• Question by: Geoff Pope
• Meeting date: 20 February 2008

The plan is that they will start to see improvements as early as next year.

• Question by: Geoff Pope
• Meeting date: 20 February 2008

For people who get frustrated waiting because there is a problem on the District Line; that is going to be a much longer wait than we thought now then?

• Question by: Geoff Pope
• Meeting date: 20 February 2008

The number of lost customer hours to the Underground has got worse not better in the last year, so where are all these improvements?

• Question by: Geoff Pope
• Meeting date: 20 February 2008

There are not only those costs there are the cost overruns incurred before and also the lost time. You have estimated 18 months' to 2 years' delay which is going to increase the costs while contracts are reconfigured. Tim O'Toole [Managing Director, London Underground Limited] told us last week that some key personnel have left so it has become quite difficult to understand the status of work against contracts and sub-contracts. This is all becoming a nightmare, isn't it?

• Question by: Geoff Pope
• Meeting date: 20 February 2008

They are already 18 months late anyway, so you are adding another 18 months.

• Question by: Geoff Pope
• Meeting date: 20 February 2008

There was not very much information in the answer which is very disappointing because London desperately needs the upgrades to the Tube network which is the lifeblood of the capital. Here we are, well into the PPP and projects are slowing down. Do you have some idea of the additional costs that we are going to incur?

• Question by: Geoff Pope
• Meeting date: 20 February 2008

I do not think many people will believe you when you say, 'Things are delayed. We don't know how much it's going to cost but, at the end of the day we're going to do it earlier and it will be better'. Are you in the real world any more?

• Question by: Geoff Pope
• Meeting date: 20 February 2008

Are you not feeling over-positive yet again?

• Question by: Dee Doocey
• Meeting date: 20 February 2008

I think that would be much better. The second thing the Empty Homes Agency has picked up, normally from their hotline, is that there is great difficulty apparently with people who own empty properties getting information on what help is available, like grants for renovations. Kent, as I think I mentioned to you earlier, use a scheme called No Use Empty and I would like you to look at introducing a pan-London scheme in order to provide information which would encourage those people who either own empty properties or who are going to buy properties that are currently not fit...

• Question by: Dee Doocey
• Meeting date: 20 February 2008

The difficulty in using percentages rather than numbers, as the Empty Homes Agency said in their response to your draft Housing Strategy, is it is entirely possible that the targets are not ambitious enough because it is entirely possible that you could achieve the percentages without actually returning one single home to use because of the new build. What I think you should do, and what I would like you to commit to do, is, in order to make a real impact, to reduce the number of long-term lets to half the existing levels by 2016 is to forget about...