Speaking at an air quality event in London last week, Ruth Calderwood, environment policy officer at CityAir, said she would like TfL to alter its payment system, which currently prevents businesses from having corporate accounts with the scheme, similar to the accounts many hold with taxi firms.

Boris Bikes have been a hit with employees and commuters seeking a flexible low-cost alternative to crowded buses and tube trains, and a number of firms are keen to promote the service. For example, investment firm Nomura is working with TfL to locate a bike stand outside its offices.

"Businesses would like to be able to issue a card, or a token or something to visitors who come to their premises so they can then perhaps take a bike out," said Calderwood. "The bikes are already very popular, but this is another area that could offer a good way forward for TfL."

Meanwhile, Murad Qureshi, chairman of the London Assembly Environment Committee, said he would like Boris Bikes to be accessible through the Oyster smart card system.

"I think the main issue is it has to marry up with Oyster cards," he said. "Oyster is key and TfL should do something like that, but for whatever reason it’s being kept separate."

A spokeswoman for TfL downplayed the prospect of corporate accounts for the scheme, arguing it would be too difficult to integrate the current payment system with corporate accounts as each membership must be linked to a credit card.

However, she admitted that a number of hotels are getting around the problem by loaning access keys to their guests.

"You can have up to four keys on an account, but it’s not like you can just introduce a swipe key for everyone at a corporate rate," she said.

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 At last Wednesdays Environment Committee, the main item of business was the Royal Parks.   This is an area of immense interest and concern to many Londoners given we have eight royal parks covering 5,000 acres providing some of the biggest green spaces in the capital for around 37 million visitors each year. 

At the meeting, the chief executive of The Royal Parks, Mark Camley together with representatives from the Mayor’s Office, Jeff Jacobs and Sir Edward Lister were in front of us to discuss the change for the Royal Parks which has transpired more into a quasi devolution to the GLA. 

However, what struck me more, having been told about the plans for the half hearted transfer, was the lack of vision and ambition being conveyed.  This is given the enthusiasm orginally shown by the Mayor’s office last summer in his “The Mayor of London’s Proposals for Devolution”.   

In June last year, the aim was to have responsibility for the Royal Parks devolved from Whitehall to the Mayor of London. This would have meant more democratic accountability to Londoners.  Indeed, there was a statement published by the Department for Culture Media and Sports(DCMS)last January, in which its stated objective was to “transfer The Royal Parks to the GLA to ensure clear democratic accountability and have the Mayor as a visible champion for the Parks and to deliver management which is more responsive to the needs and expectations of park users and local people”.  This would have meant the Royal Parks no longer being an Executive Agency of the DCMS but instead it would have become an integral but distinct part of the “GLA family” to include bye-laws conferring powers on the GLA to cover trade and business in the parks and the conduct of visitors to their grounds.

 What we have ended up with is something very different. The Mayor has instead been given powers over a new Royal Parks Board, to which he has powers to appoint half of the 12 member board including the Chair.  Of  the remaining six, three are to be appointed by London’s local councils, one must be a member of the Royal Household with the final two seats held by the agency’s Chief Executive and a second executive.  So the parks will remain in Crown ownership with City Hall merely gaining “a voice in the parks’ management”.  Crucially, the Mayor does not control the budget for the Royal Parks.   So as Sir Edward commented, we have ended up with a “half-way house”, which we will almost certainly have to return back to in a few years to reform further.  Jeff Jacobs also conceded that the original ambition for the Parks had been compromised during the lengthy legalisative process of the Localism Bill. 

As for vision, we got very little of this, as we were told that in essence, very little would change. However, even with the quasi devolution which we ended up with, I would still have preferred to see more ambition and vision expressed by the Mayor’s office.  For example, ideas for allotments perhaps?, playing fields? or possibly a discussion on changes in the horticulture so as to inspire Londoners to use their Royals Parks a lot more.  Instead, the meassage was no change on the horizon.  This is disappointing, because whilst hoping for a “Londoner’s Park”, we ended up with a “half-baked Mayor’s Park” which obviously has yet to inspire the Mayor and his office to provide Londoners with a new vision for one of our most valued assets.

