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• Reference: 2009/0116-1
• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 21 October 2009

What are your top three greatest risks and how are you managing these, and what is your greatest reputational risk?

• Reference: 2008/0010-1
• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 08 October 2008

What lessons has the ODA learned from the Beijing Games?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 08 October 2008

Can I ask one tiny supplementary which is a little bit tangential? I understand that Queen Mary College - which is a university round the corner from where I live and just down the road from Stratford - has made its student village - about 3,000 properties - available for the entirety of the Olympics. Is that in some way making up for the shortfall in accommodation that is likely to be built at Stratford?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 08 October 2008

I do appreciate that most of the questions we want to ask you are probably subject to commercial confidentiality and so the last thing you want to do is announce the answers in public, but I will try one and maybe you can give us a thoughtful answer on this. It is about the IBC, the Media and Broadcast Centre. Is there a risk that it might not ultimately be built where it is proposed that it be built but that an opportunity might arise out of current other developments in the property market to relocate them within the Stratford...

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 08 September 2005

A lot of people will look to their local councillors as being people to protect their interests. How do you see that working? I know the local five boroughs have, more or less, agreed a single position on the Olympics and how they work with it. Do you have any problems with any of their requests and proposals?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 08 September 2005

I have a feeling that if Angie (Bray) were Mayor of London, she might have problems with it, as well. Leaving that flippant comment to one side, do you see, for example, London Citizens having a continuing involvement with the Olympics?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 08 September 2005

It would be very helpful for everyone if those relationships were understood, so that if the DCMS Select Committee makes a point, and the Assembly contradicts it and has a different perspective, there is a coherent response to that, and we understand how the hierarchy works, and how the different interests are being responded to and protected and so on. This could become a rather bureaucratic conversation, but some serious work needs to take place outside of meetings like this. Otherwise, we are going to have lots of very interesting headlines, but maybe not a lot of light shed on...

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 08 September 2005

Some months ago, in Mary's (Reilly) absence, I had the privilege, as vice chair of the LDA, to be a co-signatory with you of a letter to London Citizens. They are a particular pressure group on behalf of a number of faith groups, in particular. A number of comments were made to them about housing, about training, and so on. How do you see that being followed through in the coming months and years?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 08 September 2005

Thank you for that. Clearly, it is a bit like the situation with local businesses, that although there may be a range of formal commitments which are very well detailed and set down, individual people and interest groups might have difficulty understanding how they get into the structure of the Olympics. Say your road is stopped up, because there is some work taking place, or some development happens at the end of your street for the Olympics, and you do not really understand who to go to, or why it is happening. How is that mechanism going to work?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 08 September 2005

One final question, and I can ask this by posing a possible answer, I suppose: who should hold the Olympics to account? Potentially, the Olympics board holds it to account; the ODA holds it to account; the LDA holds it to account; and the London Assembly and each of the individual boroughs might consider they have to. There is a Select Committee of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) which might want to, as well. Is there potentially a real messy soup of accountability, out of which everyone will want a soundbite, but no one will actually wrestle...