Siân Berry took a South-North tour of green businesses in London on Friday 18th April to talk to entrepreneurs about her plans to boost small, local and green businesses.
The visits also mark the launch of the Greens’ new website www.greensmeanbusiness.co.uk, a directory of green businesses in London.
As part of her manifesto, Siân has pledged to:
- Change planning rules to make 50% of space in all new commercial developments available at affordable rents for the shops, offices or workshops of small businesses.
- Increase the advertising space on the Underground, and give priority to local business and free space to community groups.
- Close London City Airport and use the land as a new Green Industries Park to encourage new enterprise in the growing environmental sector, especially manufacturing.
- Give free insulation to every home that needs it and low-cost loans for the installation of green energy technologies, massively expanding the market for manufacturing and fitting.
- Introduce new procurement policies in the GLA so the administration buys more goods and services from within London.
The tour, on which Siân was joined by Green Assembly Member Jenny Jones and Green MEPs Jean Lambert and Caroline Lucas, began at Brixton Market on Friday morning.
Siân then moved on to the Brew Wharf restaurant and microbrewery in London Bridge for lunch, then to Borough Market, Lush in Covent Garden, the unique Unpackaged grocery shop in Clerkenwell, and finished up with signing copies of her books at the independent Big Green Bookshop in Wood Green. All these markets, shops and other businesses can be found on the Greens Mean Business website directory.
Siân said:
“Smaller businesses put more of their profits back into their community, building economic as well as environmental sustainability. And we all prefer having a wide range of unique businesses, instead of empty ghost-town high streets and big-box retail parks. So it’s about time our community did more to help these businesses compete against the multinationals.”One thing I would do as Mayor is make sure that all new large developments made half their floor space available for small businesses at affordable rents. We need to defend our high streets, not let them be abandonded or swallowed up by identikit shopping centres with the same, boring shops in every one.
“We could be heading into tough times economically and we can’t rely on finance multinationals who can and will easily leave London if that looks beneficial to them. We need a more resilient economy to see us through a recession, and my policies to let small business in all sectors flourish in London will help to build that economy.”