Search questions

• Question by: Murad Qureshi
• Meeting date: 24 October 2007

Can I just go back to Neale's comments. I am glad to hear that local authorities are looking at areas where there is already the social infrastructure to provide additional housing. It strikes me, though, that the last time the capacity study was done at the GLA, during the first term, the local authorities in the south-west, where there is the infrastructure, the roads and what have you, got off lightly. I am talking about Richmond upon Thames and Kingston upon Thames. It seems to me, when I go through those parts of town, the infrastructure is there to accommodate...

• Question by: Valerie Shawcross
• Meeting date: 24 October 2007

It is good that we have got an opportunity to make a step change in the quality of development, particularly in affordable homes, with this Strategy and the Mayor's new powers. We also, as Assembly Members, had a rather robust conversation over lunch with the London Housing Corporation. That was about the very great degree of variance there seems to be at the moment between the housing management standards and the estate management standards - the neighbourhood management standards - between existing housing associations, amongst which there has been a great balkanisation; there are 500 or so housing associations in...

• Question by: Peter Hulme Cross
• Meeting date: 24 October 2007

A little while ago I went to an exhibition at the Building Federation. They were showing what I can only call an updated pre-fabricated house. It was actually a flat. It had a steel frame and it was was in situ, inside this frame. The frame could be put on the back of a lorry and taken to a site and bolted together. You could construct, effectively, a block of flats in modular fashion and all you had to do, having plonked it there, was to connect up electricity and water. The whole thing was centrally heated, and worked just...

• Question by: Jenny Jones
• Meeting date: 24 October 2007

That is going to be true even with the new powers.

• Question by: Jenny Jones
• Meeting date: 24 October 2007

What about enforcement?

• Question by: Jenny Jones
• Meeting date: 24 October 2007

Could I stop you there. I have got some questions and not very much time. Perhaps I can ask all my questions then you can just answer as best you can. The first question is how are you going to enforce all this, because that always seems to be the problem with councils actually being able to enforce codes. My view on all this, about trying to get to Level 3, is that it is just utterly unambitious. If you think that the houses we build now are going to be here for at least 50 years and possibly 100...

• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 24 October 2007

Can I just pursue this point, to agree with Jenny's point - the fuel poverty point - that by focusing on the affordable housing you get an added social benefit, but the Strategy focuses on the larger strategic developments. Isn't there a lot more that we can be doing given that I think the statistic is that 98% of all residential completions in the last year for which figures were available, were fewer than 100. By focusing on the larger ones we are missing the greater number. Are you satisfied that enough is going on to get the standards up...

• Question by: Sally Hamwee
• Meeting date: 24 October 2007

Before we move on to the next question I wonder if I could just ask you this: you have referred, Neale and David, to the relatively short time period covered by the Strategy. Leaving aside issues of the outcomes of elections and so on, what is anticipated in terms of roll forward of the Strategy, revision after it has been adopted and when a new one would come, or a revised one would come, onto the stocks to take us beyond 2011?

• Question by: Damian Hockney
• Meeting date: 15 February 2007

All right, David. One thing that I am a bit concerned about is that, if you look, for example, at the actual stadium and you look at the original quote of £280 million, the Government has now acknowledged it will be higher than that because of the fact that you want a legacy from it; you do not just want a temporary 80,000 seat stadium. Now, the problem is that that tends to indicate to me that no account initially was taken of a possible legacy use, so therefore there is at least another £100 million in costs. Ignore the...

• Question by: Damian Hockney
• Meeting date: 15 February 2007

If I turn to other areas, you mentioned - Sydney and Athens, and so on. My problem with the situation is, if you look at Athens, and, five years earlier, at a lot of the other venues, and with things like rowing and so on, these things were promised to be legacy. If you look at all the original stuff, it said, `this will be legacy'. But the rowing area now has, sort of, environmentally despoiled a wetlands area. The problem is, I cannot find any situation where I can trust claims. It all seems very pie in the sky...