Item 2 – Minutes of meeting held on 14 October 2014 London Councils Minutes of the London Councils Leaders’ Committee held on 14 October 2014 Mayor Jules Pipe chaired the meeting Present: BARKING AND DAGENHAM Cllr Darren Rodwell BARNET Cllr Richard Cornelius BEXLEY Cllr Teresa O’Neill BRENT Cllr M. A. Butt BROMLEY Cllr Stephen Carr CAMDEN Cllr Sarah Hayward CROYDON Cllr Tony Newman EALING Cllr Julian Bell ENFIELD Cllr Doug Taylor GREENWICH Cllr Denise Hyland HACKNEY Mayor Jules Pipe HAMMERSMITH & FULHAM Cllr Stephen Cowan HARINGEY Cllr Claire Kober HARROW Cllr David Perry HAVERING Cllr Roger Ramsey HILLINGDON Cllr Philip Corthone HOUNSLOW Cllr Stephen Curran ISLINGTON Cllr Richard Watts KENSINGTON & CHELSEA Cllr Nicholas Paget-Brown KINGSTON Cllr Kevin Davis LAMBETH Cllr Paul McGlone LEWISHAM Mayor Sir Steve Bullock MERTON Cllr Stephen Alambritis NEWHAM Mayor Sir Robin Wales/Cllr Ken Clark* REDBRIDGE Cllr Jas Athwal RICHMOND UPON THAMES Cllr Lord True SOUTHWARK Cllr Fiona Colley SUTTON Cllr Ruth Dombey TOWER HAMLETS Mayor Lutfur Rahman WALTHAM FOREST Cllr Clyde Loakes WANDSWORTH Cllr Ravi Govindia WESTMINSTER Cllr Philippa Roe CITY OF LONDON Mrs Catherine McGuiness LFEPA - * Cllr Clark substituted for Mayor Wales when he left after item 4. Apologies: HILLINGDON Cllr Ray Puddifoot MBE LAMBETH Cllr Lib Peck NEWHAM Mayor Sir Robin Wales** SOUTHWARK Cllr Peter John CITY OF LONDON Mr Mark Boleat WALTHAM FOREST Cllr Chris Robbins CITY OF LONDON Mr Mark Boleat CAPITAL AMBITION Mr Edward Lord JP OBE CC ** For early departure Item 2 – Minutes of meeting held on 14 October 2014 Ex officio (under the provisions of Standing Order 2.6) EQUALITIES Cllr Marie Pye London Councils officers were in attendance 1. Declarations of interest Mayor Jules Pipe pointed out that legal advice indicated that neither he nor any other remunerated London Councils members were obliged to declare an interest under item 8 Remuneration of Members, he would, nonetheless, and on behalf of all affected members declare an interest on the grounds of openness and transparency. No other interests were declared. 2. Minutes of Leaders’ Committee AGM and ordinary meeting held on the 15 July 2014 Leaders’ Committee agreed the minutes of Leaders’ Committee AGM and ordinary meeting held on the 15 July 2014. 3. London Infrastructure Investment Plan 2050 – London Councils Consultation Response Cllr Claire Kober (Labour, Infrastructure and Regeneration, Haringey) introduced the item saying: • The Mayor had produced a draft London Infrastructure Investment Plan 2050 for consultation with a deadline of 31 October • The draft Plan was an ambitious document and attempted to pull together different infrastructure needs, the costs that would be involved in realising these and aimed to bring together relevant parties to progress the aims within the London Infrastructure Delivery Board • London Councils had put together a consultation response, which was attached as an appendix and which officers were asking us to discuss and sign off • In the consultation response we highlighted a number of issues, grouped within the broad areas of Governance, Finance and specific Infrastructure requirements • One of the key omissions of the draft report was that of social infrastructure. Although housing and schools were included within the overall costs, there was no detailed analysis of the requirements. This was a weakness because housing, schools and Item 2 – Minutes of meeting held on 14 October 2014 health play a critical role in supporting London’s continued growth and also because there were strong inter-relationships between, for example, housing and transport • Within governance arrangements, we highlighted that it was essential to understand how the London Infrastructure Delivery Board would work with existing structures and any new boards that would be created. A Board designed to include all stakeholders was likely to be too large for detailed decision making. How would the London Infrastructure Delivery Board work with the LEP, Homes for London Board, etc? How would it take into consideration any sub-regional partnerships? • We support fiscal devolution, but although this would give us some degree of certainty of available funds, it would not be enough to bridge the estimated funding gap of £1.3 trillion. We therefore needed to look at other solutions and we suggested looking at capturing land values and making the most of our assets • With regards to the specific infrastructure requirements, we thought that much more emphasis should be put on demand management. For example, rather than building a tolled, orbital road tunnel, we suggested to look at electronic road pricing to discourage travel at certain times of day in certain areas of London. Walking and cycling should be emphasised, as well as the improvement of the rail infrastructure. Similarly with regards to water, energy and waste infrastructure, emphasis should be on reducing demand, such as water saving measures, improvements to existing infrastructure (fixing leaks), energy efficiency measures