--- election_year: 2021 party_id: green party_name: Green Party party_leader: Sian Berry political_spectrum: left victory: false government_outcome: opposition sections: - economy - taxation - health - education - housing - immigration - defence - foreign-policy - environment - transport - law-and-order - welfare - democracy-and-constitution - agriculture - energy - devolution - science-and-technology - local-government --- # Green Party London Mayoral Manifesto 2021 2021 LONDON GREEN PARTY MANIFESTO ## SIAN BERRY - YOUR CANDIDATE FOR MAYOR OF LONDON Sian Berry is a Green London Assembly Member and won third place in the last election for Mayor in 2016, where she won more second preference Mayor votes than any other candidate. ### Sian says: “I have been a Londoner all my working life, and in all that time I have been a private renter. I’ve experienced first-hand the frustration of bad landlords, broken plumbing and high rents. “Before being elected to the Assembly, I worked with communities across the country to protect the environment and win big new funding for better transport services. “I have got so much done, and I’m ready to serve you and our city as your Green Mayor. “In the Green Party you will find everyday people who became politicians because we care deeply about the places we live, our future and our neighbours. “Our citizens are crying out for people they can trust who will stand up for what’s right. “As well as making me your first choice for Mayor, you can vote for our hard-working Assembly candidates on all your ballot papers in his election.” ## LONDON NEEDS A NEW START London should be the greenest city in the world, the city best prepared for the future. We can get there with a new Green Mayor. Right now, Londoners are crying out for a new start. A recovery that raises everyone up and creates a secure future. One we can pass onto the next generation with pride. With Caroline Russell, I have worked hard for the past five years representing you as a Green London Assembly Member. Even before the crisis, our work with citizens and campaigners exposed huge problems. Our renters are in despair, homelessness is rising, traffic is going up, and women and minorities are harmed every day by prejudice and the criminal justice system. People on the lowest incomes are struggling, and our youth services are being devastated by cuts. Coronavirus has exposed some of the worst gaps in our systems. But these systems can be changed. Things can be different and, as your Green candidates for Mayor and Assembly, we have the plans to do it. ## USE THREE VOTES FOR SIAN BERRY ### AND THE GREEN PARTY ON THURSDAY 6 MAY ## A POLITICIAN WHO GETS THINGS DONE As a London Assembly Member for five years, I have listened and worked with Londoners on the issues that matter to you. * Won a big change in policy from the current Mayor to give residents the power to vote down plans that demolish council homes. * Got the Mayor and Assembly to declare a climate emergency. Greens are needed now to make the new 2030 net zero target a reality. * I have helped reverse deep cuts by winning over £70 million in new funding for youth clubs and services in London. ## GREEN PARTY POLICIES Our policies for London are winning support from people all across the city. ### WE WILL CREATE THE GREENEST CITY IN THE WORLD Only a Green Mayor can be trusted with our future. We will: * Set the right targets to solve the climate and ecological emergency before 2030, and work with all our citizens’ to achieve them. * Protect green spaces, stop using pesticides, improve woods and wetlands across the city, and create new parks and greener streets. * Invest more in green energy and new jobs, with warmer homes and new funding to cut fuel poverty. **READ MORE FROM PAGE 6** ### A CLEAR PLAN TO KEEP LONDON MOVING Greens want to make it easier to get around for everyone. We will: * Reduce traffic and cancel the Silvertown Road Tunnel, investing instead in healthy streets, walking, cycling, better buses and new public transport links. * Flatten fares and create a single zone for tube and rail, just like we have on buses, helping everyone in outer London pay less for travel. * Make all transport in London zero carbon and non-polluting by 2030. **READ MORE FROM PAGE 30** ### FRESH THINKING FOR HOUSING Our ideas will help everyone find a decent, secure home. We will: * Bring more homes under the control of Londoners, with new investment to acquire homes for key workers at a London Living Rent, and more support for co-operative and community-led housing. * Prevent the loss of council housing by giving more residents the power to vote against demolition, and set up a People’s Land Commission so that people in local areas can make their own plans for new homes. * Prevent homelessness by working with renters to improve rights and cancel the rent debts built up during the pandemic. * Rents are too high and making inequality worse. A Green Mayor will not stop pushing the Government until we win the power to set rent controls in London. **READ MORE FROM PAGE 48** ### ACTION FOR A SAFE AND HEALTHY CITY Our goal is to keep everyone in our city safe from harm. We will: * Set clear targets to prevent violence and bring murders down to zero, investing in * real prevention to stop violence against women, and services for young people that help them thrive. * Do more to support good mental health, making it equal to physical health in importance. We will open up more green space and help Londoners connect with each other in their communities. * Make roads truly safe, by cutting speed limits and investing in road policing. * Achieve clean air, with an ultra low emission zone to cover all of London, and work to cut traffic and invest in green buses. **READ MORE FROM PAGE 62** ## A DUTY TO RESPECT EVERYONE’S RIGHTS Greens will support everyone to live their lives free from discrimination. We will: - Support freedom of movement, the rights of EU citizens, and fight to end all hostile environment policies that target migrants and refugees. - Create a city-wide mission to end racism and sexism, support the rights of LGBTIQA+ citizens, young and older Londoners, and break down the barriers faced by disabled Londoners. - Protect civil liberties and push back on police powers. Hold them to account, stop the use of facial recognition, and roll back the increase in stop and search. O READ MORE FROM PAGE 86 ## A PROMISE TO SHARE MY POWER Greens believe in putting power in the hands of the people. We will: - Bring more diverse voices into decision-making, so more Londoners have real power over policies that affect them, including the Mayor’s budget. - Do more to win powers from Government for a direct say over taxes, the NHS, education, criminal justice, housing and environment policies – just like in Scotland and Wales. O READ MORE FROM PAGE 102 ## A MISSION TO TRANSFORM OUR ECONOMY A Green Mayor is the only choice for a real green recovery. We will: - Be champions of our high streets and small businesses, building resilience with affordable rents. - Create green jobs to make, re-use and repair more of the goods and services we need locally. - Support workers with a new London Living Wage at £14 an hour and flexible, family-friendly standards for employers to meet. - Open up opportunities for young people with a trial of a Creative Autonomy Allowance – a regular income to help kickstart careers in business and the arts. O READ MORE FROM PAGE 112 ## CLIMATE Action to stop climate chaos isn’t the priority of the Conservative Government, but we can find hope in our cities in 2021. Across the world, city mayors have often taken the lead when national governments have proved they are not up to the job. We believe in powering local action and working with communities, and a Green Mayor will start by cancelling all the projects from the current Mayor that would make the climate and ecological emergency worse. We will invest in green jobs and transforming our economy, using all the resources we can muster to create new green energy, and cut wasted energy and carbon emissions from our homes, transport and businesses. ### STOP MAKING THINGS WORSE The current Mayor is still pushing policies and plans that will make climate chaos harder to prevent. This is unacceptable. * A Green Mayor will cancel traffic-inducing road schemes, including the Silvertown Road Tunnel and the Croydon Five Ways road plan, diverting the funding to clean transport and better streets. * Greens would oppose all airport expansion in London. The current Mayor is supporting London City Airport to increase flights and backs the expansion of Gatwick Airport. ## WE WILL SET THE RIGHT TARGETS THAT SCIENCE DEMANDS * All our targets - in the London Plan and in all the Mayor’s strategies - will urgently be brought forward to 2030 in line with avoiding the risk of going over a 1.5C rise in global temperatures. * A Green Mayor will set the right targets and review all the statutory strategies to make sure our actions in London are focused on doing everything we can to avert a climate and ecological disaster. * We will change the rules for Mayoral decision-making so that every budget plan and official decision report in City Hall includes an assessment of the impact on climate and ecology, to help reduce our footprint every time we make new policies or spending plans, and so we can be held to account. * A Green Mayor will tell the truth about our impact. The overall carbon impact of decisions and the progress of current policies will be reported in writing every quarter to the Assembly, with dedicated time within the Mayor’s Question Time four times a year for questions about work within the city to stop climate chaos. * We will set up an independent Citizen’s Assembly on the climate and ecological emergency, recruiting a representative group of Londoners to serve for a year at a time on a permanent body, supported by and working with the London. WE WILL CREATE THE GREENEST CITY IN THE WORLD London could be leading the way with our response to the climate and ecological crisis. But no Mayor of our city has yet acted with the real urgency needed. Too many of our homes are cold and damp, our green spaces – so precious to us now – are being built on. And our air, water and habitats are polluted, while we burn too much of our waste and our recycling rates are going in the wrong direction A Green Mayor is the only one you can trust to set the right targets and make the right plans to meet them, working with citizens across the city on this vital mission. For our health and for our future, we need real Green action on climate, green space, nature, waste, and the resources we use. And, crucially, we need to transform our economy and create good green jobs to make, re-use and repair more of our stuff locally. That’s the recovery we want to lead, and we need everyone with us. ## WE ARE FACING A CLIMATE EMERGENCY When the UN’s IPCC special report came out in October 2018, Greens across the country took immediate action. First in Bristol, where Councillor Carla Denyer proposed and passed the first motion in Europe declaring a climate and ecological emergency. Since then, more than 300 elected bodies in the UK have followed her lead, including Parliament. The London Assembly passed a climate emergency motion proposed by Green Assembly Member Caroline Russell in December 2018. ### We must listen to the people on the streets When Extinction Rebellion started their protests in April 2019, the current Mayor told them the city should ‘get back to business as usual’ and, ever since failing to ban the protests, the police have tried to extend their powers. Greens say business as usual is the problem. We support not only the right to peaceful protest across the world, but also policies that will lead to the system change we need to solve the crisis. ### We need to set the right targets The Mayor’s strategies still have climate targets based on becoming a zero-carbon city by 2050. All targets in every policy urgently need to be brought forward to 2030 to avoid the risk of going over a 1.5C rise in global temperatures. Green Assembly Member Caroline Russell has challenged the current Mayor repeatedly about his failure to update his plans and targets to reflect the science. Assembly Environment Committee. The Assembly will be resourced with expert support to examine the Mayor’s policies, hold all the GLA organisations to account, and find and propose new ideas to respond to the crisis. * A Green Mayor will also work with active climate campaigners and citizens’ groups to help plan and support our action to meet climate targets. This Climate Emergency Alliance will be independently run and funded without conditions to advise and hold our work to account. * We will work with all borough councils across London to meet our climate targets, and immediately push all of them to declare a climate emergency and set targets that match those of the Green Mayor in City Hall. We will also encourage and support other public bodies and businesses with guidance to define their own adaptation plans and actions on the climate emergency. * Continued investment in carbon-intensive, fossil fuel industries and climate-damaging activities is unacceptable in the face of the climate emergency. A Green Mayor will take the necessary steps to divest all GLA-controlled investments by 2022. We will support and acknowledge those boroughs already planning to divest their funds and will work with the others in setting and achieving their own divestment objectives. ## A CLEAN ENERGY REVOLUTION * A Green Mayor’s strategic goal will be for 100 per cent renewable energy supply for all the GLA’s operations by 2026 and a zero carbon energy system for the whole city by 2030, including removing any reliance on natural gas or wood burning. This is a hugely ambitious task to achieve, but we can only get to the place science demands by setting the right goals and working towards them in every way we can. * The current Mayor has failed to lead the way – refusing to set up a green energy company owned and run by Londoners, instead opting for a limited model under the wing of a larger supplier. Greens in City Hall will correct this and set up an ambitious independent energy supplier for London, investing in clean, green energy and offering Londoners an ethical, good value alternative to the Big Six to save money on our bills. * All profits from our Energy for Londoners company will be reinvested into energy saving measures for the homes of people in fuel poverty, which will be backed up by borrowing and investment directly from the GLA budget. * Working with Energy for Londoners we will ensure people have access to useful advice, services to use and best practice actions they can take to save money on essential bills such as electricity, water and heating. * Community energy projects in London are not receiving the support and funding # RETHINK THE LONDON PLAN London’s strategic planning policies have recently been updated. Greens have worked throughout the process of drafting the London Plan and the examination by the Planning Inspectorate to win good new policies for the climate, including: - Strong new wording that green energy now needs to be ‘maximised’ in developments. - The social and educational value of green spaces is now recognised. - Protection for real ‘ecological corridors’ not just green spaces. - Requiring a net biodiversity gain from new developments. - The cooling properties of trees and green spaces in a warming city are included. - New water management requirements in flood risk areas. - A higher green transport mode share target for central London. - Embodied carbon included for the first time, with a requirement to measure the whole life-cycle carbon impact of development. However, there is much more that our planning policies could do, and many of our proposals have not been taken up, in addition to new climate targets. A Green Mayor will put this right, review the London Plan and bring in new policies for the climate and communities: - Protection for allotments extended to urban farms and community food growing spaces, something the current Mayor has so far ignored. - The list of planned transport schemes still includes dangerous, traffic-generating new road crossing schemes in east London, like the Silvertown Tunnel, which will be cancelled and removed - Aviation policies that oppose all airport expansion in London and the South East, not just Heathrow, and make plans for the area around City Airport to become a Mayoral Development Corporation to develop a new quarter for the city in place of this airport. - We will expand the embodied carbon policies in planning rules to specifically preference re-use and refurbishment over demolition and set new standards and incentives so embodied carbon is reduced. Throughout all this we’ve argued for a better process, asking the Mayor to make the