1 INTRODUCTION

The challenge

1.1 To deliver what Londoners really want and need, London government must:

(1) Provide coherence and integration in the planning of different services and activities so they support each other in achieving social, environmental and economic goals;

(2) Have a consensus seeking, open, accountable political process and culture;

(3) Involve the wider community as a routine and integral part of its decision taking processes, not an occasional bolt-on.

1.2 Britain's existing models of local government fall far short of these ideals. The proposed new London Strategic Authority must be radically different from existing local authorities if it is to live up to the hopes and expectations being placed on it.

This discussion paper

1.3 This discussion paper sets out the Sustainable London Trust's initial views. It was written by Roger Levett, based on a series of wide-ranging discussions involving Richard Adam, Eileen Conn, Peter Draper, Judith Hanna, John Jopling, Roy Madron and Romy Shovelton. All took part in a personal capacity.

1.4 Chapter 2 outlines what a sustainable city would be, and proposes three broad principles of city governance needed for sustainability. Chapter 3 suggests what the principles mean for the proposed new London Strategic Authority. Chapter 4 examines the principles in more detail and derives 16 more detailed guidelines from them. Finally Chapter 5 sketches how the new model of London governance set out in this paper could respond to a potential issue.

Context

1.5 On taking office in May 1997 the new Labour government promptly promised a Green (consultative) Paper and a referendum on London government. The Sustainable London Trust warmly welcomes this commitment and shares the widespread hope that it will result in the creation of a new strategic local authority for London.

1.6 Debate has already started about whether the new authority should have an elected Mayor (and with what powers) and about its voting system, boundaries, powers, staffing - and even about possible premises. But little attention has been given to how the new authority should actually work. How should it make its decisions? What sort of issues should it get involved in? How broadly should it range? How should a new level of elective democracy relate to civil society and citizens' democracy in London - which includes a plethora of voluntary and community organisations, initiatives and partnerships already active at all levels from neighbourhood to the whole city region?

1.7 These questions deserve careful thought before the administrative nuts and bolts are settled, because of a paradox that lies behind the current debates. London's `democratic deficit' is one of the strongest arguments for a new authority. It is assumed almost without question that the creation of a new authority will improve democratic accountability. Yet there is unprecedented public cynicism about, distrust of, and lack of engagement with, the democratic institutions we already have. To ignore this is to risk basing the new authority on a model of political organisation which is manifestly in crisis where it already exists.

1.8 The crisis is not an excuse for turning our backs on representative democracy. Collective action, democratically mandated, is indispensable for many aspects of urban sustainability. We cannot do without government. If it is failing us, we must understand why, and learn how to do it better. If a new London authority is to meet the hopes being invested in it, it cannot simply be another version of the sort of councils we already have. We must take the opportunity of a fresh start to think critically and creatively about how the strategic authority for a great city should work.

2 TOWARDS A SUSTAINABLE LONDON

What would a sustainable city be?

2.1 The Sustainable London Trust's aim is to make London more sustainable - or at least less unsustainable. Our manifesto Creating a Sustainable London sets out in detail our views on what this means; this chapter gives a very brief summary.

2.2 Sustainability is about both living within environmental limits and improving the quality of life. The two strands, far from being opposed, each hold the key to achievement of the other. People will only consent to the big reductions in consumption of natural resources (especially fossil fuels) and releases of pollution and waste if they can be achieved without a reduction in their quality of life. But once our most basic material needs are met, if we stop and think what really matters for our quality of life - health, security, family, social and cultural life, confidence in the future - we realise these things need not depend on continual growth and elaboration of material consumption. Indeed they may be easier to achieve within an economy geared to sufficiency and meeting needs rather than inventing demands. Moreover such an economy in Northern cities like London would reduce our demands on developing countries, and help them also find a path towards sustainability.

2.3 For both environmental and social reasons, both locally and globally, sustainability entails reinventing the city as a cohesive social organisation whose members in satisfying their own needs also help meet the needs of others. It means rejecting the free market vision of the city as just a vast machine for accelerating and intensifying the exploitation of some by others.

