Cllr. Darren Johnson AM, Leader of the Green Party Group in the London Assembly said, “This is a plan that puts big business before the interests of ordinary Londoners.
It proposes massive unsustainable growth with a major new round of road building, significant airport expansion and new office accommodation the equivalent of an additional seventy-five Canary Wharfs.
Although we welcome the Mayor’s targets for affordable homes, what he is not offering Londoners is affordable jobs. Of the 636,000 new jobs the Mayor is projecting in his London Plan, 454,000 are expected to be in business and financial services.
Who seriously believes that the promised new jobs in financial services are really going to go to the poor and unemployed of east London? More likely, they will attract even more wealthy commuters into London from the South East and beyond,” Darren continued.
Greens are opposing the Mayor’s London Plan on the following grounds:
· It will add to London’s transport problems
It supports new road building and major airport expansion and there is a lack of policy objectives to reduce need to travel, reduce traffic, and improve local accessibility.
· It does not adequately protect London’s natural environment
Open space protection is not strong enough in the plan, leaving room for much remaining open space to be developed, including sites with nature conservation value.
· It is a tool of the City and big business
It puts financial services and ‘the city’ at the centre of London’s economic development, at the expense of other, more appropriate, forms of development.
“We need a more imaginative approach that values economic diversity and local economies rather than being almost wholly dependent on the financial services sector,” Darren concluded.
ENDS