plans citizen-led and inclusive, with a formal Statement of Community Involvement, as put forward by the organisation Just Space, which has helped many hundreds of Londoners to engage with the process. In our review of the London Plan, we will make greater citizen involvement a priority from the start. they should. We will put London at the forefront of community energy, with a target to increase capacity at least 25-fold by 2024 with support from Energy for Londoners, improved planning policies and direct funding from City Hall. This will support our zero carbon energy goal and our additional target of at least 1 GW of solar energy capacity in London by 2030. * A Green Mayor will call on the Government to stop the practice of routing nuclear waste trains through London. As the most dangerous freight carried on the railways, it is unacceptable for highly radioactive nuclear fuel rods to be transported through densely populated areas. ## A GREEN NEW DEAL FOR HOMES Our fresh thinking on housing will ensure that all Londoners have a warm home that’s cheap to run, thanks to investment in insulation and clean energy. * A Green Mayor will take immediate action to reduce energy use in homes and cut fuel poverty, using London’s own resources, and would campaign with other city mayors to push the Government to invest in a huge programme of energy-saving across the country. * The Green budget amendment for the GLA in 2020 was able to deliver a tripling of the current Mayor’s plans for greener homes, simply by leveraging borrowing from expected savings to the energy costs on the GLA’s own estate. With a Green Mayor, this approach will be extended across London to create a Green New Deal that multiplies by an order of magnitude the energy saving investment in London’s housing stock. * We will work in partnership with councils, pension funds and housing associations to amplify our Green New Deal investment fund further and create a massive new level of investment for our homes. It would focus investment initially on council and housing association homes, but also seek to bring private landlords and homeowners into the scheme as it matures. * Cutting fuel poverty, poorly heated and damp homes will be the focus for who benefits from our programmes for energy saving, with every Londoner benefiting by 2030. We will set up an immediate insulation and ventilation taskforce to deal with cold damp homes, and cut the number of these by at least a third by 2024 – going faster if more funding can be obtained. * A Green Mayor will campaign hard for Government to put a zero carbon new home standard in place by 2023 at the latest. * A Green Mayor will write new planning rules for London to make it easier to apply to work on insulation and retrofit projects for whole streets at once. * Within City Hall we will set up a team of experts who can be employed by councils ## THE CARBON IN OUR STUFF The carbon emissions involved in creating the things we use and consume every day are a huge gap in other parties’ policies. We need bold new plans and strategies if we are to become truly carbon neutral in time to avert climate chaos. Our policies to cut embodied carbon include: * We will correct the gap in our waste targets by setting a goal to reduce the baseline amount of waste produced, not just set recycling targets in percentage terms. * A Green Mayor will also expand the embodied carbon policies in planning rules to preference re-using buildings and avoiding demolition as a principle. This is a big gap in London’s carbon policies so far, which is now being picked up by a strong retrofit campaign by architects. * Reducing the amount of resources we produce and waste means getting business on board with setting targets of their own, and we would aim for 100 of the biggest businesses in London to have set targets to reduce their own ‘stuff turnover’ by the end of our first year in City Hall. * Our business and high street improvement policies will also focus on promoting and supporting enterprises and community organisations that help people to re-use, re-sell and repair existing goods. ## PREPARING FOR CLIMATE RISKS ### CLIMATE CHANGE RISKS FOR LONDON A REVIEW OF EVIDENCE UNDER 1.5°C AND DIFFERENT WARMING SCENARIOS A report on behalf of Caroline Russell AM City Hall Greens Green London Assembly Member Caroline Russell commissioned research in 2019 to show the risks to London from climate change. For the first time, her evidence gave an insight of what life will be like in London if we reach 1.5 degrees warming – even hotter heatwaves than in recent summers, higher chances of flooding for thousands of homes and hundreds of schools, and extreme strain on emergency services. Key findings from Caroline’s report, Climate change risks for London, include: - Two thirds of London flats could experience overheating (temperature over 28°C) by 2030. - For every 1°C increase over 20°C ambulance call outs increase by 1 per cent. - In the most vulnerable districts in London, the odds of dying from cardiorespiratory causes increased by more than 10 percent for every 1°C increase in temperature. - 23 stations on the London Underground Network are at significant risk of flooding. The Northern and Central lines have the most stations at risk. - 643 schools are at risk from a 1 in 30 year flood (this is considered high risk) - An increase of up to 40 per cent in water supply is needed by 2040 in order to meet the water deficit in London and the south east. In 2019, London saw several incidents that show these risks are very real and immediate. Caroline found that 137 tube stations suffered flooding-related disruption during just one bout of exceptional rainfall. Caroline says: “These events are the reality we are living in now, and as our climate emergency continues, they will only become more and more common. “The current Mayor’s failure to do timely research on the impact of extreme heat to places like schools and workplaces means that we aren’t yet properly prepared.” - A Green Mayor will plug the gaps in our knowledge about how badly our city will be affected by climate change, and will review and make new plans to protect people from impacts such as extreme heat, flooding and a secure water supply during droughts. - We will create a standing scientific advisory group for the GLA, which will assist the Assembly in scrutiny independently assess and propose policy to the Mayor to help avoid and deal with climate risks. - Our planning policies will prioritise water security; focusing to reduce flooding of homes and businesses, protect London’s water supplies and allow the aquifers beneath our soil to recharge whilst preventing the spread of pollution from roads and landfill sites. that are struggling to properly staff energy standards inspections in private rented housing. We will compile data on the results of these inspections and report to councils on their performance and how they compare to others. ## OUR AVIATION ACTION PLAN Greens have led the opposition to airport expansion in the Assembly, pushing the current Mayor not just to oppose Heathrow Airport’s third runway but also holding him to account over his support for City Airport and Gatwick expansion. ► We will always oppose any expansion of aviation in London and will plan to reduce flights dramatically in line with climate goals. ► A Green Mayor will support workers at Heathrow and in surrounding businesses that depend on the airport with a ‘just transition’ policy to create opportunities and training for quality jobs in the local communities as flying is reduced. This will be done through targeted Green New Deal investments in industries and job markets that can sustainably offer high-quality employment opportunities in areas such as renewable energy, housing stock improvements, education and community support. ► We have worked with and will continue to support the campaigns against aircraft noise across London, aiming to limit early morning and late night flights, and oppose the concentrated flight paths that make life a misery for people in the worst affected parts of the city. ► When we first proposed to target the most frequent flyers through a Frequent Flyer Levy, the Mayor and Labour Assembly Members laughed. Now this policy is gaining support from across the political spectrum. A Green Mayor will continue to lead the way and push for innovative ways to cap flying through Government policies, without affecting those who fly the least already. ► In 2016, Sian Berry proposed closing City Airport to free up a huge area for housing and create a new quarter for London. This inspiring policy and new vision for the east of the city caught the imagination of Londoners, and in this election we will push once again for the owners to rethink the use of their land. ## ENVIRONMENT Greens in City Hall have been working for twenty years to bring the urgent attention needed to the ecological and climate emergency. From our work to establish the Green Grid and save the Wildlife Crime Unit to our research exposing the loss of front gardens, time and again Greens have stepped in when other parties have failed. As chair of the Environment Committee for the past three years, Green Assembly Member Caroline Russell has focused new thinking on issues as diverse as unflushable plastics in period products, aircraft noise, tube dust risks, and farming in the Green Belt. A Green Mayor will protect and link up nature in a true ecological network. We will make sure our citizens, particularly our children, have access to the health and education benefits of nature, and protect all London’s people, plants and animals from chemical, light and noise pollution. A Green Mayor will set the right environment targets, including an overall waste reduction goal that will underpin new work and policies to reduce resource use in our economy, cut down on demolition in favour of refurbishment, and support new re-use and repair businesses. Greens are the only ones who truly get this, and our policies for a greener, cleaner London are integrated, comprehensive and long overdue. ## OUR ECOLOGICAL EMERGENCY ► Ecology in London is in crisis and needs to be supported across all areas of policy. To make this possible we must properly establish and nurture a core network of ecological corridors, both at a strategic and local level. Greens in London have been influencing local and neighbourhood plans to protect existing green corridors but, across the city, far too many planning applications are allowed that cut through these networks and cut off plant and animal species from places to live, and the opportunity to migrate, breed and thrive. ► A Green Mayor will create a new, finer grained Green Grid strategy, working with and through the National Park City initiative to involve local ecology and wildlife groups and guardians, friends of green spaces and local communities in identifying and improving local ecological assets and corridors. ► Our work on ecological corridors will be paired with increased support for network building between boroughs to make sure these links cross borough boundaries, and to increase the number and quality of green spaces, and parks. We will share clear advice on how to achieve Green Flag Award status for parks, with a target set to increase these awards in London. ► We will also deliver clearer planning and strategic protections for smaller green spaces that form key parts of the network, such as preserving the links to and between rows of back gardens, which are neglected in current mapping and plans. ► In the development of the new London Plan, Green Assembly Members have worked hard to introduce planning policies that require net biodiversity gain from new developments, including habitats for threatened species such as bats, sparrows, hedgehogs, swifts, bees and pollinating insects. However, the current Mayor’s approach does not do enough to preserve existing biodiversity and the requirement for an overall ‘urban greening factor’ to be achieved is too general. We will strengthen these policies, and specific requirements for individual key species will be introduced. # GOLD PLATE # THE GREEN BELT Work by Greens on the London Assembly has shown there is a huge potential for London’s Green Belt land to be used for the benefit of London’s people, nature, ecology, flood protection, energy and food production. Green Assembly Member Caroline Russell has worked on these policies in the Assembly and says: “The Green Belt is under threat like never before. It needs a plan for improvement and stronger protections.” A fifth of London is protected as Green Belt land. It is our ‘city limits’, preventing urban sprawl, providing a home for wildlife, a place to visit and relax, as well as farms that grow food. Established over 70 years ago, London’s Green Belt is under threat. Only seven per cent of the Metropolitan Green Belt is within the GLA’s area but we believe it is our duty to take a lead from City Hall to improve and protect it. There is currently no plan for our Green Belt, or to work with surrounding councils to improve and protect it. Only a Green Mayor will have the true leadership and vision to get this right. - A Green Mayor will bring together councils, farmers, landowners, local residents, wildlife, ecology, land management and flooding experts, water companies, green energy providers and transport providers, including Transport for London, to make a comprehensive new strategy to revitalise London’s Green Belt. - We will improve access, linking up existing public Rights of Way, creating new footpaths, promoting visits through Transport for London, and improve landscapes and engage with NGOs and community groups to find new ways to enjoy and promote sports and leisure activities. - Sites of importance for nature conservation make up 44 per cent of the Green Belt, but these sites need to be better connected in networks and green corridors. We will bring together everyone working in the Green Belt to make a new plan for nature. - We will champion ten new nature- friendly farms on existing agricultural land and other appropriate sites in the urban fringe. This can integrate increased tree cover fruit and other trees that can be used for human consumption and ensure no net loss of high grade farmland. - Increasing food production close to London, particularly fruit and vegetables would improve food security. There are more than 200 existing farms in the Green Belt, and our strategy will help them diversify, farm more sustainably, improve and conserve the soil and provide more of the food London needs. - We will support farmers and growers to get longer tenancies and access to London’s customers and businesses, from farmers’ markets and community group box schemes to supermarkets. - Locally grown fruit and vegetables can create 1000s of London Living wage employment opportunities, improve food security and support the local economy. - The Green Belt can play a useful part in cutting carbon and providing London with sustainable energy sources. Through our green energy company, we’d work to bring new community energy projects to the Green Belt to support our zero carbon energy goal and our additional target of 1GW of solar power capacity in London by 2030. - Main roads and motorways are a real barrier to nature, and millions in green road funding lies unspent by Highways England. We will work with Highways England, councils and community groups to find places for green bridges across motorways and roads around London to help link up nature across our boundaries. - To help meet climate targets, we need to rewild and reforest large areas of land. Only 16 per cent of London’s Green Belt is covered by woodland, and our strategy would aim to create new woods on any land not needed for farms and energy, working in tandem where possible, through agroforestry. - A Green Mayor will immediately stop the use of all chemical pesticides and herbicides, including glyphosate, from use on GLA-controlled land. We would work to increase the number of councils adopting the same policy for public spaces, footpaths and estates, and to remove these chemicals from garden centres and retailers in the city. This will be combined with a focused education, equipment and skill-sharing programme for borough councils, housing associations and domestic gardeners on effective alternatives, including approaches that manage spaces to be less tended in order to reduce the need for plant management of any kind. We will set a target for zero glyphosate use within London within two years. - Our planning policies will oppose all development that would damage ancient woodlands and veteran trees, based on their unique value for the climate and ecology. Architects and developers should regard these assets as a bottom line for preservation and design schemes that avoid ever cutting down or damaging them. - Light and noise pollution are also damaging to our quality of