2.4 Involvement and participation are essential for moves towards sustainability, for four logically distinct reasons:

(1) `Quality of life' is subjective. It is what the people involved think it is - it doesn't have any meaning independently of peoples' values. There are objectively measurable proxies for aspects of quality of life - for example levels of air pollution, youth unemployment or fuel poverty. Expert knowledge and judgement have a legitimate role in framing and interpreting such measures. But they ultimately depend for their validity on the views and values of the people affected.

(2) Democratic principle: people have a right to a voice in decisions which affect them. The range and complexity of the decisions required for sustainability means peoples' views cannot be fully captured simply by the ability to vote for one of a limited number of political parties at intervals of 4 or 5 years. More fine- grained and continuous forms of involvement are needed.

(3) Ownership: sustainable development requires cooperative action by a wide range of people and organisations. The consent and support needed are more likely to be forthcoming if the people affected feel they have had an input to the decisions and their wishes and needs taken into account.

(4) Information and creativity: people outside government institutions often have knowledge and understanding which can solve problems, identify what will or will not work, and make for better policies and projects. This needs to be embraced and used to the full.

2.5 Sustainability thus requires a shift in perspective. The local authority no longer sets the agenda. Instead it is just one partner - albeit an important and influential one - in a broad-based collaborative process of deciding issues, aims and actions.

Principles for sustainable city governance

2.6 We use the term `governance' to emphasise that the management and direction of a city is far broader than the work of official government institutions. It includes the contribution to the public realm of the myriad of voluntary and community organisations and processes, formal and informal, through which people think and act collectively as citizens rather than individually as consumers. And it includes the ways the official and unofficial parts relate to each other and work together.

2.7 This paper concentrates on the role of the local authority. (Other work by the Sustainable London Trust focuses on the community dimension). We believe sustainability requires city government to follow three broad principles:

(1) Coherence and integration in the planning of different services and activities so they support each other in achieving social, environmental and economic goals;

(2) A consensus seeking, open, accountable political process and culture;

(3) Involvement of the wider community as an integral part of its decision taking processes, not an occasional bolt-on.

3 PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS FOR THE NEW LONDON STRATEGIC AUTHORITY

3.1 This chapter suggests how the principles summarised in the last chapter could be reflected in the proposed new strategic authority for London. The aim is to indicate the characteristics the new authority would need to have to satisfy these principles. The Sustainable London Trust are not proposing a detailed specification for the new authority. Instead, we are posing questions and criteria against which we suggest specifications should be judged.

The Mayor question

3.2 Much of the debate about the new authority has focused on the question whether it should have an elected Mayor. In some cities such as Curitiba and Barcelona, powerful elected mayors have inspired, articulated and implemented a new positive vision for their cities in a way that is virtually impossible in the traditional British model of local government. The Sustainable London Trust therefore believe the elected-Mayor model is worth a try.

3.3 However for every Curitiba or Barcelona there are dozens of cities where elected Mayors have proved venal, short-sighted, uninspired, divisive or corrupt. We must therefore not treat the elected-Mayor model as a panacea or an end in itself. Instead we should consider it as a possible means to achieve our objectives for London government.

3.4 This chapter is therefore written so far as possible to avoid either presupposing or ruling out an elected Mayor, but instead setting out criteria by which proposed structures, with or without a Mayor, can be appraised. In the following discussion the blanket term `the authority' should therefore not be taken to mean either the whole organisation or any particular part of it.

Political system

3.5 The principle of open and consensus based politics has the following implications:

(1) The voting system for the new authority should be specifically designed to deliver a plurality of viewpoints, including minorities. Elections should therefore be by proportional representation.

(2) The institutions should provide for a range of parties or interests to share power in coalition. Lessons should be learned from the various experiments in power sharing which followed the increase in `hung' councils in the mid 1990s.

(3) Perhaps the most obstructive feature of British political routine is the `whipping' system - the acceptance that parties will routinely instruct their members which way to vote, and heavily penalise dissidents. This is not an inevitable feature of elected legislatures. The new authority should emulate the Dutch constitution, which prohibits whipping as an unacceptable interference with freedom of conscience.

(4) Whipping is bolstered by the concentration of patronage and spoils in the party machine. Position, office and influence should be allocated so far as possible by open and explicit cross party mechanisms, not by party machine.

