Register of Undertakings and Assurances

All petitioners against the Crossrail Bill have been informed that the DfT have published the second draft of the Crossrail Register of Undertakings and Assurances. A download is attached below, along with an explanatory note.

A first draft of the register was published in December 2006 (an explanatory note setting out the key changes made to the register since then is attached below). The purpose of the register is to capture all the individual undertakings and assurances given to petitioners and to Parliament into one single document to ensure that the "nominated undertaker" (the person who will in due course be appointed to construct Crossrail), as well as the Secretary of State for Transport or any other organisation exercising the Bill powers, complies with them.

The register will form part of the Crossrail Environmental Minimum Requirements (EMRs) and an undertaking has been given that "any nominated undertaker will be contractually bound to comply with the controls set out in the EMRs". The register should be read in conjunction with the other documents that are also part of the EMRs, namely the Construction Code, the Environmental Memorandum and the Planning and Heritage Memorandum.

Drafts of these documents can also be found on the Crossrail Bill Supporting Documents website (http://billdocuments.crossrail.co.uk/). Undertakings given in these documents are not included separately in the undertakings register as they are covered by the single EMR undertaking which is on the register.

The register includes:

• all formal signed undertakings between petitioners and the Secretary of State for Transport;
• assurances given in the Crossrail Bill House of Commons Select Committee proceedings, transcripts of which can be found on the Parliament website at (http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm/cmcross.htm);
• undertakings and assurances given to petitioners in letters from Cross London Rail Links (CLRL), the Department for Transport (DfT), or our Parliamentary Agents (Winckworth Sherwood); and
• undertakings or assurances given in the Crossrail Information Papers, all of which can be found on the Crossrail Bill Supporting Documents website (http://billdocuments.crossrail.co.uk/). Where undertakings or assurances given to petitioners are covered by the generic undertakings or assurances included in the information papers, they are not separately recorded against each individual petitioner in the register.

The register does not include undertakings or assurances that have either been carried out already or which will be carried out during the passage of the Bill (for example, an assurance to amend the content of the Bill) as the purpose of the register is to capture undertakings and assurances that will be carried out once the Bill is enacted and construction starts.

The DfT, CLRL and Winckworth Sherwood have sought to include in this second draft of the register all the undertakings and assurances that have been given thus far. However, in any process such as this, with such a large quantity of documents and correspondence, there is the potential for items to be missed.

One of the reasons for publishing a second draft of the register at this stage of the Bill process is to give petitioners an opportunity to let us know if they feel that an undertaking or assurance that they believe that they have been given has not been captured.

If you feel that an undertaking or assurance given to you has been missed, please contact

Michell Rawlings
Crossrail Bill Team
Department for Transport
2/19 Great Minster House
76 Marsham Street
London SW1 4DR

Direct Line: 020 7944 3377
Fax: 020 7944 2608
email: michelle.rawlings@dft.gsi.gov.uk

(It would help with dealing with your query if you send a copy of the missing undertaking or assurance, letter or email, or a documentary reference etc, that will allow it to be found).

Comments are welcome as soon as possible and by 28 December 2007 at the latest.

Once again, the purpose of the register is simply record factually actual undertakings and assurances given, and it is not intended to be a mechanism for seeking amendments to undertakings etc already given or for seeking additional undertakings etc.

This is the second draft of the register to be published; it is not the final version. There will be at least one further opportunity to comment on a draft before the final register is published after the Bill receives Royal Assent. The timing of Royal Assent is a matter for Parliament, but we expect that it will be secured in Summer 2008.

2 November 2007

File Downloads

  Register of U&A cover nov 07.pdf (25.2K)

  Register of U&A second draft Nov 07.pdf (245.4K)

  Register of U&A Explanatory note nov 07.pdf (18.1K)

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