life and to wildlife. We will develop and promote best practice for street and development lighting design to reduce light pollution and preserve and extend dark sky areas. - We will build upon work by campaigners showing the level of noise inside many of our parks, and fund the creation of at least 100 ‘tranquil areas’ in green spaces, using improved noise shielding in landscaping and removing and reducing traffic around and within existing parks. - A healthy population of bees and other pollinators is critically important to London’s ecology, and Greens will make sure all parks and green spaces, including roadside planters, verges, and our new bee-friendly bus stop roofs, support bees with wildflowers and suitable planting. - We will bring in new planning and transport policies (including our bid for London to fully control traffic and parking laws) to make it easier for councils and community groups to create ‘parklets’ in place of car parking and at places where streets are closed to through traffic. - A Green Mayor and Assembly Members will continue to ensure adequate resources for the Metropolitan Police Wildlife Crime Unit and establish a Habitat Crime Unit to tackle more serious and organised wildlife crimes up to and including ecocide; this would also include the prevention and investigation of fly- tipping on farmland, country lanes and in wildlife sites within London. ## OUR GREEN AND BLUE INFRASTRUCTURE - A Green Mayor will recognise the vital importance of strategic policies for green and blue infrastructure in tackling the climate emergency, and will set an overall target for London’s green and blue spaces to exceed 50 per cent by 2024, and a further target for overall green and blue cover, including green roofs and new wetlands, to reach 55 per cent or more by 2030. - The National Park City initiative has proved to be a hugely successful way to link up a range of policy areas and put weight behind a whole-city strategy to value our green building blocks and infrastructure. The work done by the campaign in mapping and linking the community assets and groups working on these issues has been invaluable, and includes transport, heritage, education and business initiatives, in addition to core values supporting wellbeing and nature. A Green Mayor will therefore boost support for National Park City work, increase its promotion (including through our new advertising policies on public transport) and will host gatherings for the initiative in City Hall to celebrate every season. - We also commit to back the call from 20 environmental groups for the next Mayor to create ten new district level parks in areas of deficiency of access to green spaces, and will support the development of new ‘regional park’ areas and strategies to mirror the work already done in the Lea Valley, focused again on river improvements and corridors based on water ecology, such as the Wandle Valley, Brent River Park, Dollis Valley Green Walk and the Quaggy River Park. - To help preserve and get more green spaces into community hands, we will support local communities in designating the open spaces and places for nature they value as Assets of Community Value, which gives them the right to bid when an asset comes up for sale, and we will campaign for a Community Right to Buy to strengthen these rights and protections. - To help local communities improve and create new green spaces in their areas, we will at least double the grants available from the Green City Fund, and target and promote these to more disadvantaged areas and excluded groups, with additional staff and resources to make sure this happens. - Our planning policies will prioritise water security; focusing to reduce flooding of homes and businesses, protect London’s water supplies and allow the aquifers beneath our soil to recharge while preventing the spread of pollution from roads and landfill sites. - A Green Mayor will ensure no development leads to the net loss of permeable land or water storage capacity. We will improve streetscapes and water permeability using transport funding to support sustainable urban drainage, and step up work to restore and re-wild London’s rivers and other historic and biodiverse habitats. - We will aim to cut water pollution and supply pipe leakage by working with Thames Water, boroughs and the Environment Agency to improve responses to large scale pipe failures, and coordinate action to reduce water pollution from road run-off. * We will ensure that any green space protection gaps in the current London Plan are checked and amended, and create at least ten major new schemes on GLA controlled land that showcase the health, sustainability and nature benefits of redeveloping land previously devoted to car use, such as car parks, or by reducing main road widths. * We pledge to increase tree canopy cover sensitively and sustainably by at least 20 percent by 2030, including through: - large scale woodland creation in the Green Belt - at least 100 new street tree schemes - growing more woodlands and trees in public parks and green spaces - updating council strategies and work- ing with landowners. ## GREEN SPACES FOR HEALTH AND WELLBEING * Green proposals for the London Plan successfully won the inclusion of education as well as wellbeing as benefits to be considered when green spaces are threatened. This will help more local communities to defend green spaces and parks from development. To further cement these benefits into policy, we will establish a London-wide ‘green living’ supportive educational and social prescribing programme for all ages, to connect people with local green and blue spaces. * A Green Mayor will work with education authorities to enable a comprehensive environmental education programme within schools, including support for outdoor Forest Schools and Natural History curriculum support. * We will develop a strategic plan to expand the Walk London network, with at least six new high-quality green walking routes that link green spaces to bring nature closer to people, and review the current footpath strategy. These plans reflect the strategies to make London’s streets safer, more pleasant to use and to support people in engaging holistically with their local environment. * We will double the funding currently available through the Greener City Fund for community green space projects, with a specific programme for schools to connect children with nature, and review other funding streams to ensure they deliver beneficial climate, nature and health outcomes. * We will work to ensure that sufficient resources are provided to enable housing associations to effectively deliver plans set out in green infrastructure strategies, and provide good quality green space that links well with the surrounding environment, highlighting the importance of open space for residents of social housing. We will support initiatives enabling residents and landlords to provide space for producing food and work with social landlords. ## OUR RECYCLING POSTCODE LOTTERY Does your local borough council recycle these everyday items? * plastic buckets * crisp packets * aluminium foil * black plastic food containers * biro pens * bike tyres * Tetra Paks Green Assembly Member Caroline Russell asked every council in London the same question in January 2020 and uncovered London’s confusing recycling postcode lottery. Her research found that none of the London boroughs was able to consistently recycle a list of seven common household items, and that a lack of London-wide oversight means that Londoners are left confused as recycling rules vary from one borough to the next. Caroline says: “We know people are desperately concerned about their impact on our environment, from the new awareness around single-use plastics to fast fashion. But it is too hard to know what to do with your rubbish in London. “When boroughs provide no clarity on what can be recycled, where, and in what condition, it is no wonder that London’s waste mountain keeps growing.” * A Green Mayor will campaign hard to get rid of London’s recycling postcode lottery, working with councils to build more consistency into their services, and demanding the power from Government to take more control of how London’s waste is handled. * A Green Mayor will also support the target set by 20 environmental groups to support the creation of a minimum of 150 new community orchards, providing healthy, diverse and resilient green spaces for residents. * We will also support initiatives to create community-led allotments, enabling residents to interact with and experience nature as well as providing access to locally grown fruit and vegetables. ## WASTE – SET THE RIGHT TARGETS * With a Green Mayor, London’s target will be to become a true zero-waste city by 2030, with no need to rely on incineration to avoid landfill waste. * A Green Mayor will set a new, ambitious primary waste reduction target that will underpin new work and policies to reduce the ‘stuff turnover’ in our city’s economy. This target will apply to the total ‘arisings’ of waste material produced, not just to recycling or ‘residual’ waste that is incinerated or sent to landfill. * Our new waste reduction target, with an effective suite of policies, will mean we will need no new incinerators to meet our statutory target to cut landfill waste. * Evidence shows that incinerators, even modern plants, create huge air pollution risks for people living around them, as well as creating new incentives and markets for waste, including materials based on fossil fuels, and depressing recycling levels. Greens in London have helped lead campaigns against new incinerators and are opposing those proposed in Edmonton and Belvedere. We will continue to oppose and protest against all new incineration capacity within London. * A Green Mayor will work with boroughs and businesses to set individual targets for waste reduction in their own operations and across their areas, and develop new ways to monitor progress, publishing data showing the achievements and performance of boroughs each year, and showcasing good practice. ## REDUCING ‘STUFF TURNOVER’ To meet our waste reduction targets and become carbon neutral before it is too late, we need to consider the carbon embodied in the materials we use, and cut down dramatically on the throughput of resources in London. A change in the whole character of our economy is needed, where every business and public body aims to eliminate unnecessary resource use, helping to cut down on the ‘stuff turnover’ of all that we do in the city, from the buildings we construct to the products we use in our daily lives. A Green Mayor’s new waste reduction target will underpin a wide range of new policies. ## A CITY-WIDE STRATEGY FOR RE-USE AND REPAIR * A Green Mayor will publish a new waste reduction strategy, including a comprehensive set of policies to increase reduction, reuse and repair. Work will include gathering and promoting comprehensive information on where Londoners can find pre-owned goods, get items repaired or maintained, and sell or donate used items. * Working with campaigners, we will create a new fund to support councils and local enterprises to use empty high street shops and council buildings (including temporary use) to provide a repair centre on every high street. The fund will also support universities and colleges to create reuse and repair workshops. * The fund will also support the establishment of a ‘library of things’ in every borough, where residents can borrow infrequently needed household items, such as power tools, sewing machines, specialist cooking, cleaning and decorating products, electronics, camping equipment and luggage. * Using GLA land or developer requirements for a major site, a Green Mayor will help found a London Repair Academy, which will be a London-wide resource, hub and educational establishment for training and information on repair skills and training on how to run these kinds of social enterprises. * We will also campaign for a comprehensive Right to Repair that will require manufacturers to keep goods operational for years after purchase and encourage repair and reuse. GLA procurement scoring will be reviewed to focus on purchasing goods and equipment that can be repaired and are not designed to become obsolete within a few years. * Reducing the amount of resources we produce and waste means getting business on board with setting targets of their own, and we would aim for 100 of the biggest businesses in London to have set targets to reduce their own ‘stuff turnover’ by the end of our first year in City Hall. * From a resource perspective as well as meeting climate targets, it is much better to refit and refurbish buildings than to demolish them, which also causes waste, pollution and social problems. Our priority will always be to protect the environment, people and future generations, and to protect the social cohesion of an existing neighbourhood. * A Green Mayor will expand the embodied carbon policies in planning rules to preference re-using buildings and avoiding demolition as a principle. This is a big gap in London’s carbon policies so far, which is now being picked up by a strong retrofit campaign by architects. * We will encourage builders to adopt a more ‘naked homes’ or bespoke, buyer-led approach to fitting out new homes, so that new bathrooms, kitchens, doors and other fittings in new build homes are not installed as standard only to be quickly removed by new owners to fit their own styles. ## ELIMINATE SINGLE-USE PLASTICS * A Green Mayor will lobby the Government to tighten up all product and packaging regulations to remove more single-use plastic items at source with better regulation, and to require manufacturers to use a certain percentage of recycled and biodegradable content in any unavoidable plastic packaging. We will also work to make sure items labelled ‘compostable’ meet minimum standards. * The current Mayor has introduced a number of distinctive water refill fountains, which have helped reduce single-use plastic bottles by a small fraction. A Green Mayor will expand this network, and include new designs that allow for direct drinking as well as bottle refills, and designs that are more suitable for parks and heritage areas. * We will guarantee free drinking water in all GLA-provided public toilets, including the new provision we are funding in Transport for London tube and rail stations. ## CUT DOWN ON FOOD WASTE * A Green Mayor will encourage councils to include the reduction of food waste in local climate action plans, in line with Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 12.3 which calls for a 50 per cent reduction in food waste from farm to fork. * We will work with councils and waste disposal authorities to ensure no organic waste goes to landfill or incineration by 2030. * We will promote food redistribution initiatives. Remaining surplus food will be used for animal feed, community composting or sent for anaerobic digestion rather than being incinerated. * We will campaign for powers for the Mayor to roll out a consistent set of recycling services across London boroughs, and push boroughs to work on common standards and information, so that every home in London has a standardised service for recyclables and food waste collection every week. * We will optimise opportunities for creating energy from food waste, including sending public-sector food waste and parks waste to anaerobic digesters, and funding pilot projects for up-to-date compost and waste technologies. ## EMBODIED CARBON IN BUILDINGS AND HOMES * A Green Mayor will put together comprehensive policies to cut down on the carbon impact of material turnover in new and refurbished buildings. We will expand the embodied carbon policies in planning rules to specifically preference re-use and refurbishment over demolition, and set new standards and incentives so that embodied carbon is reduced not just reported. * We will require whole-life carbon emissions impact to be assessed on completion of buildings not just at the application stage. To make these assessments easier, the GLA will create a database of authenticated data on supply chain emissions in the building sector. * We will campaign for Government to include these rules and standards in its own policies and push hard for VAT on repair and green refurbishments to be cut at a national level. * As part of new planning conditions, a Green Mayor will ensure that, in every application, an assessment of options compared on a whole-life carbon basis has been carried out. Where demolition takes place, we will introduce a requirement for diversion of waste from landfill and demonstration that demolished fabric is kept at its highest possible use-value, in line with circular economy principles. * For councils, housing associations, community organisations and co-operatives who own and run buildings, we will offer advice and guidance from City Hall on how