Strategic planning process

3.6 The principles call for integration between different topic areas and explicitness in decision processes. To provide this:

(1) The business of the authority should revolve around a Strategic Plan for London, periodically updated. This would start with an explicit set of declared overall aims and values. These must be general and far-reaching but not just platitudinous. Like the current land use planning system it would set an overall framework whose detailed application would be flexible. Unlike the land use planning system it would define and promote positive goals rather than just responding to developer pressures, and deal with the whole urban metabolism - not just land use but stocks and flows of natural resources, manufactured goods, people, social and cultural institutions and activities, public services - indeed everything that matters for London's environmental and social sustainability. The plan would be London's Local Agenda 21.

(2) Criteria for decisions and indicators of performance should be closely based on the overall aims in the Strategic Plan.

(3) Accountability and transparency should be promoted through the routine publication of appraisals of decisions against the Strategic Plan criteria and periodic (at least annual) public reporting of performance against Strategic Plan performance indicators.

(4) The main activity of the authority should be extended investigations of topics such as transport, the city's energy footprint, the desired direction of economic development, rather than ad hoc and fragmented decisions on `casework'. Broad investigations should be seen not as rare luxuries but as the main business. The output of such investigations should be updates to the Strategic Plan.

Integral consultation / involvement

3.7 An important part of every investigation should be to define who the relevant stakeholders are, decide how best to discover and articulate the range and balance of relevant interests and options, and then to carry out the appropriate consultation processes and techniques. The role of the strategic authority should be as much to make the appropriate processes happen as to make decisions itself.

3.8 Appropriate methods will often include some combination of:

(1) Co-opting stakeholder representatives onto the investigatory body and / or as advisers to it;

(2) Taking evidence or submissions from interested parties, either in formal session or informally and conversationally;

(3) Organising non-technical events such as Future Search conferences, Citizens Juries, Focus Groups, Planning for Real events designed to enable all relevant stakeholders - with particular attention to the less articulate, confident or conventionally influential - to formulate and convey their views;

(4) Where appropriate, commissioning more traditional methods of opinion research such as exhibitions, questionnaires and circulation of consultation drafts;

(5) Setting up and managing specialist working groups, consultative conferences and other means of drawing in specialist and expert constituencies over a period.

3.9 Local Agenda 21 processes have pioneered the application of these new methods, and the new authority should learn from and build on this experience.

Voluntary and community links

3.10 As well as involving appropriate interests in each investigation, the authority should nurture a continuing close relationship with existing representative bodies and processes including London First and business organisations. In particular there should be an established and explicit mechanism for the authority's strategic planning process to incorporate view and priorities from Local Agenda 21 processes at London-wide and smaller scales.

3.11 The Sustainable London Trust supports the creation of a London Citizens' Forum as a means of coordinating, strengthening and increasing the influence of voluntary and community activity in London. Such an initiative must by its nature spring from voluntary and community initiative rather than being created by local government. The London Strategic Authority should involve such a forum, if established, as a partner in designing and carrying out consultation processes.

Implementation

3.12 The authority will implement its policies largely by influencing the way other organisations carry out their activities. Accordingly:

(1) The new authority should not run or manage any services itself.

(2) The authority should use the full range of tools - regulation, taxation, investment, subsidy, enabling / brokering, service level agreements, contracts, franchises, persuasion - to influence others. There should be no dogmatic preference for one kind of instrument or another. The yardsticks for intervention should always be effectiveness in achieving policy goals (as articulated in the strategic plan), with minimum expense and interference.

(3) Where the authority needs to initiate or secure some new service or activity, it should commission implementation from the best qualified outside agency.

(4) In commissioning such services there should be no dogmatic presumption for or against any particular kind of service provider - whether in the public, private or nonprofit sectors.

(5) However the authority should set extensive collateral conditions to ensure that all contracted services further the authority's broader goals. For example if the Strategic Plan for London called for local employment generation, local sourcing, environmental responsibility and enlightened employment policies, these should be promoted through conditions and/or criteria applied to all contracts and tendering processes.

