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• Question by: Murad Qureshi
• Meeting date: 24 October 2012

Murad Qureshi (AM): I just want to briefly go back to land valuation taxation if you don't mind, given Roger's [Roger Evans AM] comments. I hear what you are saying about local planning concerns that have to be addressed by local authorities, I hear what you say about anything being proposed having to be national and not just London, but you would accept that it would discourage land banking and a fair amount of empty sites? Forget empty properties, there are major sites lying empty. Would it not encourage those being moved on at least and the promotion of jobs...

• Question by: Richard Tracey
• Meeting date: 24 October 2012

Tony, you have already spelt out some of the complexities of trying to bring something like this in and you have discussed whether it would simply be London or whether it would apply to the rest of the country, but surely one of the other enormous unfairnesses of it would be at what level and percentage it came in and indeed who qualified. Liberal Democrat politicians have been talking about a mansion tax applying over £1 million or £2 million, which seems very unfair, but surely the really serious unfairness of this would be if young people trying to get...

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 24 October 2012

Roger Evans (AM): I too spent a pleasant lunch some years ago being lobbied on this matter by Dave Wetzel [President of the Labour Land Campaign]. Professor Tony Travers (Chair, London Finance Commission): It is always fun. Roger Evans (AM): Yes, and he made the point that Jenny [Jones] does that it would encourage better use of land in London. Does that not mean that if you are using a piece of land for residential purposes it will encourage you to put a block of flats on it, the higher the better, rather than just ordinary houses?

• Question by: Andrew Boff
• Meeting date: 24 October 2012

Andrew Boff (AM): Professor Travers, do you think that the localisation of business rates might assist local authorities in dealing with the blight of empty shops and derelict land?

• Question by: Nicky Gavron
• Meeting date: 24 October 2012

Nicky Gavron (AM): Picking up on what you were saying earlier about hypothecation and recognising that you are trying to do a very important, long term job which may pay off, in the shorter term, how far is your survey of other cities looking at the ways in which other city governments have been enabled to set charges like congestion charging, or have the powers to set levies and so on, which they can hypothecate? The Mayor has two opportunities in London: CIL and congestion charging, and there could be others like that. Are you going to come up with...

• 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?