to not only avoid demolition but refit, extend and refurbish existing homes to reduce energy use and carbon emissions, developing case studies, best practice and advice services. * We will also introduce policies to enable and incentivise the use of lower carbon building materials, including safe timber, cement alternatives, recycled steel and remanufactured building materials, and to reduce the volume of material used in new buildings. * Offsite construction methods can be more efficient in the use and re-use of materials and can make safe and efficient use of timber. We will work with landowners and companies to create at least one facility for the construction of modular building construction that exemplifies circular economy practices within London by 2024. * Working with both small and large construction companies, we will create a London-wide database of upcoming and available materials for re-use in buildings, helping to create new businesses that store and provide these materials if needed. ANIMAL WELFARE IN LONDON wild animals as new national laws now require. ` Our new advertising policies for Transport for London will help people choose a ` A Green Mayor and Assembly Members diet based more on sustainably grown ` We will make sure all purchasing across will continue to ensure adequate plant products and avoid mass-produced the GLA group of organisations conforms resources for the Metropolitan Police animal products that take little account to strict ethical rules, including non­- Wildlife Crime Unit, supporting the of health and animal welfare. animal tested cleaning products. investigation and detection of cruel and ` We will promote a cruelty­-free economy ecologically damaging trades in wild ` We will engage with universities and the and cruelty-­free practices, and advocate animals and animal products. wider science and knowledge sectors for clear food labelling on welfare to make London a world centre for non ` We will strongly resist calls for any cull of practices, and for especially and ­animal biomedical research. We will urban foxes and other animal populations inherently cruel foods such as pâté de encourage all establishments in London posing a concern. We will discourage fois gras to be banned. that conduct research using animals growth in numbers – for example, to publicly commit to replacing animal ` We will campaign to end London’s fur we will work to get fast food waste experiments with humane alternatives, trade, and push for London Fashion off the streets by making shops take reducing animal numbers and suffering Week to remain free of fur, using the more responsibility, and use any new and improving animal welfare. GLA’s funding of the event as a lever to waste powers and strategies for more persuade designers to avoid this horrific consistent recycling to make sure street ` We will lead the way in making London trade. We will also campaign for more bins and waste containers provided to a vegetarian and vegan-friendly city, councils to follow Islington’s lead in households are secure against fox and increasing the availability of plant-based banning fur sales in its area. seagull scavenging. options on menus wherever we have an influence. We will reduce the use | See MORE ABOUT our ethical advertising ` We will ensure that the rules around of meat and dairy produce in catering policies IN THE CHAPTER A MISSION TO puppy selling, as set out in ‘Lucy’s Law,’ procurement decisions across the GLA, TRANSFORM OUR ECONOMY are properly enforced and ensure action influencing the wider London catering is taken against people selling animals industry. illegally. ` Animal welfare will remain a concern ` We will support the rights of renters to whenever meat, milk or eggs are used, keep pets and work to expand school and we will bring in policies across the and community-based education GLA for the use of only organic, higher programmes on responsible pet welfare products. We will conduct ownership. research in City Hall to monitor and ` We will only use humane pest control report on which of London’s schools, methods where animal populations are hospitals and prisons offer healthy controlled on GLA property. vegetarian and vegan options, and offer ` A Green Mayor will lobby boroughs, the advice and support to increase these Royal Parks and other landowners to options and reduce meat consumption ban any animal circuses, not just for across the public sector. 28 MANIFESTO for a new start LONDON GREEN PARTY 2021 29 **A CLEAR PLAN** **TO KEEP** **LONDON MOVING** Greens approach transport using rational, commonsense principles. We prioritise the healthiest, safest, most efficient ways to get around. Our transport policies mean comprehensive walking, cycling and green public transport projects would get new investment, while the current Mayor’s plans that will make traffic and pollution worse will be cancelled. We will set bold targets to reduce traffic, and shift the balance of paying for our transport budget away from people who take public transport. We need fairer, smarter road charges, and truly fairer fares, flattening the fare zone system and reducing costs for people in outer London. And we will make streets and transport safer and more accessible for Londoners, with more enforcement of the rules of the road, more step-free stations, better bus stops and more toilets in our underground system. Only a Green Mayor and more Assembly Members can be trusted to keep London moving. ## OUR TRANSPORT AND CLIMATE GOALS * A Green Mayor will set a goal for London’s overall traffic miles to reduce by 40 per cent by 2026 and 60 per cent by 2030, and we will achieve this with a comprehensive set of policies that will: * improve city planning and aim for access to services within 15 minutes locally on foot, * make streets safe and accessible for children, older and disabled people to walk, wheelchair or cycle, * improve public transport and reduce fares, and * charge for driving in the city at a fair rate. * We will also bring forward the current Mayor’s target for at least 80 per cent of journeys to be made by walking, cycling or public transport by eleven years, from 2041 to 2030. * Along with our climate policies and support for zero-emission vehicles, our goal to reduce traffic miles will contribute to our overall city-wide climate emergency target to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2030. * We believe that London can achieve net zero by 2030 for the transport sector using powers the GLA and Mayor currently hold, and a Green Mayor will set a target to achieve this. ## FEWER CARS AND ONLY CLEAN VEHICLES * The current Mayor’s ultra low emission zone (ULEZ) plans for 2021 only extend to the north and south circular roads. A Green Mayor will expand the ULEZ to cover the whole of London by October 2022. This option was considered by Transport for London, but was not included in the public consultation, so we would act immediately to reconsult Londoners on a wider scheme to bring clean air to the whole of London as quickly as possible. * By 2023, we aim to replace the current Mayor’s ULEZ scheme which merely encourages less polluting cars with a smarter, fairer, privacy-friendly road-pricing plan, which will reduce miles driven as well as cleaning up vehicles. * Whatever engine they have inside, all kinds of motor vehicles create deadly particle pollution from tyre and road wear, which is why a Green Mayor will set an overall target for reducing traffic. * Our new plans will include a clear direction of travel for higher standards that would progressively raise the bar for vehicles in London in stronger steps, so that every diesel vehicle and any vehicle without zero tailpipe emissions will be effectively prohibited from driving in London by 2030. * While we want Londoners to walk, cycle and use public transport, we realise there will always be some essential car and van journeys. These vehicles should be electric, with zero exhaust emissions. The provision of electric vehicle charging points is a strategic issue for London and previous Mayors have all failed to step up and make sure the network grows as quickly as it should. A Green Mayor will bring new leadership to make a full strategic plan and introduce new funding and support for councils and energy companies to rapidly roll out a full network of fast, good value charging points. ## HOW WE WILL CUT TRAFFIC IN LONDON * A Green Mayor will cancel road projects that will make traffic worse. The current Mayor has signed the contract for the Silvertown Road Tunnel, despite a huge campaign for him not to place this burden on the next Mayor. If cancellation costs are too high, we will convert it to run only for buses and cycling not for private cars, in order to avoid inducing new traffic in surrounding boroughs. * Through devolution discussions with the Government, we will demand that funds already paid by London’s drivers are given to London. We will press for a share of the Roads Fund (Vehicle Excise Duty hypothecated to fund Highways England), and a share of fuel duty. * A levy on workplace parking spaces to reduce car commuting in London was proposed in detail by Sian Berry in her campaign to be Mayor in 2016. The current Mayor has only just started to look at this policy with some borough councils, but we will start work straight away on developing a London-wide scheme. * Councils and community groups will be empowered and funded to develop low traffic neighbourhoods, where children, older and disabled people can confidently venture onto the streets outside of their homes. People on foot, and those using micro-mobility devices such as wheelchairs, scooters and cycles will be able to circulate freely. Access will be maintained to all addresses by emergency services, delivery and trades vehicles and the residents’ own cars, but through traffic will cease. This programme will be supported by transferring funds from road schemes, and borrowing against new revenues and devolved funding streams. * Alongside low traffic neighbourhoods, we will invest in measures to make main roads less hostile to people walking, wheeling, cycling and scooting. We will begin a program of upgrading pavements to be level and wide enough for social distancing. We will provide more crossing points with dropped kerbs and tactile paving and ensure they are accessible for people with wheeled mobility aids such as rollators, and buggies – preferably with raised crossings at side roads, bus stop bypasses and safe bike lanes. * As revenue streams dependent on petrol and diesel vehicles will decrease with these being phased out, we will bring in a new fair, smart system of road charging that rewards people who don’t drive in central London and who drive outside of busy times, which will start consultation in 2021 and be implemented before 2023. This will be fair and privacy-friendly for drivers, with charges based on the distance driven, vehicle emissions, time of day and location, with the cost able to be shared between everyone in the vehicle to encourage car sharing. This scheme will cover all of London and enforce the emissions limits set out in our other policies. * In the interim, we will bring in an increase in the current congestion charge to a level similar to the rise seen in bus fares since 2010. * We will make it a condition for boroughs to receive funding for walking and cycling measures, that controlled parking schemes, organised to reduce in-borough car trips, are in place across the borough to protect residents from local commuter car journeys, and ensure there is a programme of reducing on-street parking spaces to allow for parklets and space for bike lanes and bus priority schemes. * Alongside campaign groups working on active travel, accessibility and health, a Green Mayor will lobby the Crown Estate Paving Commission to build the case for traffic removal from all the Royal Parks in London. * To reach our traffic reduction target, business action would also be vital. A Green Mayor will aim to get business and logistics firms on the same mission, reducing traffic miles on behalf of all of us, particularly when delivering our goods and services. Under our new smart, fair road-charging scheme, businesses would have a real incentive to reduce miles driven, use vehicles more efficiently and invest in e-cargo bike solutions. * A central London zone, some residential areas and key town centres across London, will be set to be permanently free of all private car journeys by 2030, and a programme of car free streets, days and weeks will begin immediately to demonstrate the benefits and the best areas for these zones. * **SEE MORE ABOUT OUR PLANTS FOR FREIGHT** ON PAGE 40 ## SMARTER TRAVEL CHOICES: LONDON ON A MISSION * A Green Mayor will work with Transport for London and London boroughs to bring in a comprehensive smarter travel choices programme. This would be comparable to the efforts made in the run up to the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games to bring about travel behaviour change and free up space on the road and public transport network. The Olympic efforts aimed to reduce demand at peak times by 30 per cent, but on average 35 per cent of people changed the way they travelled on weekdays thanks to the campaign, with up to 40 per cent doing so on key weekends, and overall traffic miles on roads were reduced by 15 per cent. * Comprehensive information and promotion would help and encourage Londoners to reduce, re-time, re-mode and re-route their journeys to help us reach our target for traffic reduction, clean the air and reduce overcrowding on public transport at peak times. * We will also work hard to build smart transport planning into places we visit, like workplaces, hospitals, schools, universities, football stadiums, theatres, festivals and large events when they resume. * We will work with NHS bodies to come up with hospital travel plans that reduce the need for private car journeys. ## FAIRER FARES WITH ONE ZONE Travelcards and weekly caps to travel to central London cost people in outer boroughs much more, and Greens are committed to eliminating this inequality between inner and outer London. The current Mayor’s ‘fare freeze’ has only applied to single journeys – not the travelcards and weekly contactless caps that working people depend upon. Sian Berry is the only candidate for Mayor pledging to flatten the fare structure and bring down outer London fares. She will reduce cost differences between zones, and create one single fare zone for all of London within two Mayoral terms. There has been a flat fare on London buses since 2004, but the fare zone structure has not changed since the early 1990s. Using the weekly travelcard, which costs the same as the cap on pay-as-you-go fares, the total annual cost of travel into central London from Zone 6 is now £3,114. This is far higher than the annual cost of £1,702 for travel from Zone 2, and these inequalities have worsened over time. More and more people are being pushed to the edges of London because of housing costs, only to be punished by higher transport costs when they move. This isn’t fair. Two workers in the same central London hospital or other workplace should pay the same fare to get to work no matter where they live. ## FAIR FARES The way costs for travelcards and weekly caps increase as you move outwards in the travel zones is completely unfair, particularly when many people are moving further away from central London because of the cost of housing. * A Green Mayor will focus on flattening fares for commuters so that everyone pays the same no matter where you live. We will start by merging zones 4, 5 and 6 by 2024, with a flat fare system by 2030. Flattening the zone structure that has barely changed since 1991 is the most revolutionary idea for London’s fares since the introduction of the Travelcard in 1983. * We will freeze the bus fare for the next three years and, as soon as possible, expand the Hopper fare that lets you change between buses without paying again, to include using the bus after the tube, overground or national rail network in London. * To support young Londoners, a Green Mayor will defend against any further attacks from the Government on free bus travel for under-18s and the Zip card discounts. We will work with young people and students to extend these concessions further, aiming to increase the age limit to 21 for carers as a priority, and for all young people as soon as possible. * Greens are committed to defending the terms of the 60+ Oyster card, including its use during the morning peak, which was suspended under conditions imposed by the Government. * We will also help workers by expanding transport concessions to give free travel for nurses and firefighters, not just police and Transport for London staff. The current Mayor’s companion pass for disabled freedom pass holders is a start but we need to help more of the most vital workers who keep