.