Mark Camley was answering questions from Murad Qureshi, Labour’s environment spokesman on the London Assembly. Murad probed the chief executive about the possibility of more pitches in Hyde Park to counter the loss of playing fields across London and to help increase sports participation. 

But Mr Camley said the Royal Parks already host a variety of pitches and sporting provisions. “More formal sports would mean less informal sports”, he said.

Environment spokesman for the London Assembly Labour Group, Murad Qureshi said: “We are all in favour of retaining the general character of the Royal Parks but we should capitalise on their potential for providing more sporting facilities. London needs more playing fields and the changes to who runs the parks gives us a perfect opportunity to look at this again.”

Murad has long been a supporter of more playing fields and pitches in the Royal Parks having led an Assembly investigation into the loss of playing fields in 2006.

Ends.

Notes

Murad Qureshi is a London-wide Assembly Member and Chair of the London Assembly Environment committee.

Earlier this year, the Department for Culture Media and Sport set out  its objective to transfer control of the Royal Parks to the Greater London Authority. But in July the Heritage Minister, John Penrose MP, announced that he now intended to create a new Royal Parks Board giving the Mayor power to appoint the Chair and other members of the Board.  More details about the new governance structure were released today.

It emerged only this week from the charity London Playing Fields Foundation that at least eight fields around the capital were in danger of being lost due to a change in planning laws which would make it easier to build on them.

For further information please contact Nikki Salih on 0207 983 4363

Fuel poverty looming for average households

During yesterdays Mayors Question Time, l asked the Mayor about fuel poverty.  With household incomes tumbling in real terms, it won’t be the council tax nor the Mayor’s annual fare increases for transport which hit family budgets the most (although, they will no doubt cut a pretty hefty blow) but the energy price hikes of up to 18 per cent which will make the biggest dent.

London Councils estimate that 1 in 4 households live in fuel poverty already. Also, a recent article in the Financial Times warned that if energy bills remain on their current path, the average household will be in “fuel poverty” by 2015.

Based on this, l was keen to ask the Mayor what he was doing about fuel poverty in London? The answer I’m afraid was not very much. He spoke about his Re-New scheme. This is something which he introduced in 2009 when the Mayor set a target of greening 200,000 homes by 2012.  By Spring 2011 this target plummeted to 55,000, which is just 1.7 per cent of London’s 3.3 million homes.  By September 2011 just 10,678 homes were treated.  The pace really needs to be stepped up considerably this autumn if the Mayor has any hope of meeting even his downgraded target.  Unfortunately,  it looks as though Londoners can take cold comfort from the Mayor’s response to me.

At the same time, the big utilitiy companies are under intense political pressure, forcing them to consider radical change in order to restore public trust particularly after Ed Millband’s speech at Labour Party conference pledging to ” break the dominance of the big energy companies”.  Yesterday morning, Scottish & Southern Energy (SSE) announced that it had changed its electricity pricing policy by auctioning all its power.  If SSE can do this, why not EDF, which are the biggest supplier in London and who have done very well out of the GLA? (They are not only an olympic sustainabilty partner, they are also getting the first £200 million contract to remove the pylons in and around Stratford).  My suggestion to the Mayor was that he should follow suit and ask EDF to respond to criticism of high bills with a radical shake-up of the way it buys and sells electricity, thus allowing smaller independent companies to enter the market. Will the Mayor listen? Over to him.

Charity London Playing Fields Foundation has launched a register of at-risk fields warning: "Once lost, a playing field isn’t coming back."

At least eight fields around the capital are thought to be in most danger, though the charity says there could be many more and is calling on residents to speak out about facilities near them.

The foundation’s chief executive Alex Welsh said proposed changes to planning laws and cuts to council budgets mean sports fields are in danger of being sold off or falling into disuse because maintenance costs are too high.

He said falling numbers of outdoor pitches meant fewer young people were getting the opportunity to play sport which could have a damaging effect on public health.

Mr Welsh said: "If we want current and future generations to lead more active lives we have to be vigilant.

"Next time you’re queuing up at your local supermarket just think 20 years ago you might have been standing on a cricket square or centre circle.

