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• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 16 January 2008

Just to clear up the point about when the report was released I think it went to the Board at 9 am or so and the press release came out 3 pm or 4 pm. I could not get the report itself off the LDA website until close to 7 pm on a Friday evening.

• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 11 October 2006

It is obviously crucial that we get this brownfield development right if we are to protect greenfield and indeed the green belt. The figures I have in the decade before the LDA was set up, so in the 1990s, we lost the equivalent of Richmond Park in greenfield development and in this decade we have been losing St James's Park every year, that is development on greenfield sites. So, with that context, do you think that the the LDA's annual target of, I think is it 50 or 55 hectares a year, is adequate?

• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 11 October 2006

I have a question on this very topic later, question 136, if your notes help you; still on the same subject of tackling barriers to employment and unemployment. It simply does not ring true to me what you have been saying as to why there is such disparity between London and the rest of the country. If you talk to your colleagues in Liverpool or Newcastle or even single-industry towns like Bradford or Oldham, they will be green with envy with the opportunities we have in London. So, can you return to this question of this gap between employment rates...

• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 11 October 2006

An awful lot of that is migration and that is people coming because they perceive that the jobs are here. So, intuitively that should not be working. If the jobs are not here, that should not be driving migration. They should actually be going out of London to where the jobs are. There is stronger jobs growth outside London.

• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 11 October 2006

I agree we have those problems. I am not sure they are so extremely different from other parts of the country. But against that, we have massive opportunities in London that single-industry towns, where the industries closed in the north of the country, do not have. In terms of the LDA, whatever the causes of it, the facts are there, that it is getting worse in London compared to the rest of the country. In terms of what the LDA is doing about it, your snapshot is very stark. The ones with red blobs are in this area and all...

• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 11 October 2006

That is them rather than you, because when the Mayor is taxed on this issue he says `Oh well, when I get more powers over skills all will be well'. But actually the LDA has been up and running, and you are in your sixth year now. What I am trying to understand is what more ought you to be doing or what more ought you to have done, given that you are, at heart, an economic development agency and the primary indicator of economic growth is the number of jobs created.

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

The Chief Executive (Manny Lewis) referred to the decision that the management are making, that the Board had in considering these issues. Could you advise me of the expected costs for surveyors and for legal advice for the land acquisition programme?

• Reference: 2004/0216-1
• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 17 March 2004

What or who actually drives the LDA's agenda? .

• Question by: Andrew Pelling
• Meeting date: 17 March 2004

Is skills training as a responsibility too fractured in London? We share skills training issues with the five different Learning and Skills Councils. Is five LSCs too many for London? Is the compromise of sharing the process of skills training through FRESA and the London Skills Commission, while worthy, in the end probably a false compromise and should the LDA have the prime responsibility for skills training in London?

• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 17 March 2004

The thesis behind this question is that the Assembly has a statutory responsibility to hold the LDA to account, but you are not a creature of regional government; there are these multiple accountabilities. If we are to do our job in holding you to account effectively, we need to see how these conflicts are working, and we talked offline about the difficulty of, for example, making available publicly a Government Office for London quarterly assessment of you. I think we need to explore further how to see that relationship working better with government. Moving on to the second question relating...