• Question by: Sally Hamwee
• Meeting date: 23 February 2005

Chairman, if I can explain. I did not mean anticipating an application but in the situation we are in and indeed to pre-empt the situation that we reached.

• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 23 February 2005

The truth of the matter is that your planning advisors recommended to you and I have it before me, that the Mayor is content for the London Borough of Richmond to determine the case itself, subject to any action that the Secretary of State may take that does not therefore wish to direct refusal. You on the other hand have decided in your refusal letter to Richmond to offer a whole list of what appear to be your prejudices against this particular planning application. You say for example, and this is you saying this not your advisors, this is a...

• Question by: Sally Hamwee
• Meeting date: 23 February 2005

Your reason in your letter as I understand it covered the MOL points but also, as Tony Arbour has quoted, a reference to the location acting against the promotion of inclusiveness. Is it not dangerous to stray outside what could be regarded as strictly planning matters, actually tending to become almost as nannying as saying that Congestion Charge payers cannot have an extra day to pay because they will forget about it? That is my first point about the breadth of your reasoning. The second is to ask you whether given what you have said about any prospective developer sharing...

• Question by: Jenny Jones
• Meeting date: 23 February 2005

I understood, thank you. Can I just say there is one extra issue I would like you to take up. There is an idea at the moment in the Road Safety Bill that there would be a graduated system of fines and for example that if you speed in a 30-39 zone, you only pay £40 instead of £60. That would actually be appalling in London because it already costs £46 to collect the fine. If we are only charging people £40 we are actually losing out and the Partnership goes without money.

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 07 December 2005

Right, so despite your reprioritising discussions, nothing that is currently being done in London is going to be in any way, shape or form affected by the potential worst-case scenario?

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 07 December 2005

How close are we to actually accepting that is pretty much where we are going go or do you still think that the likelihood is that we will try and stick somewhere lower than that? It does seem in a sense that all of the discussions we have been having not only with the LDA but through the Mayor at Mayor's Question Time (MQT) that it does now seem to be becoming the accepted scenario.

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 07 December 2005

What you are saying by that actually is that indirectly there may be some changes as a result of having to re-jig your financial agenda?

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 07 December 2005

Indeed, but would you forgive me for saying that the fact that there are still these question marks and that you do not seem to be able to know precisely where we are going does, I think, leave us feeling a little less reassured that you actually do have a clue about what these things are going be costing. It is one thing to start raising the issue of worst-case scenarios and then you answer, `Well, actually I do not know, it depends on this, it depends on that.' Are any of these things worth the paper they are written...

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 07 December 2005

Thank you. Could we now ask you ' I quite accept you would not be able to provide it here and now ' could we perhaps be provided with a list of your reprioritising and what projects may find, indirectly ' if that is what you want to say ' that they have been affected? Is that possible to provide that information?

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 07 December 2005

Has the worst-case scenario become now what you might call the scenario?