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• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 24 October 2007

No, no, no. I was asking you specifically about the Thames Gateway, which of course is the Mayor's flagship. Whenever he is asked where the new housing is going to be built, he says it is going to be built in the Thames Gateway. You have just told us you have been very encouraged that there are 4,000 new starts.

• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 24 October 2007

Would you care to answer the point that I made to you about the Thames Gateway, which is proposed to be the principal site for new homes in London. This suggests that there are going to be 100,000 new houses built on Thames Gateway - this is on page 27 [of the Mayor's Draft Housing Strategy]. However, in July the Mayor told me that there were only going to be 40,000 new homes.

• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 24 October 2007

Well, 5,300. To get anywhere near beating that target he should be producing 20,000, so you are already setting yourself up to fail.

• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 24 October 2007

We are not claiming anything of the sort. What we are saying is that it has got nothing whatsoever to do with the Mayor. It is a fact, isn't it, that the majority of borough councils in London do not subscribe to the Mayor's targets, and indeed those boroughs which have subscribed to the Mayor's targets have, in quantum, produced infinitely fewer houses than they were forecast to build? In effect, therefore, there has been a smaller cake and the only way they have been able to achieve the target is to get 50% of the smaller cake, whereas in...

• Question by: Bob Blackman
• Meeting date: 24 October 2007

Two quick areas I would just like to raise: how are you going to address the need for new affordable housing for families when we have already got a surplus of one bedroom properties at affordable level, and a large element of the developments that have taken place have been two bedroom properties? In actual fact the demand now in London is very much for family housing, both for affordable housing for rent but also housing that can be bought by families.

• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 24 October 2007

So, that is not a mark of success is it, by any measure?

• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 24 October 2007

Well those planning consents have been implemented, Neale, then. They cannot possibly be in the pipeline if they are already being built, can they?

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 24 October 2007

My apologies for not having been in at the beginning of the conversation, Neale; I was actually in the Thames Gateway meeting some residents in Bexley earlier on. I just wanted to take up one of the points that was raised and that is this: the clear view of all the partners, both in London Thames Gateway and in Essex and in Kent, is that you will only be able to deliver sustainable communities in the Gateway if the infrastructure is put in before the housing. There seems to be no evidence of that. Given that Crossrail is likely to...

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

Just coming back to the issue of the figures for housing, I think it would have been useful to have had someone from the Housing Corporation explain those figures because I have had difficulties getting some idea of what their methodology is on that front and it will undoubtedly become an annual political football. Coming to what I wanted to raise with Neale: the unimplemented planning permissions. Where do you think the explanation lies for that? Is it the five year limit on planning permissions? Is there not the building capacity to build them out? It would be useful, given...

• Question by: Dee Doocey
• Meeting date: 24 October 2007

Sorry, can I stop you there. There are new powers for boroughs to monitor them, but there is no new money for boroughs to do it. Without the funding it is very difficult to see how boroughs can monitor Houses in Multiple Occupation (HMOs).