London safe and healthy. * Starting with our first budget, we will include zone 1 in London’s £1.50 off-peak fares for one Sunday a month, promoting free attractions, green spaces and town centres across London and helping people explore the whole city with their families. ## MORE AND BETTER BUSES junked, examining adaptation to electric or trolleybus operation. * In recent years, London buses have been cut back, reducing the number and frequency of services, both for inner and outer London. We will reverse these cuts and make sure all of London has a clean, green bus service linking into other modes of public transport, and with walking and cycling routes. * Our modern, green bus fleet will aim to deliver a comfortable local service giving every Londoner access to a regular, efficient bus service within a five minute walk of their home every hour of the day. * We will increase bus services in outer London boroughs, particularly in those areas where residents feel forced into car ownership due to the lack of public transport alternatives. We will also increase the frequency of services to ensure that waits between buses are kept to a minimum. * We will make sure new buses have the best possible accessibility, reducing frustrations for people with wheelchairs, shopping and buggies, who require more space. A Green Mayor will ensure that wheelchair spaces on buses are appropriately prioritised for people who use wheelchairs. * A Green Mayor will move London as fast as possible to deliver a zero emission bus fleet, with a firm deadline of 2030 to make every bus a truly green bus. This is a huge change but we will aim to ensure that all existing buses are not simply * We will design a new standard bus stop for London. It will draw upon best practice for shelter, shade and seating that is suitable for older and disabled people. The new bus shelters will include visible real-time bus arrival and air pollution information, solar power generation and a roof covered in bee friendly plants. We would use it for all Transport for London bus stops as soon as possible and incentivise boroughs to take up this new design. * We will provide a modern and energy efficient live bus arrival time display at bus stops using an update of the well-loved next bus indicator ‘Countdown’ system. We will also install improved live bus information at rail and tube stations. * A Green Mayor will invest in bus safety and comfort, with smart speed limiters on every bus by the end of the term and a focus on addressing the causes of driver fatigue, including those identified in the London Assembly Transport Committee report, Driven to distraction. * In our plans for better comfort on the buses, every bus terminus would have a toilet, and bus drivers will also benefit from London-wide investment in toilets in the public transport network. Rest facilities would also be overhauled, to ensure bus drivers are not left walking the streets between shifts. ## INVEST IN GREEN TRANSPORT PROJECTS * A Green Mayor will put money raised from new smart, fair road charging and workplace parking schemes into financing a range of major new public transport infrastructure projects with strong local campaigns behind them. These will include the Sutton tram extension, the Bakerloo line extension, the West London orbital Overground scheme, DLR links to Thamesmead and an Overground link from Barking to Abbey Wood. * A Green Mayor will deliver a fully connected London cycle network, using improvements on the new cycleway quality criteria to ensure the speed and volume of traffic is not a deterrent to cycling. We will invest both in new cycle routes and in improving existing cycle routes, ensuring that all signposted Transport for London cycle routes meet the cycleway quality criteria by 2024. * We will set a target to invest £45 per head per year (£400m) in walking and cycling in London. Previous Mayors have repeatedly underspent their budgets, particularly on cycling, and then rushed investment at the end of their term. Instead we will move to regular, high-level investment in our streets, which will enable walking and cycling to be an everyday choice for far more journeys in inner and outer London. * We will focus on addressing danger at major junctions, especially those in outer London, and set targets for Transport for London and every borough to make sure no signalled junctions are without a pedestrian green crossing by 2024. The existing safer junctions programme will be delivered more quickly, designing out all high-risk road danger issues. * We will increase the rate and pace of delivery in the low traffic neighbourhoods and Liveable Neighbourhoods programmes, with a focus on enabling every borough to match the ambition of the successful Waltham Forest mini-Holland scheme. With bidding every quarter and regular development of bids by boroughs, the rate of change throughout London will speed up. * We will increase funding and set new standards for public engagement on local road changes. The requirements for each scheme and circumstance will be set out clearly so that every resident knows what information and consultation to expect, even during emergencies. * To complement the low traffic neighbourhood schemes, we will invest in work on main roads especially where people live, work and shop to make these roads less hostile and traffic dominated. London needs protected accessible space for walking and cycling at real scale on main roads, not just short stretches of disconnected provision. * We will expand current borough programmes for putting in secure bike hangars that can hold six residents’ bikes in the space currently taken up by one car. * School streets and play streets close roads to traffic at certain times for community use. A Green Mayor will review the streets outside every school in London, and massively expand investment from the Mayor for councils to help schools and communities introduce these schemes. * We will create a new programme to extend the school streets programme to roads outside colleges and universities, so that roads are closed outside these institutions at busy times to allow for both safe travel and space for student community events. * We will deliver new river crossings for cycling and walking as soon as possible, with ferry crossings immediately investigated at Rotherhithe and North Greenwich. And a push to build the long-proposed Cremorne bridge between Battersea and Fulham. * We will bring cycle hire to the whole of London, with safe parking areas for well managed dockless and hub based schemes complementing the existing central London area. We will create a payment system integrated with contactless and Oyster payment to ensure taking a hire bike is as easy as riding a bike. * We will use the Mayor’s traffic powers to take into the Transport for London Road Network those main roads and streets needed for strategic transport projects where boroughs have proved unable to deliver change. A Green Mayor will make better use of these powers where the * current Mayor has hesitated, for example in the case Oxford Street, where plans were delayed by Westminster Council, and Kensington High Street’s bike lane, which was removed by Kensington and Chelsea Council. * We will carry out a safety audit of all existing major structures, including bridges, flyovers and tunnels, and bring in a major maintenance programme to avoid future failures of resilience like Hammersmith Bridge. * London urgently needs control over the main commuter rail franchises that serve our citizens. An absolute priority for the first days of a Green Mayor will be to make the case to the Government for this devolution. This will enable London to invest in our railways away from the profit motive, and improve connections, fares and stations to match what Londoners expect from a truly integrated transport system. * Greens are committed to plan and find funding for Crossrail 2 as soon as possible to provide a key new high-capacity link across the city. * We have campaigned against the current HS2 project. The ever-expanding budget of HS2 would be better spent on projects that improve the quality of shorter daily journeys. Crossrail 2 is a good example of a project that is losing out while the government puts so much into a project that will benefit very few travellers and disadvantage communities along its path. ## LONDON SHOULD BE FLUSH WITH FREE LOOS A Green Mayor will commission new, free public toilets on our transport network, following up on proposals from Green London Assembly Member, Caroline Russell. At London Underground stations it can be hard to find a toilet, or one without a charge. Network Rail stations in London now all have free facilities since a change in policy two years ago. In an amendment proposed for the Mayor's budget in 2020, Caroline found funding to make all tube toilets free and add 32 new accessible toilet blocks, along with six 'changing places' toilets. Caroline says: “It is a disgrace that Londoners, visitors and bus and tube drivers can’t enjoy our city without worrying about where to find a bathroom. “People who have to plan their journeys around toilets, particularly older Londoners, those with a disability or medical condition and people with children, shouldn’t have their lives limited by a lack of loos. It makes sense that Transport for London should provide as many toilets as possible as part of its public purpose and service. And it certainly shouldn’t be charging people to spend a penny. * We will learn the lessons of Crossrail delays and the Garden Bridge fiasco, and bring in major changes to how projects are governed, particularly when jointly supported by Government or delivered with other parties. All projects will be set up to give Londoners and the Assembly maximum openness, accountability and transparency from the start. ## TRANSPORT GOODS SAFELY AND SUSTAINABLY Moving stuff around our city is essential work. The growth in construction traffic, supermarket home delivery, goods ordered online, and take-away food delivered to people’s homes, means we need better ways to manage these trips, and to change how we transport goods and freight around our city. * We will help the freight industry move to electric and alternatively fuelled vehicles, as well as e-assist cargo bikes for the last few miles, by ensuring sufficient space is available in the right locations in inner and outer London for the required refuelling and recharging infrastructure. * We will have a team in City Hall to encourage high street collection hubs and work with online retailers to develop this option in local centres across London. It will also work with boroughs to develop planning policies to protect the safety and welfare of delivery riders with higher levels of rider training especially for food delivery riders and access to rest facilities and toilets while working. * We will safeguard wharves and promote the use of water freight in construction-project supply chains to reduce the number of spoil trucks driving through our city, and allow access to rail paths and stations to support modal shift. * We will develop a Safe Freight fund for delivering borough-led sustainable freight strategies to increase the use of e-cargo bikes. This will cover large, existing logistic companies, new last-mile logistic companies and SMEs or sole traders who deliver products or carry equipment (e.g. bakers, plumbers). * A Green Mayor will invest in toilets and rest facilities to reduce lorry driver fatigue and ensure professional drivers and bike couriers are not left walking the streets looking for a toilet between shifts. * A Green Mayor will support a radical reform of the London Lorry Control Scheme, which currently restricts lorry movements overnight and at weekends, forces HGVs on lengthy detours and pushes them into delivering at the most congested time of the day. * We will ensure enforcement against serially non-compliant HGV operators in London via the London Freight Enforcement Partnership, publicising infringements to drive up compliance with existing regulations and standards. * We support the current Mayor’s Direct Vision Standard for lorries and Transport for London’s Safe System approach. Technological safe systems involving in-cab cameras and warning sounds when people are near lorries have developed hugely. We prefer direct vision low cab vehicles and will review all death and serious injury collisions where a heavy goods vehicle has been involved to monitor the effectiveness of the Safe System approach and develop the scheme to further reduce lorry danger if evidence shows it is needed. We will lobby the Government for the adoption of the Direct Vision Standard nationally. * We will commit to the development and roll-out of an Intelligent Speed Assistance standard for vehicles that are working in London beyond buses (taxis, private hire vehicles, HGVs, council vehicles, car share/club vehicles, delivery vans and other working vans) in London by 2024. ## NEW STANDARDS FOR SAFE, HEALTHY AND ACCESSIBLE STREETS In 2020, during the first coronavirus lockdown, Londoners responded magnificently to the call to stay at home and prioritise the journeys of essential workers. During this time, 47 per cent of journeys were made by walking and cycling and tube use was just eight per cent of normal use. But in the longer term, sat-nav enabled driving has led to a 74 per cent increase in traffic on residential side roads over the ten years from 2009 to 2019. Many Londoners discovered the clean air benefits of a low-traffic city in 2020. Deliveries and trades vehicles benefitted from near-empty roads. Previously unappreciated places came alive with birdsong, conversation and neighbourliness, as most of us chose to combine our daily exercise with our daily journeys to work, local shops and parks. Apart from the climate crisis and the air pollution crisis, our transport policy has to address the crisis of physical inactivity that threatens the health and wellbeing of so many people. Healthy streets will be a crucial resource to help people, communities and businesses recover from the pandemic. * A Green Mayor will set a minimum standard for our streets to be fit for human consumption in terms of public health. * A Green Mayor will set a 20 mph default speed limit on Transport for London roads everywhere there is a pavement, to protect people where they live, work, shop and walk, requiring a special case to be made for any increase on specific roads. Our call to get the current Mayor to consider this was rejected by Labour and the Conservatives in the London Assembly. We will work with boroughs to make all similar roads in London 20 mph, and propose even lower limits in busy areas where vehicles mix with large numbers of pedestrians. * Transport for London has developed a Healthy Streets check tool for checking our streets are safe and that they provide a range of elements like shade and shelter that support health and well-being. TfL will be mandated to use this tool and to never include design elements that increase road danger, such as narrow traffic lanes. * Main roads will also get new design standards – our investment plans to improve main roads will make sure they include frequent opportunities for pedestrians to safely cross the road, side roads with continuous footways across a junction, protection at junctions for cycling and protected bike lanes with accessibility friendly bus stop bypasses. * We will help people cross the road safely, making sure there is a pedestrian crossing at every junction with traffic lights, and ensuring crossing points are located exactly where people need them; for example providing diagonal crossings at busy junctions, ensuring two-stage crossings and waits on traffic islands are a rare exception and that signalised junctions have a pedestrian phase on every arm of the junction. * We will ensure waiting times for a green signal to cross the road are short and that crossing times allow for older people to cross in comfort. * There are not enough places to pause, sit and rest while walking. A Green Mayor will set a new standard for benches and places to rest to be provided every 50 metres. * Following creative action by community campaigners in Hackney, more and more boroughs are allowing ‘parklets’, which are social, community growing spaces, often with seating, in parking bays. Greens will promote these schemes so that parking spaces (both residential and commercial) can be transformed by communities across London. * Other design elements we will include in our new standards to increase pedestrian priority include the use of raised road crossings continuing the pavement, and new parking bays built at pavement level, so that they are ready to be retired from car use as vehicle ownership falls. * We will help more families choose to walk to school by assessing and transforming streets outside schools and the routes pupils must travel