• Question by: Elizabeth Howlett
• Meeting date: 04 April 2001

Can I just ask the Mayor if he has heard something that I have heard a whisper about - that yesterday the Standing Committee on Culture at the House of Commons has expressed doubt about the World Athletic Championships managing to get going in 2005? That bid was won on the back of the use of Wembley. Now that Wembley cannot be used, Picketts Lock is the next thing. They expressed a doubt yesterday that that would happen, considering the difficulty with transport access as well as the stadium having to be built.

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 04 April 2001

I welcome your commitment on that, Ken, but I think there are two other little questions on the back of it. The first is that, although the Olympics would be, for a number of very selfish reasons - and very good reasons - very welcome in London, they are not the only reason why we need to open up transport as a motor to regeneration in east London. I am particularly focused on the Hackney area and the Channel tunnel area around Stratford, but key to this is the river crossing package. Much as I love my colleague Len Duvall...

• Question by: Elizabeth Howlett
• Meeting date: 04 April 2001

I am certainly glad to praise the leader of the most effective local authority in the country, with 20-odd Government chartermarks for its service - many more than any other local authority. We have had this argument before, and I can remember telling you about the millions of pounds Wandsworth has put in of its own council tax money - £25 million over the last years - in affordable and social housing. No other local authority has put the money into its own housing that Wandsworth has done. I remember telling you and Samantha Heath this before: one in three...

• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 04 April 2001

You have said that, to accommodate 50% affordable housing on such sites, you would be willing to see a doubling of the density. Are you really advocating that, on riverside sites such as these, there should be twice the housing density which is already proposed in their UDPs?

• Question by: Samantha Heath
• Meeting date: 04 April 2001

When boroughs are crawling up to 13% a year, what action can we take with the SDS? You have called for 50%, but what will we be able to do about it?

• Question by: Samantha Heath
• Meeting date: 04 April 2001

It was quite galling to see all this in the press, and the flag-waving of 500 new homes, when the figure was 30% affordable housing 10 years ago, has crawled down to 20% over the last five years, and was barely 13% in the last two years. Are you aware of that appalling statistic of affordable housing in Wandsworth?

• Question by: Richard Barnes
• Meeting date: 04 April 2001

Oftel has a requirement that there is a direct relationship between the number of telephones which use cards and those that take cash; yet there is evidence in areas across London that payphones taking cash are used to support, and indeed finance, the drugs trade. Would you, in your approach to Oftel, be prepared to discuss with the MPS and the MPA where the siting and use of different forms of telephone boxes could be used? As for advertising, again, particularly around King's Cross, advertising on phone booths blocks CCTV which is being used to crack down on the drugs...

• Question by: Lynne Featherstone
• Meeting date: 04 April 2001

Obviously public telephones are important for public safety and access to emergency services, but they also play a really important role in ensuring that Londoners get home safely at night. I am sure you are aware that we have recently scrutinised this and other safety issues. People with mobile phones are fine when they reach their destination: they can just ring a taxi or something; but if there is no payphone available, you are limiting the possibility of people accessing either a taxi home or someone to come and pick them up. First, do you recognise the importance of that...

• Question by: Toby Harris
• Meeting date: 04 April 2001

Given that some London boroughs are demanding a separate planning application from the BT payphone service for each payphone box which has advertising, what provisions do you intend to make under the spatial development strategy to provide and facilitate advertising in public payphones, and to promote the existence of public payphones?

• Question by: Toby Harris
• Meeting date: 04 April 2001

I understand that pay phones have suffered a 37% fall in revenue in the past two years, perhaps because of the growth of mobile phones; but there are still a significant proportion of the population - around 5% - who do not have access to basic telephony services. Given that BT are by law forbidden to subsidise their pay phones, does the Mayor support paid advertising on the side panels of phone boxes to ensure that the network of pay phones is maintained?