• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 16 July 2002

You wait until you see the petition that is coming your way.

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 16 July 2002

I have also got an item that I would like TfL to put right to the top of its agenda for change, and I am talking about a very unloved and unwanted bus route which was rammed into a totally unsuitable residential road, by TfL, against virtually all the residents saying they did not want it. They pointed out at the time that it was the wrong sort of road and that, with parking for residents up both sides of the road, buses going in both directions would not be able to pass each other. The Chair: Angie, this actually...

• Question by: Valerie Shawcross
• Meeting date: 16 July 2002

Partly a point of information, because this is my constituency. I first raised the issue of zoning of the Tube stations on 20 December 2000 and there has been quite a lot of correspondence with TfL since then. I wonder on the issue of congestion charging in Kennington whether the Mayor would join me in condemning not just the petty party politics of this but the fact that Liberal Democrats, locally and across London at the GLA, seem to be able to say completely contradictory things. I do think the public expect us to act in a more consensual and...

• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 16 July 2002

That is not really good enough because in the part of London which I represent, given the targets that have been set for us, we are hard put to know where they are going to be, and we were told by your advisers that they knew where they were going to go. Well, if they know, we want to know and we want to know soon, otherwise there will be blight.

• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 16 July 2002

On 10 July, your adviser spoke to the SDS Committee about the sites for your housing plans and it was pointed out to them that most of the sites which appear on the maps in the Plan have already been built upon, certainly a high proportion of them have had buildings started on them, and we asked where the additional sites were. We were promised, on 10 July, that such a list existed and would be given to us. A week later, on 18 July, exactly those points were made to you by the SDS Committee and you promised us...

• Question by: Elizabeth Howlett
• Meeting date: 16 July 2002

Could we find these figures?

• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 16 July 2002

I am talking about beyond the Plan, getting them, where they have published grand statements of how socially responsible they are as corporations, to actually put up. I think there is a role, would you not agree, for your office in actually asking those questions and getting them together in quite a high profile way at the London-wide level.

• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 16 July 2002

My concern is about the standards in the private rented sector. Why not have a hotline for people with difficulties with their landlords, worried about those landlords and so forth? Do you agree, for example, with the suggestion of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors who also in May called for a system of independent arbitration between landlords and tenants when they are in dispute? Isn't there a role for the Mayor to get the key players to step up to the mark on that sort of initiative?

• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 16 July 2002

My concern is that you may favour it but it seems to me you have not actually done anything. You have not told us this morning what you have actually done since the December 2000 Housing Commission report. For example, that Shelter report in May of this year recommended having a code of management practice to ensure landlords set fit and proper standards and recommended having an independent best practice guide. You referred earlier to your empty property hotline which is being funded. Why are you not funding an initiative to get the private landlords within London to come up...

• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 16 July 2002

Can I thank the Mayor for that answer, and I would like to focus my supplementary questions on the role of the private sector, starting particularly with the private rented sector. Indeed, you have referred to the Housing Commission and one of the conclusions of that, a key finding of our report, is the importance of modernising the private rented sector. Given that, are you aware that the Housing Forum for London, which you have just referred to, at the conference in February said one of the four priority themes for the Forum is making use of the private rented...