(6) Initiatives will often need to be systemic - that is, involving a large range of interventions at different points, using different tools and affecting varied interests, in order to unravel intractable and interconnected problems. For example action to reverse the vicious circles affecting transport (outlined below) is likely to require public transport investments and running subsidies and reversed priorities for trunk road and traffic management and higher fuel taxes and selective constraints on particular vehicles in particular places and facilities and promotion for cyclists and walkers and taxation of parking spaces. A strategic authority will often need to develop and see through concerted programmes or campaigns.

Staffing

3.13 To meet the needs above:

(1) The new authority should have a very small permanent staff.

(2) The most important competencies in senior staff will be strategic planning, negotiation and brokering of agreements, coalition and consensus building, management of involvement processes, facilitation and partnership working. Recruitment, career progress, training and appraisal processes must be designed to select, develop and reward these skills.

(3) Staff exchanges, secondments, part-time attachments, voluntary contributions and consultancies should be used extensively to access relevant expertise, challenge and renew the authority's culture and strengthen networking with other organisations.

(4) However the core staff should include high level constitutional, legal, contractual and financial expertise.

Relationship with existing tiers of government

3.14 Many of the policy functions currently exercised by central government should be taken over by the new authority. For example the new authority should be responsible for developing and implementing health, transport, spatial planning and economic development strategies for London as a whole.

3.15 The new authority should not in general take over direct management of any currently borough level functions.

Powers

3.16 The new authority should have a power of general competence - that is, a `blanket' power to do anything the law does not exclude. This is the status of local authorities in many continental countries, unlike existing British local authorities which can only act within specific powers granted to them by law.

3.17 In particular the authority would need the power to shape the local economy, for example by imposing local taxes to discourage environmentally bad behaviour, and using the revenue to cross-subsidise environmentally desirable alternatives.

Finance

3.18 The new authority should have the power to raise money through any means, including local taxation, market loans, equity stakes in public enterprises or issue of municipal debt. But all fund raising and expenditure would be subjected to an annual published independent audit, which would assess and report on whether:

(1) The authority's finance and expenditure were consistent with the Strategic Plan - that is, that the authority's financial management promoted its declared policy priorities;

(2) Over the whole life of the investment, the best possible value for money was achieved for the people of London;

(3) All financial risks had been properly assessed and managed.

3.19 In this process there should be no arbitrary bias in favour of either `public' or `private' finance. Private finance would often turn out to more cost-effective for speculative, risky and revenue - earning projects, and where profit-motivated management is likely to secure reduced costs through innovative solutions. However public finance would generally be cheaper for safe, long term infrastructure investments since it would not have to provide for speculative profit.

4 PRINCIPLES OF MANAGING LONDON FOR SUSTAINABILITY

4.1 This chapter derives some guidelines for how a new strategic authority for London should operate from a consideration of some of the main challenges for management of a city for sustainability. The guidelines, in boxes, are grouped according to the three broad principles set out in chapter 2.

Principle 1: Coherence and integration in the planning of different services and activities so they support each other in achieving social, environmental and economic goals.

4.2 A big city like London is an intensely complex system. Flows of energy and natural resources, economic processes and the activities and choices of its people are intimately interconnected. For example a large part of energy consumption is due to transport, especially by car. Demand for car use is related to patterns of land use (built environment) and economy and work, as well as culture and leisure aspirations. People also drive more because of their concerns about crime and community safety - which increasing car use then make worse, while contributing to pollution and health problems and damaging the natural environment and adding to problems of inequality in the social environment. Scrap cars, tyres and oil then add to London's waste burden.

4.3 Thus a single topic, car use, is connected with a wide range of other issues that matter for sustainability. (The phrases in italics are the names of all the working groups in the Association of London Government's London Agenda 21 process.)

4.4 Public administration traditionally copes with this complexity by breaking the system down into manageable topic areas. Thus local authorities have separate departments for education, housing, land use planning, highways, waste collection, leisure, recreation and such like. In London, unlike many continental cities, many key functions for sustainability are managed by separate organisations, including health, policing, public transport, economic development, tourism, energy, water and sewerage.

