• Question by: Joanne McCartney
• Meeting date: 06 February 2015

Joanne McCartney AM: I wanted to ask about waste facilities, in particular incineration. It appears to me that the FALP seems to be going backwards on the green handling of waste by making incineration more likely. Can I just ask if that is your view? Will the Mayor commit to reviewing the carbon intensity floor (CIF) so that it will rule out all mass-burn incineration in the future?

• Question by: Murad Qureshi
• Meeting date: 06 February 2015

Murad Qureshi AM: Sir Edward, can I bring up the particular issue of subterranean basement developments? Last night I heard from residents of Bayswater that they have had 15 of these developments in the last 18 months. It has caused sinkholes, flooding and structural damage to properties. It is a problem not only in the City of Westminster but in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, in Hammersmith and Fulham and I understand in other boroughs in north London as well. We also unanimously passed a motion in March proposing that some limits should be made on these excessive...

• Question by: Richard Tracey
• Meeting date: 06 February 2015

Richard Tracey AM: Thank you, Chairman. Could I just pursue you a little further on the line of questioning you were receiving from Steve O’Connell about parking in outer London? Are you specifically delineating what is ‘outer London’ and what is ‘inner London’? What bothers me is that sometimes it seems that TfL, when commenting on planning applications, tries to impose the rather stricter inner London format on outer London boroughs. As you said, we do definitely need more scope for residential parking in outer London.

• Question by: Onkar Sahota
• Meeting date: 06 February 2015

Dr Onkar Sahota AM: Sir Edward, should we expect to see more parks and other pieces of green open space being built upon?

• Question by: Navin Shah
• Meeting date: 06 February 2015

Navin Shah AM: Good morning, Sir Edward. In your introduction, you made a reference to the long-term future. Can we look at that in the context of safeguarding London’s skyline? Can you tell me, please, what policies in the altered London Plan could be used to ensure that in the short and long term we do not end up with out-of-character buildings like 1 Merchant Square popping up across London?

• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 06 February 2015

Tony Arbour AM: You will have heard already this morning that the principal concern of the Assembly relates to change of use, particularly change of employment use. One of the areas where the Assembly has actually right across the board sought to encourage the Mayor to be more muscular, even than his natural inclinations might have taken him, related to the [Sharon] Bowles [Member of the European Parliament for South East England] reforms, which have already been referred to, on the loss of office space. In your answer, you have talked about that and you have talked about the changes...

• Question by: Steve O'Connell
• Meeting date: 06 February 2015

Steve O’Connell AM: First of all, I would like to thank you, Sir Edward, and your officers for the work involved in bringing forward these alterations. I note your continuing protection of the environment and green spaces and I am encouraged by your comments around self-build. I know my colleague Andrew [Boff AM] will turn to the housing question a little bit later. I would like to pick up on two points, one around parking standards and another around the first time that community pubs have been commented on in the London Plan. On the parking standards, I noticed that...

• Question by: Jenny Jones
• Meeting date: 06 February 2015

Jenny Jones AM: On this substantive issue, I am very concerned that you are actually releasing too much industrial land because the vacancy rate on industrial land has actually halved in the past 15 years and is now lower than retail vacancies. I am concerned that you are talking about surplus land when, actually, it is not surplus because small businesses still need to be near centres of population and they still need to be near town centres. I just wonder how much research you have done on this.

• Question by: Fiona Twycross
• Meeting date: 06 February 2015

Fiona Twycross AM: I am going to shift the question a little bit away from housing. Obviously, we all recognise the need for housing, but there is a danger that we create a false dichotomy between the use of land for housing and the use of land for other purposes. Does the Plan recognise and deal with the tension between the need to provide land for housing and the need for all other uses including employment and infrastructure?

• Question by: Tom Copley
• Meeting date: 06 February 2015

Tom Copley AM: I want to move on to talk about affordable housing. Would a London-wide percentage target for affordable housing be more effective at delivering the homes that Londoners need the most?