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

Just going back to this question of different kinds of housing, what place will housing co-operatives, tenant management organisations and Black and Minority Ethnic Registered Social Landlords have in the Mayor's overall strategy?

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

Just one more point: the Tenant Management Organisation (TMOs). The Mayor will have responsibility for the Decent Homes programmes now, I understand. Presumably he will be keener on TMOs than going through local authorities, because of their involvement in the management. As Val said, the issue of quality of service is as important as the quantity of housing available.

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

Neale, you missed out housing cooperatives. They are based on mutuality. They are an obvious model for intermediate housing, particular for young people.

• Question by: Peter Hulme Cross
• Meeting date: 24 October 2007

A little while ago I went to an exhibition at the Building Federation. They were showing what I can only call an updated pre-fabricated house. It was actually a flat. It had a steel frame and it was was in situ, inside this frame. The frame could be put on the back of a lorry and taken to a site and bolted together. You could construct, effectively, a block of flats in modular fashion and all you had to do, having plonked it there, was to connect up electricity and water. The whole thing was centrally heated, and worked just...

• Question by: Valerie Shawcross
• Meeting date: 24 October 2007

It is good that we have got an opportunity to make a step change in the quality of development, particularly in affordable homes, with this Strategy and the Mayor's new powers. We also, as Assembly Members, had a rather robust conversation over lunch with the London Housing Corporation. That was about the very great degree of variance there seems to be at the moment between the housing management standards and the estate management standards - the neighbourhood management standards - between existing housing associations, amongst which there has been a great balkanisation; there are 500 or so housing associations in...

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

Sorry, I was asking is he putting pressure on central government to do so.

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

I have got very little time left, so can I finally ask you about student accommodation. There was very little in the Strategy about what the Mayor is doing about student accommodation in London. I am sure you are aware that young people are at risk from things like dodgy wiring, faulty gas heaters and cowboy landlords. Is the Mayor working with student union representatives and universities to address this?

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

Sorry, can I cut in, Neale. I do not accept what you are saying because, again, you are saying the same thing: it is up to boroughs to provide the revenue. Boroughs are squeezed all the time on funding and if they have not got the money they cannot provide the revenue, and just putting in a strategy that says, 'boroughs will provide it', is not going to help. Can I move on to overcrowding. You talked about overcrowding in your opening remarks. I think the estimate is that there are 260,000 children in homes that have got not enough...

• Question by: Valerie Shawcross
• Meeting date: 24 October 2007

Do you think the Mayor would be interested in seeing the housing association sector restructured somewhat in London, to avoid some of the problems of lack of economies of scale and fragmentation that we see at the moment that undermine the quality of housing and estate management?

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

Surely the emphasis ought to be on providing better accommodation for older people, which might persuade them to move on from under-occupying homes - one in four homes in London are under-occupied - and therefore trying to free up at the top, which will eventually free up at the bottom, for the hostels? There does not seem to be too much emphasis on that. I am concerned that nothing that you have said has led me to believe that the problem is going to be addressed, of people with mental problems in hostels not having appropriate support and accommodation.