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• Question by: Jennette Arnold OBE
• Meeting date: 07 December 2005

This is a specific question, and Darren (Johnson, AM) and I are dealing with an issue at the moment: if a planning application is being sought within a particular borough, say Waltham Forest, are locals to seek their first interaction with the borough planners rather than go to the LDA or go to the GLA? What is the route?

• Question by: Andrew Pelling
• Meeting date: 07 December 2005

I wanted to react to a point that Jenny Jones (AM) made and to then ask a question because I feel very disheartened that she feels that nothing is happening, as Jenny said, on Green Grids, particularly when Darren (Johnson, AM) told me during the budgetary process that agreement with the Mayor would get things done rather than agreement with the Assembly on the budgetary process. Is Jenny right when she says that nothing is being done on Green Grid?

• Question by: Jenny Jones
• Meeting date: 07 December 2005

One of the methods that you could accommodate this flood risk is through the Green Grid. Now, I am not seeing any movement on this. I am not seeing the finance in place. I am not seeing, in any serious way, that you are actually going to put that in place.

• Question by: Jennette Arnold OBE
• Meeting date: 07 December 2005

Could I come back and say, within the Olympic Park, whose 106 is that now that the LDA has purloined it?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 07 December 2005

I am very grateful for your answer, which I will take not only as an answer but also as a very clear statement of the challenges of getting this right. In the interests of getting to other questions on the agenda, I think we could rest it there, with the promise from you that in the New Year, there will be some clarity about how we are taking this forward, which we can maybe examine again.

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 07 December 2005

To cut this down to a more blunt political point then, there is a risk in the Olympics that if the relationship with the LSCs is not amended or revised or improved in a way that the Mayor is suggesting it should be, then the GLA's view is there is a risk to the Olympics and the delivery of training as part of that?

• Question by: Bob Blackman
• Meeting date: 07 December 2005

That clearly contradicts with what the Mayor has had to say. The reality is that the costs are going up beyond those expected and the Mayor has quite openly said to us, on the record, that it is basically a seven-year bridging loan that we are having here and we are acquiring additional property in order to fund the increased costs. Is it not a fact here that you are becoming a property speculator in order to fund the Games?

• Question by: Bob Blackman
• Meeting date: 07 December 2005

Can I just take you back to what the Mayor said at the last Mayor's Question Time, where he said, on the record, that this was precisely the reason why the land increase was taking place? Can I just tell you what he said? `We have increased the size of the land we are acquiring by about 25%' ' you are now saying it is 29%, so clearly the briefing to the Mayor was not quite correct - and basically he has done it so that the land could be sold later on at a greater profit.

• Question by: Jennette Arnold OBE
• Meeting date: 08 September 2005

Yes, was that a big `yes'?

• Question by: Brian Coleman
• Meeting date: 08 September 2005

Mr Mayor, I am looking at the cultural legacy from the Olympics. Funding for arts and culture in London is already hard pressed, as you know, especially that that is dished out through the Association of London Government (ALG) and the London boroughs. How are we going to fund the cultural legacy? Is that going to be to the disadvantage of arts organisations which are currently funded from the public sector?