Whatever happened to Mayor Boris’ green promises?


by Darren Johnson AM    
11:00 am - January 26th 2011

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When Mayor Boris Johnson addressed the Environment Agency in November 2008, it seemed he had converted to “the religion of climate change”, and put his indifference to environmental action behind him. So has he delivered?

Unfortunately the Mayor is a politician who likes to hype one or two catchy ideas. One first appeared in the long list of promises made in that speech – to spend £100m in his four-year term helping households to install insulation. The second is the target he then set – to insulate 200,000 homes by 2012.

Only a month later he recast his £100m as money to be spent “over four years in environmental programmes of one kind or another”. Wasn’t that just for home insulation?

By the time it appeared in his budget in January 2009 it was for “environment and climate change programmes”. If you add in other environment-related programmes such as those on walking, cycling and “smarter travel” the figure is more like £300m, so what was this £100m for and what happened to home insulation?

In fact, this figure of £100m keeps cropping up in the Mayor’s speeches with little explanation year after year; the definition subtly shifts each time.

Programmes have been delayed or cut, most match-funding from London’s boroughs has failed to materialise, and all the while the Mayor has continued to trumpet his £100m spending promise and his impressive-sounding targets.

The target of reaching all 1.2 million un-insulated homes in London by 2015 has only reached about 8,500 homes so far. You can watch my video about it here.

The LDA had a £9.75m budget to kick-start the programme, and boroughs were supposed to fund the advisors to reach hundreds of thousands of cold homes across London.

When I asked for an update in October 2010 the Mayor admitted that the funding was only going to reach 55,000 homes by the end of 2012, a quarter of his original target. But that didn’t stop him trumpeting the target in a press release later that month.

When I chased the Mayor about the shortfall in funding from the boroughs in November he admitted he had forgotten to follow up on a promise to lobby them.

If the Mayor did convert to the climate change religion, he’s a lapsed churchgoer.

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About the author
This is a guest post. Darren Johnson is chair of the London Assembly and deputy chair of the Business Management and Administration Committee. He represents the Green Party.
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Story Filed Under: Blog ,Local Government ,London Mayor


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Reader comments


1. dave bones

Cheers for this Darren.

2. dave bones

I was reading this one on the tube

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard-business/article-23916294-oft-looks-at-turning-britains-waste-into-energy.do

Are you guys getting behind Anerobic Digestion for London area? How about small scale?

Boris is actually missing out riding on the advantages of all this if it were communicated properly he would see the advantages in economic terms fairly quickly. Does he just look blankly when you talk to him? He seems quite bright or is it all just theatricals?


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