to every school so they are safer, cleaner and less congested. * A Green Mayor will support the creation of a Central London Walking Network with easy, attractive and low pollution routes. We will encourage Transport for London to work with boroughs to ensure investment in strategic walking routes across the city. * A Green Mayor will develop a coherent network of safe cycling routes, using both temporary and permanent measures to roll out protected bike lanes at pace, and tackling difficult hostile junctions that need a full redesign to work safely for people walking and cycling. * Many cities and towns (including Oslo, Barcelona, Brighton and York) are making large areas car-free, especially where ## THE BEST EVER BUS STOPS Londoners have told us that current bus stops simply aren’t good enough for the older and disabled people and outer Londoners who rely most upon them, and we have listened. Sian Berry has plans for a vastly improved new bus stop design for London’s streets. Greens will bring in a comprehensive new design, which will be used for all new and replacement Transport for London bus shelters. Our proposals will give Londoners who rely on buses: * Real-time bus arrival time and air pollution information * Proper, comfortable seating, with arms to help older and disabled people stand up * Ringfenced advertising space for local small businesses and services * Solar generating glazing to cut carbon * Attractive, bee-friendly planting on the shelter rooftop, alongside further solar power generation * New pedestrian crossings in the right place for every main road bus stop The proposals for this new standard respond to problems raised by Londoners, including badly designed, uncomfortable seating (sometimes designed deliberately that way as part of hostile design policies towards homeless people), and the lack of safe crossings on main roads that help people reach bus stops. With a Green Mayor, London will have the best bus stops in the world. there are large numbers of people on foot. A Green Mayor will support boroughs to develop car-free zones in London. * Our focus on bus, freight and delivery driver welfare, combined with danger reduction measures described in other sections of this chapter, will make residential streets and town centres safer for all road users. * We will work with Londoners to devise models to bring electric scooters and other new electric vehicles safely within the law in the city, and include regulation of these innovative modes of transport in our proposals for traffic and transport law devolution to London. In particular, we will ensure that micro-mobility does not make our streets less accessible, as has happened with badly dumped dockless hire bikes clogging up pavements. * We will review and improve equality impact assessments for transport decisions, working with data on economic impacts and with disabled people’s representatives to ensure that proportionate, accurate and broad-based equalities issues are considered for strategic plans and individual projects. * We will restore road policing capacity. Currently more than 100 officers have been removed from the Roads and Transport Policing Command to create the Violent Crime Taskforce. This was supposed to be reviewed after six months and they should have been replaced as soon as possible. We will target road police resources in particular on speeding and extreme speeding offences, which cause so much harm. READ more about our plans for safer roads in our chapter ACTION FOR A SAFE AND HEALTHY CITY ## ACCESS FOR ALL * A Green Mayor will commission an independent audit of ways to improve accessibility for disabled people on the tube and rail networks. Too many projects to provide step-free access at stations are currently on hold simply due to cost or are delayed by being left to the end of the Crossrail programme. We will make the case for the social value of these schemes and build a new investment programme. * A Green Mayor will work with boroughs to deliver a fit-for-purpose blue badge scheme which is consistent across London. A Green Mayor will increase the number of blue badge parking bays in the city. * With a Green Mayor, Transport for London will regularly audit and report on pavements and introduce a programme of improvements to enable walking and wheeling. * Our new bus investment will prioritise accessibility. Working with bus manufacturers and working closely with older people, parents and disabled people’s organisations, we will optimise access and space for people of all ages and needs and specify more space on newly commissioned buses so that two wheelchair users can travel together on the bus. * A Green Mayor will prioritise the electrification of buses and taxis to provide a smooth and pain-free ride, particularly on hospital routes. * We will review access to stations, checking for safe pedestrian crossings, level footways, appropriate tactile paving, protected cycle lanes and secure bike parking. * We will immediately review bus driver wellbeing and training and, with the involvement of older and disabled people’s groups, work with bus drivers and unions to reduce timetable pressures that can lead to high speeds and an uncomfortable passenger experience for older and disabled people * Our new bus stop standard will put accessibility first, with appropriate levels for boarding by foot and by wheelchair, cycle bypasses with zebra crossings to reduce conflict, all-weather protection, shelter for wheelchairs and buggies, seating and tactile paving. Live bus information will be displayed clearly for those who can’t easily use apps and online tools. * Our 2020 GLA budget amendment pledged to make all tube toilets free and install 32 new toilet blocks in Transport for London stations, along with six new fully accessible Changing Places facilities. The current Mayor has not taken up our idea and made access to toilets a priority, but we will. This is a vital service for all Londoners and the lack of toilets prevents many people from leaving their homes. A Green Mayor will use new investment funds to expand this programme and make toilet provision a priority again. * We will work with disabled people’s groups and black cab drivers who have lost business due to the coronavirus crisis, to help prioritise disabled and older passengers on non-emergency taxi journeys. This should reduce waiting times and increase comfort for people who rely on wheelchair transport and have difficulty transferring into and out of a car. In the process it will help taxi drivers by providing resilient and regular work for drivers of accessible cabs. * Our low traffic neighbourhoods investment will address some of the local barriers to mobility experienced on the streets today by people using aids such as white canes, rollators, wheelchairs and adaptive pedal cycles. Every temporary and permanent scheme will be designed and double- checked to ensure that there are coherent, accessible, step-free routes into, out of and through the area. This means accessible dropped kerbs, even footways and appropriate tactile paving, so that children, older and disabled people can get around safely and conveniently especially around bollards and planters at entry points. Low traffic neighbourhoods will be trialled with on-going local consultation so that communities can respond to the experience and win changes. * A Green Mayor will ensure cycle routes benefit disabled people who use buggies, scooters and cycles as their main mode of independent transport. We will ensure that lane widths and access points along the routes meet accessibility standards, minimising tight turns, difficult slopes, obstacles and fast-moving traffic. * The current Mayor has failed to check councils apply consistent policies about the placement of electric vehicle charging points, which belong on the road in parking spaces and not on pavements. A Green Mayor will prevent charging infrastructure being placed on pavements, and from cluttering up footways and blocking access for people with buggies and wheelchairs. * Our safe and healthy streets, where everyone is able to go at their own pace and stop for a chat with neighbours, will reduce loneliness and foster mental health and community cohesion. **FRESH THINKING** **FOR HOUSING** A safe place to live is a human right. But in London we are failing. The number of people left destitute to sleep on the streets is appalling, and this is just the most visible sign of a much bigger problem. Our homeless people don’t need sweeping up like fallen leaves into temporary homes. We need to heal the tree – root and branch – the system that has too many gaps to fall through, and too much injustice. System changes and power shifts are the most resilient changes we can make. Welfare must be fixed, because benefit caps and universal credit are making homelessness worse. We must keep reforming the private rented sector, and fight together for better rights and the power to bring in rent controls. We also need better rights for social housing and council tenants. Hard-won ballots for estate residents facing demolition are a start, but we need to put more tenants fully in control of homes. Our existing homes need fixing too. Councils and housing associations already have a huge job to do on fire safety, and our next Mayor must assess the problem and make plans for the Green New Deal London needs. ## RIGHTS FOR TENANTS AND RENTERS ▸ A Green Mayor will work from day one for every Londoner to have their right to a decent, secure home respected, including the right to good standards, security from unfair evictions and protection from high rents. ▸ Throughout the pandemic, Sian Berry has stood up for the rights of renters, fighting for the eviction ban and proposing fair ways to cancel rent arrears built up, not turn them into debts. Landlords who need support should be able to claim it from Government. Greens will continue to campaign until renters are not made to bear the burden of the crisis. ▸ A Green Mayor would not accept any more delays on the promised abolition of no-fault evictions and section 21 of the Housing Act. ▸ We will campaign to scrap the benefit cap and maintain the emergency coronavirus increases to the Local Housing Allowance rate for housing benefit so that it at least covers 30 per cent of rented homes in any local area. ▸ Sian Berry pushed the current Mayor for more than three years before he started to argue for rent control powers for London, and London’s renters need a real champion for this issue. These devolved powers are urgent and Greens will not go slow or give up on pressing for these powers, and we will work with mayors of other cities to win them. ▸ A Green Mayor will use these powers to set up a Rent Commission for London to decide on a new target level and downward trajectory for private rents, and immediately define the London Living Rent better to take account of the wage gaps faced by households led by women and African, Caribbean, Asian, Latino and other minority ethnic Londoners. ▸ We will bring in a two-year freeze for private rents while the new body completes its work and puts forward long-term, stable and predictable rent control plans. ▸ We will support the London Renters Union and other groups organising tenants from the grassroots, providing grants for them to expand and for new local groups to be set up, as proposed by Green Assembly Members in the most recent GLA budget. This will include groups representing students and migrants and refugees, as well as disabled tenants, to ensure their rights, including to adapted homes when needed, are respected. ▸ London will have its own Social Housing Commissioner, charged with supporting tenant rights, equality and empowerment in council and social-rented homes, and supporting active and thriving tenants’ associations across London. They will be a tenant themselves and supported with the resources needed to empower resident groups across London. ▸ We will provide grants and support for new co-ops, including revolving loans for ## GREENS FIGHTING FOR RENTERS’ RIGHTS Sian Berry has been a private renter in London for nearly 25 years, and has championed renters’ rights on the London Assembly right from the start, putting forward the idea of a London Renters Union in her manifesto for the 2016 election. Before that, Sian wrote to Sadiq Khan while he was still an MP in 2015 asking him to help amend legislation to give rent control powers to city mayors. She continued to put pressure on the current Mayor for three years until, in late 2018, he finally took action. Sian Berry will stand with millions of her fellow renters to strengthen their rights. She will work with other Mayors from across the country, to campaign for the devolved powers we need to set rent controls, bring down runaway rents, forgive rent arrears accumulated during the pandemic, and end unfair evictions. The current Mayor has been defeatist and slow when it comes to winning a better deal for housing. Sian Berry will be a committed champion for London’s renters. new groups, targeting the promotion of these services particularly towards key workers and people living in houses of multiple occupation who wish to take over the running of their homes, and to African, Caribbean, Asian, Latino and other minority ethnic Londoners. - We will campaign at a national level for a right to co-op for people in shared houses, following up on research work by Sian Berry in the London Assembly. - We will work to close the loopholes that leave property guardians in legal limbo, and put forward changes in the law to include property guardians in new rights for renters. - We will amend the London Plan to better control short-term lettings in London, with strict limits - including prohibition in areas of high housing need - built into lease conditions for new buildings and give more support to councils in enforcing time limits and quality of life for surrounding residents. - Much higher levels of truly affordable rented homes will be included in new planning policies for the Build to Rent sector. - We’ve campaigned from the start for a Student Living Rent. After pressing the Mayor we have won requirements for a proportion of student accommodation to be affordable in the new London Plan, but we strongly believe that the Mayor’s definition of this at 55 per cent of the maximum maintenance loan is too high, and a Green Mayor would work with student unions and student campaign organisations to bring this down. - We will support the calls from Green students to support students affected by the coronavirus crisis, including rent rebates, refunds and grants and support for mental health. We will also campaign for the national Green Party policy to write off student loan debts. - Our new renting rules will include a default right for renters to keep pets. Greens on the London Assembly have campaigned for unfair pet clauses to be banned since 2016. ## NO MORE LOST COUNCIL HOMES - A key power needed from housing devolution to London is the ability to stop the loss of council homes through Right to Buy. Every effort we make to build more council homes is currently neutralised by this policy. A Green Mayor will present evidence and campaign fiercely for an urgent suspension of Right to Buy in London. - A Green Mayor will stop the loss of council homes through demolition. We will review all funding conditions for estate demolition projects, especially for those schemes that have not progressed since being signed off by the current Mayor before the ballot policy was announced in 2018. New, resident-led plans would be required, along with ballots for schemes that have stalled. ## WINNING A FINAL SAY WITH ESTATE BALLOTS February 2018 saw a massive victory for residents on estates as the current Mayor u-turned on his estate ballots policy. It was revealed that 95 per cent of responses to the draft estate guidance demanded ballots for residents, following our campaigning with residents across London. As a result, the Mayor dramatically reversed his policy, after his draft guidance was explicitly against giving residents this final say. The new guidance came into force in July 2018, making a resident ballot compulsory before funding is given for demolition schemes. However, the new rules still have unfair restrictions from voting for different kinds of residents, including private renters. The Mayor also allowed far too many schemes – 34 in total – to slip through the net, by giving them funding or planning permission in the long period of 11 months between the end of the consultation period and the final policy being announced. Our policy will be to review all of these schemes that are not now underway, so we can require new plans and new ballots for residents. * We will review all existing estate ballot exemptions. And we will prevent any council and social rented homes being converted to ‘affordable’ rent in new plans. * A Green Mayor will