• Question by: Jennette Arnold OBE
• Meeting date: 24 October 2007

What actions are you taking in terms of this serious concern that the councils have raised?

• Question by: Jennette Arnold OBE
• Meeting date: 24 October 2007

Neale, it was clarity we were looking for. Alan Benson, Head of Housing, met with Members - certainly of my Group - and we welcome that and we feel that we fed in and we can see, in the Strategy, issues of concern to us that have been addressed, but what we wanted to get was what difference this is going to make so that the current situation is not going to really improve; the Mayor does not have a power to actually deal with this issue.

• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 24 October 2007

OK. So the two things they are asking for are, firstly that there should be specific reference, so that point we are clear on. The second thing they are saying is that the Mayor should remove the target for 25% re-lets by 2012 from his draft Housing Strategy. As I understand it, their concern is that if they do not, as it were, get enough for their people they will not have the incentive to bring forward schemes and so forth. I have to say I am in two minds about that because I am politically old enough to remember...

• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 24 October 2007

Actually I want to come in on exactly this point but before I do, can I say, since there has been some hostile questioning, if I can put it that way, from other parts of the Chamber, that in relation to the additional powers to the Mayor we, from our side, have supported this. We are very pleased to see renewed or additional vigour on this subject. It is the number one issue of concern to Londoners in the polls, certainly the ones I have seen. On this question of the Capital Moves, can you just be clear. You have...

• 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.