• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 10 October 2001

As the chairman of a London-wide body, I'm sure you think it right that you should travel around London to listen to the concerns of local residents. I wonder if you can tell us why, when the residents of Havering invited you to visit the borough to listen to concerns about lack of fire cover in Hornchurch, you turned them down?

• Question by: Meg Hillier
• Meeting date: 10 October 2001

What about my point about the Fire Brigade Union and negotiations with them on these issues?

• Question by: Meg Hillier
• Meeting date: 10 October 2001

It recently came to my notice that in my constituency there was an event involving a frozen pond and I wondered if you could outline how well prepared you see the fire services are to deal with non-fire emergencies, given that I know that it's a non-statutory responsibility?

• Question by: Toby Harris
• Meeting date: 10 October 2001

I'm sure we all welcome that proactive involvement. I would be interested in learning, perhaps on your next visit, whether or not the resource indications of the number of partnership meetings that your Borough Commanders now have to attend is impacting on everything else. But could I move on? You talked about schools briefly and we've all read the shocking figures that 60% of fires in London are caused by arson and I would be interested to know what work you're doing with other local agencies to prevent this?

• Question by: Meg Hillier
• Meeting date: 10 October 2001

What about the resource implications of this? It's all very well having legislation. You're already doing a lot of the work. Is the Government really going to give more power to the Fire Authority, where it might see a demand also then for more resources to do some of the things that we would all agree need to be done, but need to be paid for from somewhere?

• Question by: Louise Bloom
• Meeting date: 10 October 2001

Thank you for that very detailed answer. I think maybe we will have to agree to disagree on the London Plan. I know it's something that Assembly members generally are very concerned about. You touched on the SDS. How do you see the two strategies - the Economic Development Strategy and the SDS then - dove-tailing in together as we go through the draft? Perhaps you could specifically tell us what work is actually being done on those to make sure they do dove-tail in together? One problem the Assembly has been very concerned about is that strategies just don't...

• Question by: Louise Bloom
• Meeting date: 10 October 2001

• Question by: Andrew Pelling
• Meeting date: 10 October 2001

On the point of the strategies and the consistency of approach, I'm not entirely sure that I do agree with Louise there's much inconsistency between the two plans. But it does strike me that, as regards the Economic Development Strategy, that no consideration has to be given as to how balanced it is. Do you feel that, as regards the activities of the LDA, it will be best if we concentrated on three particular areas? Perhaps those areas of greatest social deprivation, those areas where there is a decline and also perhaps dealing with some of the bottlenecks in London's...

• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 10 October 2001

As a layman, I would have thought - and I'm sure you will be able to disabuse me of this - that, if buildings are going to be infinitely taller than we have known before in London, it's going to require much more sophisticated methods of dealing with any emergencies that there might be in those buildings and usually increased sophistication means additional costs and resources. Is that something that you have thought through?

• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 10 October 2001

Can I ask you about the resource implications of Towards the London Plan. If there are going to be, as the Mayor suggests, around 20 tall buildings, that presumably will have resource implications for you and there must be other resource implications in the Spatial Development Strategy. Have you thought through those?