"Our register is not ideal as it is reactive but in the absence of a continuously updated database of playing fields it’s the best we’ve got." The foundation says the stock of football and cricket pitches in the capital has plummeted in 20 years, meaning youngsters have fewer green spaces to play on than ever before.

It introduced its "at-risk register" because of a lack of information about how many playing fields have been lost in recent years.

So far it says it has helped to save 15 threatened sites, either through advice, a feasibility study or acquiring the ground with the help of funding from the London Marathon Charitable Trust. Communities are being told that the best way to protect playing fields is to use them.

A report in 2006 by the Greater London Authority revealed that hundreds of hectares of open space had been lost in the previous two decades, though since then officials say it has been difficult to quantify how much has been lost.

Murad Qureshi, chairman of the London Assembly’s environment committee, said since the report "there has certainly been a further loss of playing fields in London and many have also been mothballed".

Mr Qureshi said: "This is something we need to keep an eye on.
"The draft National Planning Policy Framework’s lack of protection for sport and recreational buildings is of deep concern and certainly won’t help this trend of the loss of playing fields in London." 

A dilapidated sports ground that has been boarded up for 10 years should be restored as an open space for the community, say campaigners.

The 12-acre Hervey Road Sports Field in Kidbrooke had been used since 1890 for sporting activities until vandalism forced its closure. Greenwich council announced plans to build a special school on the site five years ago but has dropped this proposal.

Residents say the lack of facilities on the field – which was used for football, rugby, athletics, hockey and tennis – is a missed opportunity.

Susan Proudfoot, a leading member of the Save Hervey Road Sports Field group, said: "We still don’t know the council’s intentions for the field… At the moment the grass is cut and it is tidy but it has not got a single facility on it and no markings.

"Playing fields are really important, not just for people being active but also from a community point of view.

"We feels ours is a community landmark, but once it can be restored again it will be even stronger."

The site is on the London Playing Fields Foundation’s "at risk register". A council spokesman said the field would be released for "different uses" once a decision is taken about where Willow Dene special school is to be built.

He added: "As an Olympic host borough Greenwich is fully committed to ensuring an expansion in facilities for physical activity."

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In January the coalition set out proposals to “pass control of the Royal Parks from the DCMS to the Greater London Authority” and committed the Government to “legislate when the opportunity arises”.

These plans were subsequently watered down with the parks set to “remain in Crown ownership, under the overall responsibility of the Culture Secretary” and City Hall merely gaining “a voice in the parks’ management.”

The London Assembly’s Environment Committee will meet next Wednesday (12th October) to discuss the Royal Parks Agency’s work and question Sir Edward Lister, Boris Johnson’s Chief of Staff, on the Mayor’s new role and vision for The Royal Parks.

Committee Chair Murad Qureshi said: “Millions of Londoners and visitors enjoy our royal parks every year.  Not only do they provide facilities for play, sport, catering and entertainment, but they are home to many species of plants and animals. 

“We are keen to explore the future plans for the royal parks, as it is important that generations to come will also be able to enjoy all they have to offer.”

The committee is asking Londoners to share their views on whether the parks currently meet the needs of local people.

Anyone wishing to contact the committee can email at environmentcommittee@london.gov.uk, phone 020 7983 4510; or write to London Assembly Environment Committee, PP10, FREEPOST LON15799, City Hall, The Queen’s Walk, London, SE1 2BR.

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Local residents should not be asked to bear the brunt of the crossrail project

The Crossrail Paddington Community liaison Panel heard from contractors “BFK” last Wednesday night ( Western Lorry Routes presentation ) on how it intends to bring the tunnel segments for Crossrail into the Western Portal by a major number of lorry movements through neighbouring residential areas. That’s some 70 vehicles a day ( there and back ) for 18 months. This is contrary to the original understanding that it would all come in and out of the site by rail. This, when we already have issues about heavy lorries passing along Great Western Road and the Council has been asked to investigate issues raised by the tarmac cement site behind and on the side of the Westbourne Park garage.