bring estate ballots into planning policy by requiring grant applications from all demolition schemes to boost social housing numbers. Following problems with recent ballots, improved guidance will do more to involve residents in devising plans from the start and give firmer guidance on neutrality in ballot publicity. * We will support the production of credible People’s Plans for residents on estates with a funded expert team in City Hall to help. ## NEW COUNCIL AND LOW-COST RENTED HOMES FROM EXISTING HOUSING * A Green Mayor will bring an end to the crisis in temporary accommodation by supporting and funding a rapid expansion of London Councils’ Capital Letters programme, which leases homes long-term from landlords at reasonable rates for councils to provide to people in housing need. This approach will save huge amounts compared with the very high cost to councils of often substandard nightly paid temporary accommodation, and can be funded by working in partnership with councils and minimal capital investment. * A Green Mayor will add dramatically to the stock of low-cost rented homes by purchasing existing homes, with the GLA using grants and sustainable borrowing to buy homes from developers and landlords for renting at London Living Rent levels from councils and housing associations. * We will also work with councils, housing associations and pension funds to build up a larger, collaborative revolving acquisition fund to expand this idea further. * We will work in partnership with councils to make better use of prudential funding and borrowing mechanisms to buy back more homes previously lost under Right to Buy in order to bring these once again into council housing stock for letting under secure tenancies. This will mitigate the continued net loss of council homes in London which Sian has exposed, and create a pipeline of new homes far exceeding what is currently being built by councils. ## CREATING THE NEW HOMES WE NEED * A Green Mayor will correct mistakes made by the current Mayor in using the affordable housing grant money devolved from national government. The Mayor is moving too slowly and devoting too many grants to unaffordable shared ownership homes in future phases of long-term schemes, when more needs to go to create council and social rented homes from those being built now. - Billions risk lying unspent long after 2023 from the 2016-2023 grant programme unless something is done. Sian recently exposed that in mid-2020 £500 million was lying completely unallocated and useless. We will bring forward spending and also use money allocated to later phases of planned building programmes to convert homes already in planning or being constructed into new council and social housing. - Our new planning policies will recognise that the current Mayor’s ‘London Affordable Rent’ is not the same as social rent and seek to abolish all dodgy definitions of affordable housing for good. - By presenting clear evidence and by campaigning alongside Londoners, we will win more funding and much more flexibility for new housing grants from the Government. This will include a push for more funding for the conversion of existing homes, and homes already under construction, into social rent homes, not just new builds. - A Green Mayor’s grants for new homes will not be for unaffordable shared ownership or ‘affordable’ rent, but be reserved for new council homes, social housing and community-led housing, with smaller grants available for London Living Rent homes. The grants will be provided on a sliding scale depending on the number of bedrooms to increase the level of family housing provided. - We will scale up diversity in the housing market – creating new programmes to support councils, smaller housing associations, small builders and community models to build homes, including on small sites identified by our People’s Land Commission. - A Green Mayor will act now to support community led housing and co-ops in the city. The Mayor has left the majority of his Community Housing Fund unspent, and failed to put significant public land towards these new ideas. - We will use the Mayor’s Land Fund better and open up the London Development Board with more transparency and new members from tenant, resident and community housing groups. - Using planning and funding powers, we will make sure more fully wheelchair accessible homes, built to the highest standards, are secured by councils and in planning decisions by the Mayor. Currently, a very small percentage of planned homes are fully wheelchair accessible, and there is an acute shortage of council homes for disabled Londoners. - Housing needs projections must be improved so that boroughs make suitable provision for accessible and supported housing for young people who become adults with disabilities. This work is best coordinated at a London-wide level and we will make sure the GLA leads on this, and reviews allocations policies from councils to make sure they are available to people who need them. - We will use research from here and abroad to build more intentional intergenerational properties and developments that better suit the lifecycle of families. This too will help support community building and can support reducing social care costs. - We will address overcrowding in homes by conducting a borough by borough needs assessment, correcting gaps in current Government statistics, and putting together a strategy to better match people to homes across London, working with older Londoners’ representatives to establish new Mayoral programmes to find ways to provide people who wish to downsize with genuinely attractive and desirable options, including co-housing. - We will work with local authorities to support owner occupiers to take on lodgers, and provide GLA advice for potential lodgers, setting up a brokerage service, along with standards and a register of hosts, and policies to ensure fair rents and decent living conditions. - A Green Mayor will campaign for a Community Right to Buy for land and buildings that community organisations wish to make use of, at a national level or the devolved powers to create this right in London. - We will use small sites better, working alongside councils and communities to map spaces within local areas where new homes can fit, through a London-wide, bottom-up People’s Land Commission. O SEE MORE ABOUT OUR PEOPLE’S LAND COMMISSION ON PAGE 59 Greens on the London Assembly have pushed successfully for policies to prevent social division being built into new developments. ‘Poor doors’ where social and affordable housing residents have separate entrances and get inferior facilities are discriminatory and create unnecessary divisions and hierarchies between residents. * We first highlighted the potential for ‘poor playgrounds’ – the horrific prospect of separate areas being built for children in different tenures to play in – in our response to the Mayor’s Housing Strategy. * Although we have been successful in getting councils like Camden to write clear policies against these divisions into open spaces policies, the current Mayor has still not put watertight rules into his new London Plan, and a Green Mayor will correct this. ## STOPPING POOR DOORS AND POOR PLAYGROUNDS ## FIXING OUR EXISTING HOMES Fixing the shocking state of fire safety in our homes is a huge job for every kind of housing provider, thanks to years of deregulation by the Government and appalling work by big developers and contractors. * A Green Mayor will take the lead at a strategic level, assess the work needed and make the case to ministers that our councils, housing associations, leaseholders and private landlords need specific funding and support to make our homes safe. * Energy saving is as neglected and urgent as the safety work needed on our homes. Greens have been highlighting the lack of work on our many 19th and 20th century homes since a major report was produced in the early 2000s by Jean Lambert MEP. A Green Mayor will start on day one with a full, new assessment of the city’s needs. We would use this to make plans and demands for huge investment in our housing, which will get the carbon emissions from our homes down to zero and show fuel poverty the door. * For disabled people, bidding for council homes is far more difficult, and more time and help is needed to ensure homes can be viewed ahead of bidding and that necessary adjustments are planned in good time before moving in. Councils are responsible for this, but a Green Mayor will work with disabled people’s groups to review all council processes and make clear standards at a London level. * We will campaign for deep reforms to leasehold, including caps on ground rents and limits on charges for major works, and campaign for changes to make commonhold and the right to manage easier to obtain for leaseholders. **SEE MORE ABOUT OUR GREEN NEW DEAL IN THE CHAPTER WE WILL CREATE THE GREENEST CITY IN THE WORLD** **SEE MORE ABOUT HOMES AND SAFETY IN OUR CHAPTER ACTION FOR A SAFE AND HEALTHY CITY** ## A PEOPLE'S LAND COMMISSION Greens will put power back into the hands of Londoners by setting up a People's Land Commission. Together, we will go out into our city, and find land for the things local people really want, like homes, community halls, small businesses, parks, playgrounds, theatres and youth centres. When local people find plots of land which aren’t being put to good use and would be suitable for small scale developments, a Green Mayor will provide the funding to put these ideas into action. This is the fresh thinking on housing which London needs, and it will put the land under your feet back into your hands. * Green Mayor will set up a People’s Land Commission to help identify new sites and bring land together for more community-led housing projects * Working with local people can lead to better outcomes and quicker results, with plans less likely to be challenged, and a wider variety of smaller community-led and non-profit builders finding it easier to access land and try different models. * With suitable sites identified and approved by the local community, the GLA and London’s councils can use compulsory purchase powers where land is not already publicly owned to bring more land forward for development. * Greens on the London Assembly have put together evidence showing that adding more homes on top of existing buildings, converting underused land from car parks and garages, and doing that creatively and with the community, could provide many more new homes than treating people’s homes as ‘brownfield land’ and prioritising demolition schemes that break up communities and face fierce opposition. * We also need a Community Right to Buy at a national level, or via devolved powers to London. These rights already exist in Scotland and are helping local communities to buy land and buildings and put them to use. ## HOMES FOR ALL LONDONERS Greens on the London Assembly have worked to expose the problems faced by more and more Londoners who lose their homes every year through no fault of their own. Families, young people, migrants, veterans, people with poor mental health or family problems, and people denied help by the benefits system, are all especially vulnerable to becoming homeless, along with private renters facing eviction. Councils are struggling to provide enough temporary accommodation and the number of people forced to sleep on the streets has increased dramatically in central London in recent years. Sian Berry’s work on the Assembly has also helped expose the problem of hidden homelessness. On any given night, more than 13 times as many people are in temporary homes, hiding from view on the streets, staying with friends and family or sofa surfing, than are counted in traditional surveys of homelessness. Women, including those facing domestic abuse, young people and LGBTIQA+ Londoners are some of the worst affected, and only a minority of young people are even approaching councils for help as they feel like they will get no help. Greens recently carried out research that found Londoners themselves are helping to pick up the pieces, with one in ten people taking in a friend or family member at some point in the last year, giving them a place to stay when they have had nowhere else to go. ### Sian Berry says: “We need to fix a system that has too many gaps for people to fall through. The Mayor’s office can help build more homes, and all the policies in this chapter are aimed at fixing fractures and injustice in our housing system. “But City Hall can also take more action to fix the temporary accommodation crisis and improve the information and help people facing homelessness can access, and make services much more consistent between councils with fewer gaps.” and for this right to apply across all tenancies. * A Green Mayor will create a new team within the homelessness service at City Hall focused specifically on reaching and supporting EU migrants who are at particular risk of homelessness already and face new problems as Brexit progresses. * We will require local authorities to automatically record the protected characteristics of those presenting at housing options services, so we can see more evidence of discrimination in housing policies. * We will make sure there is consistent and fair assessment by councils of ‘vulnerability’ and health needs, and increase support and targeted information for young people, families and LGBTIQA+ people facing homelessness, as well as people with medical needs who need support from their doctors. * We will also help solve the crisis in temporary accommodation with our policies to create new council and low-rent homes from existing housing. * We will make sure young people under 25 facing homelessness have the dedicated support they need, with separate accommodation and support work, and the right proportion of GLA funding set aside for this work. ### To put street homelessness in London in the past where it belongs: * A Green Mayor will fund and support more Housing First provision in London. This approach helps people with additional needs and vulnerabilities, such as people with mental health needs or people who are drug dependent, with an unconditional, non-institutional home so that they are more easily able to focus on their problems while remaining independent. * We will fight for more funding from Government to make sure councils can fully respect people’s right to help ahead of being evicted, as required by the Homelessness Reduction Act. * We will push in Parliament for legislation that guarantees victims of domestic abuse the right to remain in their homes, if they wish, rather than the perpetrator, ACTION FOR A SAFE AND HEALTHY CITY Greens take a public health approach to so much of our work. We know the importance of a good start in life and the impact that experiences in childhood can have on the risk of mental health issues, getting into trouble with finances and crime in future. We know that supporting strong communities, tackling root causes and addressing inequality are the best ways to prevent harm, and that we can’t only enforce our way out of our problems. We always seek to prevent crime at the earliest possible stage. We will shift policing priorities into local communities and away from tactics that we know are counterproductive, such as cannabis enforcement and widespread non-intelligence based stop and search. We know that some crimes are currently treated unequally, and would put more resources into domestic and sexual violence, and tackling road crime. A Green Mayor will work to ensure that London is safe and accessible for all our citizens. ## HEALTH AND HEALTH INEQUALITIES The coronavirus pandemic has had a huge impact. Many Londoners’ lives have been truly shattered, and communities have faced previously unimaginable changes. The crisis has infiltrated every aspect of our city, our healthcare system, food security, jobs and livelihoods, and the futures our young people can look forward to. We have all struggled this year, but we know that some people have suffered much more than others, and that the pandemic has exposed serious health inequalities. Greens recognise that a healthy city is one in which individuals and communities achieve their full physical, intellectual, social and spiritual potential. Health for individuals is only possible in the context of a healthy environment and society. As a result, things that improve safety and health for citizens are found throughout this manifesto. In every chapter, you will find more ways Greens will improve the wellbeing of Londoners. For example, a Green Mayor will recognise the importance of agency and the ability to choose as essential for good mental health, and our transport policies address the crisis of physical inactivity that threatens the health of many people. Taking a public health approach is also proven to save money, meaning we will be able to do more with the Mayor’s budget in the