4.5 This fragmentation prevents integrated management of the whole system. For example London's transport crisis has been worsened by the malign interaction of individually rational and well-meaning, but mutually defeating and cumulatively crass, responses by different organisations. Sectoral responses to systemic problems may make them worse:

4.6 Recognition is finally dawning - although slowly - that increases in car traffic are the problem and that responses which cater for it or collude with it merely shift or worsen the problem.

4.7 To combat this the first guideline is:

4.8 One aspect of this is the ability to plan and manage different services together. The authority needs to be able to influence all services and activities which affect sustainability at the level of the whole city.

4.9 This is particularly important given that it is often harder to unravel a sustainability problem than to fall into it in the first place. For example now London has been allowed to slip so far into car dependence, reversing any of the sectoral actions which contributed to this change may be futile or self-defeating. Isolated actions to reduce road or parking capacity, or stop car-dependent development, simply result in shopping, employment or other activities moving to other areas without the restrictions. Withdrawal of services such as special buses to out of town shopping centres is liable to reduce the welfare of the people served without any impact on the main problem. Even improvements in public transport provision on their own will be of limited effectiveness. Only coherent, coordinated action across a range of topic areas can hope to unravel this sort of problem.

4.10 This does not mean that the authority must itself manage all - or even any - of these services, or even that they need to be under public ownership. But where they are in the private sector they need to be regulated in a way that ensures profit coincides with the public interest:

4.11 Integration also requires changes within each specialism. Each local authority department or other service provider has defined areas of competence and working methods, and staff largely trained and selected as specialists in its own field. They often achieve excellence within their field - but often at the expense of ignoring the bigger picture:

4.12 Traditional departmentalism is a big obstacle. To avoid this:

4.13 Another obstacle is the doctrine, promulgated by the last government, that public bodies must not apply `non-commercial considerations' to contracts and tenders. This deliberately obstructed use of the market to promote an integrative, multi-objective approach. It also created the absurd anomaly that the Government was debarring local authorities from using their commercial muscle in the market to promote social and employment policies for which they had a democratic mandate, while urging companies with no democratic accountability to promote environmental policies through the market.

Principle 2: A consensus seeking, open, accountable political process and culture

4.14 The UK's party political system performs the same role of simplifying or avoiding complex issues that departmentalism and fragmentation do at management level. With very few exceptions, individuals can only be influential in politics through one of a very small number of political parties. This would matter less if debate within parties could encompass a range of views. However the adversarial, confrontational tradition of political debate and the `first past the post' electoral system mean that a party can only win or keep power by uniting around a simple set of propositions or promises, defined more to differentiate them from the other parties, or appeal to `floating voters', than to respond to the issues.

4.15 The more important and controversial an issue is, the more tactically dangerous it is for a party to admit uncertainty, indecision or a diversity of views - even where these are the only honest and reasonable response to a question which is indeed complex and many-sided. The Conservative Party's disarray over Europe before the 1997 general election is a case in point. The party system operates by filtering out subtleties and complexities, and funnelling all the diversity of opinion and perception down into a small number of simplified dogmas which then alternate rather than develop.

4.16 For example the pre - 1979 Labour governments' dogmatic preference for public ownership provoked the 1979 - 97 Conservative government's equally dogmatic preference for privatisation. Since 1946 a huge amount of time and effort has been devoted to advocating and implementing shifts of enterprises into and out of public ownership. But little attention has been given to curing the defects of either the public corporation invented by the 1946-51 Labour government or the essentially Victorian limited company favoured by the Conservatives. Half a century on, we are hardly any closer to managing public services to be effective at meeting human needs as well as economically efficient, and responsive to stakeholders as well as shareholders.

4.17 This system of government is described as `strong'. A more accurate term might be `brittle'. Lacking flexibility, it cannot adapt and develop, but only resist increasing external pressure until it snaps - as arguably Labour did in 1979 and the Conservatives in 1997.