I have heard complaints that very large bulk carriers from the tarmac cement site behind the Westbourne Park bus garage in Great Western Road used to have their raw materials delivered by rail; this has now stopped and been replaced by truck deliveries.  I am understanding of the fact that the contrators have a job to do, however, inflicting this sort of large articulated traffic 6 days a week until 10.00pm in a residential area is asking too much of residents to endure.

Also, in order to pass down Elgin Avenue and Chippenham Road to reach Harrow Road, they are crossing the canal bridge in Great Western Road which has a 7.5 ton prohibition on it. The outgoing cement trucks seem to have ignored this restriction for years, but this is now becoming even more frequent, so much so that there is evidence of damage to the road surface and corners.

 As planning does not cover this sort of activity, Crossrail will seek approval of the lorry routes under Schedule 7 of the Crossrail Act. This will include a request for exemption from a right turn ban at the Prince of Wales junction for segment deliveries.  But as my sister Cllr Papya Qureshi has commented, if granted, this exemption will ride roughshod over what is in fact a vital restriction on vehicle movements into her Westbourne Ward and others like Harrow Road & Bayswater. If large & heavy vehicles are made exempt, why not much smaller cars owned by local residents?

So look out for the Schedule 7 application to the City of Westminster to trigger alarm of lorry movements in the residential streets of Paddington during the Crossrail works.

Crossrail have earmarked the Big Table for demolition

Recently a friend told me about a local business and landmark threatened by Crossrail in the neighbourhood l grew up in. “The Big Table” which is on the Great Western Road, immediately to the left of Westbourne Park tube station and almost under the Westway. I have in the past purchased one of their beds and mattresses, and they are one of the very few big purchases l’ve made which I can say were made in London. This is an extreme rarity in this day. Apart from the benefits is has given to the local economy, it is also a local landmark with some history. It was built by the Temperance Society as a tea room, to get local rail men off the gin from the Great Western Rail company! 

Having had a look around the premises today, it’s one of the few places l know in London where the retail section and manufacturing are under one roof and it employs up to 10 people. The building itself is very light and airy with a distict grandeur about it so you can well imagine what it must have looked like when it was still being used as tearooms. In the evenings when it has its lights on, it offers many a feeling of security when walking under the Westway to get over to Harrow Road and North Kensington. 

So why would Cross rail went to knock it down? It is to make room for a sub-station, we are told. Having had a good look around, l cannot see why both can’t be accommodated on the same site, with the sub-station going in the backyard along the rail line itself. Better still why not further down the line nearer to the point at which the Cross rail tunnel actually begins? 

The building has clearly survived other major works around it, for example when the Westway was literally built over it in the late 1960’s, so l simply cannot see why this historic local landmark and business has to be demolished, at a cost of local jobs and heritage.

Click here to sign an online petition and save the Big Table from demolition.

Labour Conference 2011 Tribune Rally

Liverpool was sunny, its people friendly and their black cabs were much cheaper then London. Now I’m back from the Party Conference, its useful to review what l got up to other then enjoy Liverpool.

Well l made sure l was on the conference floor when Ken spoke on this battle with Boris, the present incumbent of the London Mayoralty.  He made some telling comments; for example, he questioned the moral difference between Boris’s Bullingdon vandalism as a student and the criminality of the rioters? Ken also reminded us of his own reaction to the July 7th bombings when he was Mayor in 2005. At the time he was in Singapore for the Olympic vote, but when he heard about the what was unfolding in London, he just wanted to get back home. In contrast when the riots first kicked off in London, Boris Johnson refused to return immediately, almost having to be dragged back as he tried to convince us from Vancouver that all was well with London.

When Ken was introduced to the floor by Tessa Jowell, she made a very good point; that is, that we must ensure that the contest next May will not just be a contest about celebrity. It must be a campaign about who will be the most effective leader, the most effective Mayor of London during these most difficult of times. She reminded us that competence not celebrity will get young people back to work; competence not celebrity that will build new homes and keep tubes fares down. So we were told in no uncertain terms, the choice before Londoners is one of celebrity versus competency. The Olympics will also provide a huge platform for the new incumbant Mayor on which to stage London to the world.  We should not underestimate the importance of 2012 and the implications this has for the incoming Mayor next May. Ken demonstrated great leadership qualities which cut it on the world stage when it came to representing London for the 2012 bid and (sadly) after 7/7.  He has a proven track record which will be enhanced on the Olympic platform next year.   This is just another reason why he should be Mayor next year.

