• Question by: Bob Blackman
• Meeting date: 14 November 2007

I have to say the area that I represent is under threat all over the place with planning applications coming in right, left and centre for destroying two or three perfectly good family houses with gardens and building blocks of 50 flats. The planning committees have almost no chance whatsoever of having planning grounds to rule them out. What happens then is you destroy the character of the area and create a precedent so that developers say, 'Well you have allowed it there, you must now allow it next door or further on'.

• Question by: Jennette Arnold OBE
• Meeting date: 14 November 2007

From Sunday elders can use this line 24/7 without any restrictions?

• Question by: Joanne McCartney
• Meeting date: 14 November 2007

Can I just confirm that you are happy to put it to London Councils that they look at back land strips as well?

• Question by: Joanne McCartney
• Meeting date: 14 November 2007

On your joint proposal with London Councils, which I warmly welcome, I am interested in particular with the taking of back gardens because this is a problem throughout London. In the area that I represent, Enfield and Haringey, there are lots of Victorian and Edwardian properties where streets back on to each other. There were little slivers of land left in-between those back gardens ' quite narrow ' but developers are trying to snap up and put in what many residents and I believe is inappropriate housing. I understand there is a tension between the need to build housing but...

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 14 November 2007

In that case, given that your assessment, which I think is probably correct, is it is unlikely that such legislation would be passed, why do you think they are motivated to seek legislation? Do you think they see there being votes in knocking homeless people; is it something cynical like that?

• Question by: Nicky Gavron
• Meeting date: 14 November 2007

Private gardens are a very significant proportion of London's open space, of London's biodiversity and also of London's tree cover. I really welcome your proposal to work with London Councils to strengthen planning policies about safeguarding London's gardens. There is a related point and I wonder if it could be rolled in with it, which is that, in addition to the rash of building on gardens, we also have a worrying trend in concreting over gardens, back and front. As we struggle with climate change this is leading to more and more flash flooding, and in fact inevitably leads to...

• Question by: Jenny Jones
• Meeting date: 14 November 2007

I have selflessly not included the park that I live next to so I am not being grasping on this. So you are happy for a feasibility study on this?

• Question by: Elizabeth Howlett
• Meeting date: 14 November 2007

I am delighted to hear what you are saying but what I would like you to guarantee is that you would impress upon the London Employment and Skills (LES) Board that it is very important that 31% of unemployed Londoners are somehow targeted in order to gain the skills to get these jobs in the environmental industry. They are quietly content that there is no skill shortage in London because these vacancies get filled from other parts of the country or by Europeans. I am concerned that there are still their figures: 31% of Londoners unemployed. With the jobs that...

• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 14 November 2007

We can expect to see it greened up a bit? In terms of the LDA's budget for 2007/08 it is spending £76.3 million on skills and employment yet only, at the moment, £100,000 of this is specifically devoted to sustainable construction skills. Do we need to shift that balance more?

• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 14 November 2007

It actually says very little about the skills needed for greener construction and a low carbon economy and so on. Do you think the document needs to be strengthened, given the work that the Environment Committee has done here and that the London Energy Partnership has done on the skills crisis?