4.18 However much of the advantage of pluralism will be lost if different parties or groups are still forced to unite around rigid positions to `win'. Therefore:

4.19 Multi-party government is frequently criticised for relying on secret, unaccountable accommodations between different parties to build a coalition. It is not immediately obvious why this is worse than the secret unaccountable accommodations between different factions within a single ruling party as in the UK. But either deprives the voters of control. So to reduce it:

4.20 Both transparency and consensus seeking can be promoted through a further guideline:

4.21 This would correspond to Parliamentary Select Committees, or local authority Member/Officer Working Groups.

4.22 These four points together argue for a radically different style of political discourse. If Britain's 19th century wars were `won on the playing fields of Eton', arguably our late 20th century politics is being `lost in the debating chambers of Oxbridge'. Decision making should be a cooperative venture of discovery, learning, creativity and integration, rather than a struggle for supremacy between rival factions played out through a flashy, aggressive, point-scoring style of student debate.

4.23 Part of the problem is that in central and local government it is the most trivial and sterile parts of the process that get the greatest prominence in open debate. Broad discussion happens, if at all, `off stage' in committees, caucuses and informal working groups. To encourage sensible debate:

Principle 3: Involvement of the wider community as an integral part of its decision taking processes, not an occasional bolt-on

4.24 In Britain, democracy is based on the freedom of all sane adults to vote for a choice of representatives at intervals of a few years. This was a huge step forward. But it involves too drastic a narrowing of the information and value basis to make the sorts of complex integrative decisions now needed for sustainability. Public input into decisions needs to be both broadened and deepened.

4.25 Currently `consultation' is too often a means of coercing consent or legitimating decisions already taken. The arcane rules and procedures of formal planning consultation, designed to ensure and demonstrate scrupulous thoroughness and even-handedness, instead intimidate and exclude non-experts.

4.26 `Set pieces' such as public inquiries can seem an elaborate and obscure ritual, performed largely by highly paid elderly men, whose main purpose seems to be to deny common sense and exclude the questions which people really want to raise, such as `why do we need a road in the first place?' Public protest movements, for example over road and airport developments, should be seen less as a threat to democratic due process than as a sane response to the inadequacy of current processes.

4.27 Broad coverage of people is also essential.

Conclusion: the learning city

4.28 These guidelines will not magically eliminate ambition, egotism, secretiveness, disingenuousness, aggression or conspiracy from political life. None of the measures suggested can stop individuals from taking up simplistic confrontational positions, or groups from caucusing, doing deals in private and coercing support. But we hope that they will help move away from the current situation in which these are often the only ways for politicians to operate, towards a situation where constructive, consensus-based, open approaches become the norm because they are more effective.

4.29 A key idea underlying all these guidelines is that of the learning city. To move towards sustainability London requires a continual process of adaptation and development involving both government institutions and citizens - indeed all organisations and elements of society. This is not to be confused with the perpetual organisational disruption promoted by the previous government under the slogan of `managing change'. This indeed retarded useful change by forcing public bodies continually to take up defensive, risk-averse positions and to cut back on creative, forward looking work.

4.30 Japanese industry shows that innovation, openness and flexibility thrive in stable secure organisations. Administrative convulsions make for defensive, static, risk-averse behaviour within organisations. Local Government Review has tended to retard and obstruct creative longer term initiatives such as Local Agenda 21. Instead we are concerned with creating a climate of confidence and creativity, and encouraging all elements of civil society to be receptive and responsive to the widest possible `bandwidth' of information and values.

4.31 The new authority must take a leading role in this process. For these reasons the new London authority must not itself become a political football. So in a final guideline:

4.32 Only in this way can maximum advantage be taken of the unique opportunity presented by the new Government's will to create a new Strategic Authority for London.

5 A GLIMPSE OF A POSSIBLE FUTURE

5.1 This paper has inevitably dealt largely in concepts and abstractions. Readers may well be thinking `yes, but what would it actually be like'? This final chapter seeks to respond to this question in the form of a glimpse at how a big and complicated issue might possibly be managed in a London governed according to the principles we propose.

Just suppose . . .

5.2 At one of the regular meetings monitoring the roads maintenance contracts, a contractor company warns that several busy London trunk roads are now so worn out that `patching up' repairs are no longer adequate. When the other contractors say they share this concern, the Strategic Authority commissions research from a firm of consultant engineers which confirms that over the next few years several key roads will need to be closed for several months while the roads themselves and their water mains, sewers and other infrastructure are totally renewed.