and waste reduction at source • We would not support any proposal to bring planning applications for communications infrastructure within the Mayor’s responsibility and suggested looking at the CCTV network for wider data transmission • We looked forward to working in partnership with the Mayor and other stakeholders to develop a fully integrated infrastructure investment proposal for London. Cllr Philippa Roe (Conservative, Devolution and Public Service Reform, Westminster) pointed out that not enough prominence was attached to boroughs’ own infrastructure plans and that the issue of CCTV, and the cost of maintenance need stronger emphasis. She went on to say that if the Mayor’s proposal of a Thames estuary airport did not come to fruition and airport expansion needed to be taken up elsewhere in London infrastructure development needed to follow it. Cllr Nicholas Paget-Brown (Conservative, Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea) encouraged reference in the response to Crossrail2 and Thames Barrier renewal. Item 2 – Minutes of meeting held on 14 October 2014 Cllr Stephen Carr (Conservative, Bromley) wanted the London Councils’ response to highlight the fact that the draft Plan did not reflect the Mayor’s 2012 manifesto commitment around DLR extension to Bromley North but, instead, talked about an extension of the Bakerloo Line which, Councillor Carr said, had not been part of the that manifesto. Councillor Kober did not feel it was possible in the response to reflect on the degree to which Mayoral manifesto commitments had been kept, but acknowledged that Councillor Carr’s concerns should be recorded in the minutes. Cllr Tony Newman (Labour, Croydon) also called for better reflection of promises made by the current Mayor about trams and key strategic infrastructure requirements given greater prominence. Cllr Fiona Coley (Labour, Southwark) and Mayor Sir Steve Bullock (Labour, Housing, Lewisham) supported references to the Bakerloo line extension. Cllr Stephen Cowan (Labour, Hammersmith and Fulham) wanted the response to point to the importance of the ‘flyunder’ (replacement of the Hammersmith flyover by a tunnel) proposal as a means of reclaiming land for housing. This was important for Hounslow and Hammersmith & Fulham. Mayor Sir Robin Wales referred to paragraph 17(f) on east London river crossings and asked for it to be referred back to officers to be re-written as many east London boroughs felt that the failure by the Mayor of London to provide a fixed crossing had cost thousands of jobs. He referred to the Galleons Bridge proposal that had now been lost while two other bridges were being consulted on. Cllr Ravi Govindia (Conservative, Wandsworth) called for river connectivity in general to be emphasised and Cllr Lord True (Conservative Richmond) agreed as did Cllr Denise Hyland (Labour, Greenwich) who also emphasised the need to combine river crossings with public transport improvements. Cllr Teresa O’Neill (Conservative, Bexley) argued that however the section on river crossings was rewritten, she maintained that her borough’s approach had always been dictated by the best interests of Bexley. Item 2 – Minutes of meeting held on 14 October 2014 Cllr Claire Kober responded by saying that she was clear on Bexley’s position on river- crossings and suggested that a new wording was put forward by officers to all boroughs that had an interest in river crossings to comment on. Leaders’ Committee agreed the consultation response subject to the changes put forward by members of Leaders’ Committee and, in particular, to section 17(f) on river crossings being re-written and the affected boroughs consulted on the new text. 4. Housing: Recent Activity Mayor Sir Steve Bullock introduced the report saying it was a short report that represented a considerable amount of activity on an area that has been becoming ever-more important. He said: • It would be helpful to get an idea from borough leaders on their strength of feeling on the Mayor’s consultation on top-slicing 5-10% of allocations for new developments in the 2015-18 programme. So far the response from boroughs had been mainly negative but it had come from officers rather than leaders and further clarification would be useful • Similarly, it would also be helpful to get a steer from Leaders on the Right to Move consultation, recently issued by the Government. Cllr Richard Watts (Labour, Islington) expressed a strongly held view that if boroughs surrendered any control over allocations from new developments it would undermine their ability to counter objectors’ arguments by pointing to the potential benefits to local residents of being allocated a home in the new development. Cllr Ravi Govindia pointed out that housing need was not confined to those living in social housing and that he was not convinced by the Right to Move proposals. It was not clear who would bear the costs? He went on to refer to the question of out-of-borough placements described in paragraph 13 of the report and urged transparency in boroughs sharing of information.