At conference, I was pleased to be able to contribute to some fringe meetings. The first was the Labour Transport Group meeting ” What Future Airports?” on Monday lunchtime. What ever our position on the future of expansion of airport capacity in the United Kingdom developed during the Party consultation on aviation, we need to revise our national party position on the expansion of Heathrow.  This needs to be in line with our Mayoral candidate’s position of no expansion at Heathrow at least and no back door expansion through operational freedom trials either. This would be in line with government policy, but in truth, it is where we are with the public, particularly around the West London suburbs. I let the shadow aviation minister Jim Fitzpatrick know in no uncertain terms that this element of aviation policy had to be resolved by the time of the Mayoral contest next May.  Before leaving Liverpool, l was also asked to speak at the Tribune Rally on Tuesday evening. This was mainly as a result of being a regular contributor to Tribune magazine on City Hall affairs and therefore happily took up the offer.  Now its not often in life you get 10 minutes of time to speak to an audience about literally anything you think needs saying. So l took the opportunity willingly and chose to speak about the dangerous state of the world economy, and what needs doing like regulating the banks by splitting their retail arms from the casino side of their operations; putting the Tobin tax in place on the volume of transactions in the City of London and down with rating agencies and all they represent. I also spoke about foreign policy and on this front l am glad and proud to see that the Labour Party would recognise Palestine at the UN, if in power right now.  As we’ve balls-up our Middle East policies on a number of fronts, it’s refreshing to have got this one right at last. Finally, I didn’t miss the opportunity to give a plug about the importance of the GLA elections next year to the party.

Going underground @ Hammersmith Pump Station

Last Friday at the invitation of Thames Water, I went underground to see the how Bazalgette sewer system copes with overflows at its Combined Sewer Overflows (CSO) in Hammersmith onto the Thames.  It was certainly a sight to go down to the chamber some 70 metres long and 8 metres high and imagine what it must be like when it is completely filled up with rain and having to pump out 24 tonnes of muck a second.

All the CSOs along the Thames collectively pump out 39 cubic metres of untreated sewage into the Thames but the sewers can’t cope any more as London’s population has more than doubled since the famous brick sewers were built after the “great stink” in 1860.  Ourr water consumption has also greatly increased, so the present infrastructure has been overwhelmed by our growing city.

The Thames Water solution to this predicament is the Thames Tunnel supported by the Mayor and DEFRA. It’s a giant new sewer some 75 metres under the Thames, 13 miles long and wider then a tube tunnel. It will cope with any storm surges, storing and transfering the waste east where it will be treated.

In November we will have the second stage of the public consultation on the preferred route and works sites, the latter issue having raised some contraversy in some neighbourhoods in London. Let’s hope all the work sites have been moved from green sites like Cremorne Gardens in Chelsea to brown sites nearby, causing a lot less bother to local residents during the works phase.

Other issues raised include the cost of the tunnel.  The total project costs are some £3.6 million which will be paid from an additional £50 per household charge. This has not stopped some like Hammersmith & Fulham council objecting and suggesting a shorter tunnel option referred to as the Jacobs Babtie solution, which would be a better fix financially. But this proposal would still leave 19 of the 34 unchecked and not leave enough capacity in the existing sewers to be able to transfer the flows captured by a shorter tunnel to sewage treatment works in East London in any reasonable time scale. The result would be sewage sitting in the shorter tunnel for longer periods, creating the very odour problem for local resident they wanted to avoid.  This is particularly so for the residents of Hammersmith & Fulham, where the shorter tunnel would still run along their boundary with the Thames.  Whilst full, the tunnel would not be able to cope with flows generated by storms.

So all in all, barring any major revolts in the second stage of public consultation of the preferred route and in particular the location of the works sites, this looks like a welcome and long overdue addition to London’s sewage infrastructure.