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

I want to give you an opportunity in explaining what drives the LDA's agenda, to explain what is wrong with the argument that says you are the `Mayor's chequebook" and how the relationship between your business plan and unforeseen events is managed so that the LDA"s resources are used to maximise opportunities such as the Olympics or the Ford decision to stop manufacturing.

• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 17 March 2004

Can I recommend that you read what the business community said when it came to the Budget Committee here on 13 January because there was some very critical comment there about the way the business community feels. But what I want to ask you to do is to be more public going forward in terms of where requests are made and refusals are offered up. If you can show us where you are saying `no" rather than reconciling everything behind the scenes, then I think it is easier for us and indeed, the whole of London, to see how these...

• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 17 March 2004

The thesis behind this question is that the Assembly has a statutory responsibility to hold the LDA to account, but you are not a creature of regional government; there are these multiple accountabilities. If we are to do our job in holding you to account effectively, we need to see how these conflicts are working, and we talked offline about the difficulty of, for example, making available publicly a Government Office for London quarterly assessment of you. I think we need to explore further how to see that relationship working better with government. Moving on to the second question relating...

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

Can you explain how the LDA will ensure a bad Mayor, unlike our present excellent Mayor of course, who gave guidance which was not helpful to the LDA's corporate objectives, how such unhelpful guidance would be managed by the LDA? Do you have the systems in place to ensure that you make good, rigorous, forward-looking, consistent policy decisions?

• Question by: Samantha Heath
• Meeting date: 17 March 2004

On the ODPM, how convinced are they of the case?

• Question by: Jenny Jones
• Meeting date: 17 March 2004

• Question by: Samantha Heath
• Meeting date: 17 March 2004

We have worked with you extensively on our flooding report, and Darren Johnson actually signed up to that, so I was quite surprised at the Green Group's questioning. But the issues that we did identify that were of concern to the Committee were the commitment to the Green Grid, in terms of work you have done with the ODPM and we do recognise that the ODPM have actually recently announced more funding for the Green Grid. But I wanted to get a sense of how important they thought it was, and also to do with the Kate Barker report that...

• Question by: Jenny Jones
• Meeting date: 17 March 2004

I am just astonished that so much planning can go on before you actually understand the size of the risk. There are aspects to the development which are clearly going to go ahead before you have the full report.

• Question by: Jenny Jones
• Meeting date: 17 March 2004

Let us talk about some of these improvements that you referred to in your opening remarks, the Green Grid for example. I understand that, not only has only a tiny percentage of the money been raised for that, but also you have not actually secured the land yet. When is all that going to happen?

• Question by: Jenny Jones
• Meeting date: 17 March 2004

I did not actually hear an answer to my question in there. I did ask what proportion of new homes will not be deliverable? I have got a very pretty map here which outlines where the development is going to be along the river, and it is clear that a huge proportion of those houses and buildings are going to be on flood plains. Now, I am not the only person to be concerned about this. The Association of British Insurers (ABI) have raised concerns about the issue of insuring these homes, simply because " you talk about one in...