• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 25 February 2004

When I questioned you a few months ago when the Government inspector's report first came out, you seemed very reluctant to take on board any objective about minimising the need to travel. I see that you have now gone some way to incorporating that objective within the Plan.

• Question by: Samantha Heath
• Meeting date: 25 February 2004

What can we do when a planning application has already been granted but you still have not seen the transport assessment, and there does not seem to be any requirement from the boroughs to see it?

• Question by: Samantha Heath
• Meeting date: 25 February 2004

I would like to talk about the transport issue and the affordable housing issue. In order to deal with the current housing construction that is taking place, we have a couple of issues when densification does not actually come with improvements in transport. I have already raised the issue of how boroughs deal with that with travel leaving this building and going over to the ALG. It is the relationship that TfL actually has with travel that concerns me and the work they are doing in looking at planning applications and transport applications. What can we do when recalcitrant boroughs...

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 25 February 2004

You have talked about the Thames Gateway, but in south London there are 42,000 new proposed homes but there are only intensification Opportunity Area sites for 3,000 homes. Does that not inevitably mean that you will have to change densities significantly in the suburbs to such an extent that you will breach your own objective in the Plan and actually change the nature of London suburbs with greater density and more tall buildings across the suburbs?

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 25 February 2004

Is there not concern that 18 months ago that housing capacity was discredited as a basis for future projections because 15 boroughs who replied to a survey had demonstrated that 61% of the sites were already spoken for and were not available for new development? Is the consequence of that in following on from your own comments in previous meetings of this Assembly that the only way you will meet this densification is much greater building activity on small sites, ones that have to be dealt with by the boroughs, giving a green light to in-filling and back land development...

• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 25 February 2004

Given this new clause which you have inserted since June, will that result in looking at the policy again and a change in direction?

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 25 February 2004

Map 5A(ii) of the London Plan sets out spatial location of housing by gross capacity. Essentially, it sets out all the sites that were identified from the earlier Housing Capacity Study of 100 and more dwellings. The map in the final plan is the same as the one in the draft plan. Do you remember that map was criticised prior to the Examination in Public because it was shown that it only represents about 95,700 sites? In other words, identified large sites only account for about one third of the total required provision. Do you really think that you will...

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 25 February 2004

The Plan requires some 336,000 homes by 2016. For that to have any credibility surely you must have an assurance that the boroughs can actually find the room to deliver those homes. What assurance is there about that at the moment?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 13 October 2004

This is very important also to Athens, which is about overspends and who will meet the bill, because my sense - and this is a recurrent theme through today's questions - is a concern amongst some party groups and amongst Londoners, as well, that there is a potential outcome where there is an overspend which comes back to haunt us, like the Montreal Olympic Games of 1976, year, after year, after year. You have gone some way to answering this today, but again, it would be very helpful for us if there were a very clear, unequivocal statement coming out...

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 13 October 2004

I am sorry I just must comment on that, because we hear you saying that all the time about every type of finance, that the Government would not dare not give you the money, Mr Mayor, and time and time again, the Government does indeed dare not to give you the money. Therefore, I do not think that is necessarily a comfort for us to hear that from you now, and I think it is leaving it far too late, by the way, to address the overspend issue next summer when we may have already won the bid. Londoners, if...