• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 11 July 2001

I take your point about post war development but I also bear in mind the fact that no architect has ever said that the development they built was quantity led rather than quality led. Every development that has ever been built we have been told is beautiful in its time. The problem is it does not look so fashionable 30 years later. A lot of our densely populated areas are not pleasant to live in. How do you feel we can mitigate overcrowding in a poor environment with green space, particularly given the Mayor's demands that we also produce a...

• Question by: Eric Ollerenshaw
• Meeting date: 11 July 2001

If I can explain my prejudice in terms of this. First of all the Georgian density, are people talking about density in Georgian times with all those servants crammed into the cellars or are they talking about Georgian density now? But my real prejudice is that the real high densities I have seen are system-built, architect-designed estates, where certain categories of people were ghettoised, and are still ghettoised, in buildings, which when people have got a choice, they get out of as rapidly as possible. Now my worry is if we go down this high-density argument it is those people...

• Question by: Lynne Featherstone
• Meeting date: 01 January 2001

Well, cheers, because that will save the MPA authority receiving petitions from every borough group who want to keep a front station open. But would you then agree that we have to look very carefully at this situation about manning them with volunteers, because there is a real problem in police front-counters in that the civilian staff who are well-trained, take the dealing with the public through the difficult issues, but the problems build up through people not being able to ask a simple question which they don't have to queue for and don't need to wait an hour to...

• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 01 January 2001

Can I say how much I welcome the idea of the police bus and the police shop. It is absolutely right that the police should be taken to where the people want them to be, but returning to volunteers, would you agree with me that it is better that we have a front desk kept open by volunteers rather than no front desk at all?

• Question by: Lynne Featherstone
• Meeting date: 01 January 2001

Okay, obviously that should be welcomed and I favour police pods in high streets myself [laughter]. We won't go into that at the moment, but will the Chair of the Authority reassure me that with the move to borough policing that a number of the commanders have in their heads, I believe, the idea of a very modern, centralised new police station which may be obtained by PFI means, and will he assure me that they will not be encouraged before the policing contact points have spread throughout the borough, i.e. there will be no move to further centralisation prior...

• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 01 January 2001

Related to the capacity of Hendon, is it not a fact that very many of the recruits in training in fact cannot be accommodated at Hendon and are accommodated nearby in hotels and the like and that our long-term proposals for increasing the number of new police recruits is in fact severely inhibited by the lack of capacity at Hendon and in our search, or perhaps I should say the Government's and the Mayor's search to rapidly increase police numbers, because of these bottle necks at Hendon the training is not as good as it would otherwise have been.

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 01 January 2001

So nevertheless actually talking about how we're going to put these extra police officers on the street, partly through the Home Office financing, partly through GLA budget, could actually be leading to massive over-expectations if we cannot actually get the right number through?

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 01 January 2001

I would just ask you about the story which I am sure a number of us read, that you have obviously just despatched with a, "No, I can"t say a lot" but actually there were members of the Police Federation who were happy to say that they had real concerns about the fact that some of these people were spending a number of weeks doing gardening because there were not actually the spaces for them on the training courses. I don't think it is just grabbed out of air. Clearly it has been confirmed by members of the Police Federation...

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 01 January 2001

One of the things that concerns many of us is the deliverability of the Mayor's pledge to get a 1,050 extra police officers. Firstly, are we satisfied that sufficient capacity exists to achieve that? Secondly, what are we going to, perhaps by way of looking with comparisons at best practice elsewhere again, how do our training arrangements - the length of time that it takes, the criteria that was set for recruitment - compare with other major cities, either on the continent or indeed in north America, for example, where there are comparatives? Can we have an assurance that he...

• Question by: Richard Barnes
• Meeting date: 01 January 2001

And I also believe that members of the Authority should visit other police forces to see what they're doing because Amsterdam has cuts its recruitment programme from 18 months to 9 weeks. They've also set targets of 30% ethnic minority, 30% women, and 40% others for their police service. But what impressed me as well was their targeted advertising for recruitment and the fact that they had outsourced it totally and professionally, or almost totally and professionally. But what I've been trying to get, and I know you have as well since we became members of the MPA, is an...