5.3 The Authority immediately passes the research findings on to the London Citizens' Forum and the two bodies agree the Authority should hold an Inquiry into how this hugely disruptive process should be managed. Different interest groups initially present hopelessly conflicting demands to the Inquiry. Motoring organisations warn that the closures threaten gridlock and call for alternative (mostly residential) roads to be widened and temporarily designated as trunk roads to handle diverted traffic; residents' organisations vehemently oppose this and threaten to barricade their roads; green transport groups urge permanent closure of the roads, but shops along them warn that this will destroy their business; London wide business organisations warn that congestion and delays will jeopardise the city's competitive position; public transport operators demand compensation for inability to run services while roads are shut . . . and so on.

5.4 The Inquiry team decide this is suitable problem for a Future Search conference. They persuade prominent representatives of all the affected communities and interests to spend an intensive weekend, managed by trained facilitators, seeing if a consensus solution can be found. The first day is devoted to establishing mutual trust and a common perspective on the problem. In the second day the bones of a solution emerge, and by the end of the conference all the groups involved endorse it in principle. The key is to think of the need to close the roads as an opportunity to try out, experimentally and without permanent commitment, a bold and radical shift away from car dependence - which after all, as all parties acknowledge, the democratically adopted Strategic Plan for London includes as an overall aim.

5.5 Over subsequent weeks intensive negotiations between the various parties (many of them brokered by the Inquiry team) settle the details. Residential roads parallel to the roads to be rebuilt will be designated as extra cycle routes, and electronically tagged loan bikes provided in special parks to encourage car commuters to shift over. Residents' groups go along with this, recognising that the bikes will be much less disruptive than the cars they would otherwise face.

5.6 A new fleet of special highly manoeuvrable lightweight buses will provide a frequent shuttle service, using the temporary access roads which the contractors will in any case need to keep open during the rebuilding. The Strategic Authority will make a one-off grant to London Transport to part-finance the buses (in turn partly funded by a levy voluntarily agreed by the Central London Office Employers Federation who are concerned about staff retention). The contractor companies agree to phase the various renewal projects so the same fleet of buses can serve each in turn. Initially opposed to the added complication of buses running through their sites, they are won over by a report of a successful similar scheme in Berlin, produced by a transport pressure group with a grant from the Strategic Authority - and by the wish to build up goodwill with the wide community, which they expect to need later in the project!

5.7 Transport pressure groups believe the project will demonstrate the delights of car-free cities and that the roads should be rebuilt narrower, with tram tracks, and with through car traffic permanently excluded. Businesses along the roads feel the opposite! Both groups are persuaded to agree that the performance of the temporary arrangements should be appraised through a study involving both questionnaires (to gauge personal convenience / inconvenience) and focus groups (to explore values and policy views) and that a decision should be taken after the consultation on how wide to rebuild the roads. The Borough councils involved agree to pay the contractors slightly more to offset the extra cost of keeping options open until quite late in the rebuilding.

5.8 Meanwhile other parts of the Inquiry establish agreement that during the renewal programme:

• Heat mains will be laid in the roads ready for district heating schemes;
• Volunteer archaeologists will be given time to record anything interesting that is found in the excavations;
• Special access help or temporary accommodation will be provided for mobility- impaired people affected by the work;
• Councils will provide space in nearby depots for the contractors to store reclaimed road materials, to help them achieve 95% reuse;
• New pavements will be permeable to let rainwater recharge the ground;
• If it is decided to narrow the roads, neighbourhood forums will be involved in designing planting and landscaping for the space released . . .

Too good to be true?

5.9 This example is not utopian. It acknowledges that the issue is complex and will generate genuine conflicts, and that solutions will necessarily involve concessions, compromises and costs. However it also suggests that a new approach to London government based on the principles set out in this paper offers a chance to achieve much better solutions. Sceptical readers are invited to compare it with their own experience of how problems like this are managed - or un-managed - in London today.

5.10 The Sustainable London Trust does not believe the example is too good to be true. Indeed we believe that nothing less than this is good enough for London or its people. Or the rest of the world.