• Question by: Jenny Jones
• Meeting date: 11 December 2002

The fact is, the Mayor is prepared to build on open space, and I think this is appalling. For example, the development of Patterson Park, albeit a school, was an instance where a piece of open space was taken away and some very sub-standard little corners of land were given as an excuse for some sort of compensation. I just think the Mayor's green credentials on this are going to be very damaged.

• Question by: Jenny Jones
• Meeting date: 11 December 2002

Protecting something that's already vulnerable is admirable, but actually preventing open space ever being built on is something else. That is not stated in the Plan. I've got a figure here that 90% of new housing in London is built on brown field sites. That means that 10% isn't. 10% is actually on open space. To me, that's appalling, that we're losing any open space at all. Once you have lost it, it's gone for ever. Do you recognise that figure?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 11 December 2002

I find your answers very satisfactory on the broad issue of open space use and the way it's being treated through the Mayor's policies. Where I think there is a troublesome area which has come up again and again in referrals to the Mayor, is where there are uses ancillary to housing, be it education or health, where local authorities find themselves driven to - in the scrappy process of finding bits of land that they can put new schools on or new health facilities which need to support new housing - they find they are tempted to snap away...

• Question by: Jenny Jones
• Meeting date: 11 December 2002

I think it's because the land requirements for the Plan and its development are not actually calculated at any stage, and nor is the availability of the amount of brown field sites at the moment. So, we don't actually know what quantity of land the Plan will actually take. Now, there is actually no target in the London Plan -- I'm suggesting there should be a 100% target for all housing to be built on brown field sites. That doesn't exist. There is no target. That means that open land is vulnerable.

• Question by: Eric Ollerenshaw
• Meeting date: 11 December 2002

I suppose it depends on the definition of open space, doesn't it? The question I asked the Mayor at the last Assembly meeting was about council estates facing regeneration and redevelopment and facing increasing densities. Now the only two ways the Mayor defined it, he talked about under-utilised land can be effectively used more. On some estates, land has been used very wastefully. In terms of Hackney estates, which I know, they are having to face further high rise development. We've blown the blocks down. You are now insisting we put other blocks up, 14 or 15 stories. That I...

• Question by: Samantha Heath
• Meeting date: 13 November 2002

Sorry, I'm confused. I thought your bid was for education.

• Question by: Brian Coleman
• Meeting date: 13 November 2002

I think Mr Duffy is slightly incorrect. In Barnet, I don't care how many residents come from other boroughs and use my civic amenity sites, because it ups our recycling credit. And the Mayor is welcome from Cricklewood or anybody else is welcome to our wonderful civic amenity site, which we operate in partnership with ECT at Summers Lane in N12, and which replaced Tilling Way well over 12 months ago now. It's even better than Sutton and we would welcome anybody from north London or anybody else to bring their rubbish, because we need recycling credits in Barnet. I...

• Question by: Samantha Heath
• Meeting date: 13 November 2002

The reason I came at this with this question is because we're miles away from getting a single waste disposal authority for London, and if we can't even get our civic amenity sites working together, what hope is there?

• Question by: Samantha Heath
• Meeting date: 13 November 2002

Are you then going to tell boroughs - we're not talking about prescribing, but are you actually going to then try and do something to prevent boroughs from restricting access to civic amenity sites. At the moment some boroughs charge and restrict access.

• Question by: Samantha Heath
• Meeting date: 13 November 2002

On the London-wide issue, you do say in the implementation plan on the waste strategy, that you propose to develop a modern network of civic amenity sites with a focus on recycling and re-use. I notice that only one borough was successful in transforming its civic amenity site in the implementation money of £21 million. Are you actually now going out there and evangelising on supporting a better network of civic amenity sites and in addition, my big concern is that some borough are actually restricting access to their civic amenity sites, and that really isn't a particularly strategic London-wide...