The Mayor has re-announced a series of environmental projects with a reduced year-on-year budget. Some projects have been seriously delayed and some cut back following cuts to the London Development Agency. The Mayor risks missing a key target to insulate homes and not completing a network of new green spaces in east London.
Darren Johnson commented: "I’m delighted that the Mayor saw sense and didn’t short change Londoners suffering from poorly insulated homes and lacking green space.
"But the months of delay and cutbacks have seriously compromised his ability to deliver on those grand promises he has repeated year after year. He needs to put his energies into making things happen instead of re-announcing the same projects."
Editor’s Notes
The £116.5m announced by the Mayor includes a £100m rolling investment fund that has been set-up over the past few years and that will be spent over an undefined period in years to come, and £16.5m from the LDA for 2011/12.
The £16.5m of confirmed spend on environmental projects for the next year compares to budgets of £30m for 2010/11, £26m for 2009/10 (though the LDA only spent £10m) and £18m for 2008/09 (though the LDA only spent £5m).
The Mayor aims to insulate 200,000 homes by the end of 2012, but only has funding in place to reach 64,000 and has no confirmed funding to reach the remaining 136,000 in the 9 remaining months of 2012.
Of the 300 new multi-functional green spaces planned for east London, 100 have been delivered so far. But there is no budget to complete the remaining spaces, which rely on the LDA funding a team to work up projects and lever in substantial sums of funding.