• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 17 March 2004

But we have not got long now, given the timetable for constructing new buildings, where these targets are only six years away, let alone installing and constructing the thing, never mind training people up to be able to equip them with the skills and find the workforce and all the rest of it. That is quite a task that the LDA should be further down the road on, would you say?

• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 17 March 2004

• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 17 March 2004

What sustainability standards does the LDA require on its own projects, as a condition of project approval?

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 17 March 2004

Something else that I was concerned about when I visited was the condition of a lot of the equipment that is used for training there. I was told by one of the managers there that one of their visitors had recognised some of the machinery as what he used to use at Ford before he retired. Now, clearly that is not what we should be expecting from a centre of excellence. Will that be something that will be addressed sooner rather than later?

• Question by: Meg Hillier
• Meeting date: 17 March 2004

If the LDA is the agency, what resources are you going to need to be able to deliver?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 17 March 2004

• Question by: Meg Hillier
• Meeting date: 17 March 2004

Just to be clear, you want a single UDC covering the Lower Lea Valley, with the LDA as the agency?

• Question by: Meg Hillier
• Meeting date: 17 March 2004

I wanted to ask, and I suppose it is directed mostly at Tony (Winterbottom), how the LDA sees its role in supporting an Urban Development Corporation (UDC) for east London, and how does it see its role in that, particularly in the Olympic scenario, or alternatively the non-Olympic scenario?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 17 March 2004

Business start-ups and SMEs set up, particularly by minority ethnic communities in east London, have been pretty fundamental in the last 20 years or so, and yet, if I look through East Ham, West Ham and Tower Hamlets, the sort of premises they used to occupy have disappeared. The ones that are now available are unaffordable. How are the LDA and the other partnerships going to intervene in that?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 17 March 2004

Perhaps I should declare that I was at that partnership board as well, and I welcome the work that you are doing on this. But my constituents in east London can, I think, be forgiven for being a bit cynical about regeneration in the area, because it is all very well to get investment bankers there, but very few local kids become investment bankers and the arrival of investment bankers very often, by driving up the land values, forces out SMEs in traditional old workshops, which have been a classic leg-up for people in east London in the past. They...