long term. ## MENTAL HEALTH AND WELLBEING * A Green Mayor will prioritise the mental health and wellbeing of all Londoners through policies that recognise the wide range of factors contributing to mental health and wellbeing including economic, social, environmental, psychological and physical factors. * A Green Mayor will work for parity of esteem for mental health with physical health. Creating the conditions for wellbeing and resilience to help to prevent distress in the short and long term, both reducing suffering and saving resources. * We reject the stigma attached to mental health issues. There needs to be a more open dialogue on this within society and a Green Mayor will put resources behind efforts to reduce stigma and raise more awareness of mental health and wellbeing issues. This will include comprehensive mental health awareness and education within the GLA group of organisations and linking up campaigns across the public sector. * This manifesto recognises the importance of primary prevention in supporting the health and wellbeing of Londoners. A Green Mayor will implement policies which protect everyone’s right to: * green, public space * healthy, affordable food * safety * clean air * be included. ▶ Our policies recognise the importance of social interactions, reducing loneliness and increasing inclusion for all Londoners * A Green Mayor will increase access to privately owned public space to open up London to the public and create more space for Londoners to meet and enjoy the city. * Volunteer, civic, community and faith groups play a big part in London’s life and community. A Green Mayor will set a standard for grants to the voluntary sector to be at least three years in duration, and will make sure full costs including overheads are covered by grants. ▶ Greens advocate for a trauma-informed approach. A Green Mayor will work with experts in trauma and community support to review and change all aspects of how police and public services act with respect to victims, witnesses and the wider community. ## HEALTH INEQUALITIES AND ACCESS ### HEALTH INEQUALITIES Greens will never accept the health inequality exposed across groups of Londoners by the pandemic. It is a disgrace that some communities experience more adversity and poorer health outcomes than others when we can do much more to lift healthy life expectancy for everyone. A Green Mayor will target resources and support to where people are most in need. And we will close the gaps in services for groups such as care leavers and young people in the care system, and people who are homeless. ▶ A Green Mayor will change the way we measure progress in our city to help focus our work and our new targets not on endless economic growth but on new measures, including reducing inequality. Our economy chapter details our proposal for a Universal Basic Income pilot in London and job support for disadvantaged groups; these initiatives will support good health and reduce health inequalities. ▶ Greens strongly opposed cuts to local government public health budgets; we will campaign to reverse these cuts and we will closely monitor effects on London’s public health resilience, for example vaccination rates, take-up of health services by marginalised groups, and any loss of activities and outreach programmes. ▶ We will lobby the Government to establish a publicly-controlled alcohol control foundation, paid for by alcohol taxation, which will fund public health interventions to reduce harms caused by alcohol. ▶ We will help reduce the health inequalities faced by people, predominantly from Black communities, with sickle cell and thalassaemia conditions, where cold, damp homes are an additional health risk. We will target fuel poverty programmes to the homes of people who have sickle cell and thalassaemia conditions as a priority, and make sure outreach programmes in all boroughs are able to find and refer relevant people to Mayoral programmes ▶ Greens will work with GLA group organisations and local authorities to ensure they are sensitive to the needs of trans and non-binary people, have training on trans awareness and inclusion. ▶ We will be champions for a better care service, standing up for increased funding, better conditions for care workers, and the development of more sensitive and specialised care facilities and services for older LGBTIQA+ Londoners, and different faith and cultural groups. ▶ We will listen to people with experience of homelessness about the support they need and require homelessness services we fund to monitor demographics (with consent from people who use services) so we can provide targeted, appropriate and tailored support for groups who might need it. ▶ To improve sexual health, we will support key services such as sexual health clinics as vital London-wide services. Instead of clinics being dependent on one local council’s overstretched budget, we will ensure that these services are adequately funded at a London level. ▶ Greens will continue to lead the fight on sexually transmitted disease prevention and sex education, working to ensure the rollout of good Personal, Social and Health Education (PSHE) following the successful work, supported by our MP Caroline Lucas, in Parliament. We will work to make sure sexual health service providers in London have the funding to run preventative services in schools and awareness campaigns to support this. ▶ Greens will ensure the London Health Inequalities Strategy addresses the health inequalities experienced by deaf and disabled people and that the London Health Board includes representatives of deaf and disabled people. ▶ Child dental health is unequal across London. Poor dental health negatively impacts children’s development and mental health. Improving child dental health requires a partnership approach between dentists, parents, GPs, teachers, early years staff and health workers. A Green Mayor will work in partnership to implement supervised brushing schemes and to ensure access to specialist dentist services for people with disabilities. A Green Mayor will appoint a specialist in children’s dental health to the Child Obesity Taskforce. ## ACCESS A Green Mayor will work for equal access to services for all Londoners.. ▶ We will improve public spaces for people with neurodiversity, dementia and other The Green Party defines ‘drugs’ as synthetic or plant-based substances that have a substantial psychoactive and /or physiological effect, direct or indirect, on the human body. Whilst people of every social background use drugs, deaths are highly linked to social deprivation: working-age men living in the most deprived areas of England have died at more than four times the average rate. Today’s problems have been created by our drugs laws. Rising deaths and increasing availability of drugs have come despite billions of government spending on drug enforcement. To avoid capture by police, drug dealers are employing increasingly brutal methods to distribute drugs, often exploiting children in the process. It wasn’t always this way. Until the 1960s, doctors regulated the distribution of heroin through prescription to a small number of people. The medical treatment of people who use drugs was separated from the punishment of unregulated use and supply. In October 2019, the Green Party of England and Wales adopted the most forward-thinking drugs policy of any party, informed by evidence and based firmly on the principles of harm reduction, community safety and an opposition to profiteering. * A Green Mayor will implement and support harm-reduction schemes in the capital, taking lessons from pioneering work in other parts of the country and around the world which reduce drug-related harm and save taxpayers’ money. * We will use advice from experts, examples of success in others areas and where there is greatest need to work with the health sector and charities to provide: * heroin prescribing * safe consumption rooms * Naloxone Rescue Treatment * free drug safety testing * education. * We will work with the police to: * Deprioritise the policing of cannabis including stop and search, and allow for more police time to be spent preventing violent crimes. * Implement diversion from the criminal justice system to support services. * Taking heroin supply out of criminal hands and back under the control of doctors will radically reduce overdose deaths and will cut the bottom out of the illegal, violent drug trade in our city. * A Green Mayor will lobby the Government to reduce drug harms through legalisation and implement a safer, regulated supply. The Greens’ new national approach would mean that drug supply will be regulated by the Government, instead of organised criminals and alcohol and tobacco corporations, who all have a financial interest in people using drugs harmfully. ## AN EVIDENCE-BASED APPROACH TO DRUGS disabilities. We will ensure that the principles of lifetime neighbourhoods and a dementia-friendly city are included in new planning rules for streets and homes, and introduce specific design guidance, working with relevant groups. This includes improving signage, reducing clutter and designing spaces to improve navigation. - We will support a dementia-friendly city by continuous training and information for front-line staff in all GLA group organisations and do more to promote this training to borough councils and private companies that deal with the public. - Currently, some communities and groups experience more adversity and services are less accessible to them. A Green Mayor will work with boroughs and health authorities to improve access to appropriate services (for children and adults). This includes through pan-London provision commissioned through the GLA and those directly within the Mayor’s control: - Services designed to meet need. - Information provided in accessible formats and different languages. - Providing pathways to employment for people with learning disabilities. - A Green Mayor will connect the mental health and wellbeing small business sector with public sector opportunities via NHS social prescribing services. - The transport chapter outlines ways in which a Green Mayor will improve transport in the city through healthy, accessible streets, fair fares, investment in step-free access and toilets across the travel network and prioritise disabled and older passengers on non-emergency taxi journeys. - Greens recognise the crucial, unpaid and difficult work done by those who are carers (including young carers). A Green Mayor will lobby Government to improve the carers allowance and ensure carers are provided with adequate respite from their caring responsibilities, and would review and improve carer-friendly employment policies across the GLA group. Policies throughout our manifesto recognise and support unpaid carers. ## THE RIGHT TO AFFORDABLE, HEALTHY FOOD We know that the challenges people face in accessing healthy, affordable food are getting harder, with more than 400,000 children in London facing food insecurity. Rising inequality and poverty, small shops under threat from development into housing, and markets under threat from squeezed local authority budgets all add to the pressures that reduce our ability to grow our own food and afford what is in the shops. - Greens in City Hall follow in the footsteps of former Green Assembly Member Jenny Jones, whose advocacy led to the formation of London Food, of which she became the first Commissioner. A Green Mayor will strengthen the role of the current London Food Board, and integrate it more closely with the public health work of the Mayor and boroughs. - A Green Mayor will confirm London’s commitment to the C40 Good Food Cities declaration and Milan Urban Food Pact, Greens will take every chance to improve food resilience and the contribution a better food system can make to address the climate and ecological crisis. - A Green Mayor will commit to the London Right2Food charter, which includes supporting London councils to provide universal free school meals to school-aged children. - We will work with key partners, such as schools, community organisations and food experts, to make sure all Londoners have access to good value, healthy food within their neighbourhoods - We will introduce new standards in planning so that every new home has space to grow food, whether on a large balcony or roof garden or in a garden or allotment plot. - We will assist councils to deliver projects to make the best use of all available space, such as temporarily vacant space, traffic planters, walls to grow food. The projects will include access to equipment and engagement with residents. - A Green Mayor will develop and implement a London-wide good food strategy to stimulate small and medium enterprises to support access to good food for all. - We will support and significantly expand London’s street markets, provide for them in major regeneration projects, and address gaps in local council support. - We will deliver a widespread awareness-raising campaign to help people find good value, healthy food. - Charities and voluntary groups are filling the gap created by increasing levels of poverty. We will develop a co-ordinated and strategic response to food poverty in London, working with boroughs to help protect, extend and ensure the nutritional quality of meals on wheels (ensuring older people have at least one good meal every day), and free school meals. - With better financial health, through welfare reform and strong policies to promote and strengthen the London Living Wage, we intend to reduce the need for food banks. - We will campaign for an urgent change to national policy that excludes children from families with no recourse to public funds from free school meals, and fund community-based groups providing lunches for these excluded children. - We will fund school food improvement officers covering every borough to advise schools on procurement of nutritious school meals and to promote food education opportunities. - We will double the number of London Boroughs signed up to the Veg Cities campaign to 12 and champion water-only schools. CAMPAIGNING FOR CLEAN AIR Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah knows the hidden costs of busy, congested roads all too well. Her daughter Ella Roberta died in 2013 from one of the worst cases of asthma recorded in the UK, linked to unlawful spikes of air pollution from the main road near her Lewisham home. Since then Rosamund has campaigned tirelessly to demand action to clean up London’s air. She set up the Ella Roberta Family Foundation and her petition of over 175,000 signatures forced the Government to open a new inquest. This resulted in a historic first in 2020, when pollution from the south circular road was named as a contributing factor to Ella’s death. Rosamund is a powerful grassroots campaigner for real change on this issue, and her work and commitment has resulted in her becoming a health and air quality advocate for the World Health Organisation. Rosamund is the Green Party candidate for Greenwich & Lewisham in the London Assembly. * We will work with boroughs to map food poverty and identify opportunities to improve access to affordable healthy food by introducing new street markets and allotments in areas where it is hard to buy or grow food, and helping each borough to produce a Good Food Retail Plan and improve its own procurement policies. * A Green Mayor will support and promote the take-up of Healthy Start across London, working with health visitors and hospitals to help people buy essential, healthy food for children under 4 years old. * We will fund a strategic project to help schools in London to improve policies for school meals and support childrens’ right to good food, and assist councils in making sure that holiday provision is available for pupils who receive free school meals to combat ‘holiday hunger’. * In the London Plan, we will bring evidence to bear on reinstating effective new policies, which were removed by the Government, to create exclusion zones around schools where fast food shops aren’t allowed, and allow councils to resist a saturation of fast food shops in any part of their borough. * A Green Mayor will encourage vegetarian and vegan diets, through the use of advertising and communication channels and through procurement policies. * We will support schools, colleges, universities, hospitals, prisons, residential care homes and daycare centres to grow their own food, offer more healthy food including organic vegetarian and vegan options, and remove all high fat and sugar products from vending machines. * A Green Mayor’s new Transport for London advertising policies will do more to help stop unhealthy products being advertised on the transport system. O SEE MORE ABOUT OUR ETHICAL ADVERTISING POLICIES IN THE CHAPTER A MISSION TO TRANSFORM OUR ECONOMY ## THE RIGHT TO CLEAN AIR Air pollution is deadly, and deepens inequalities across London. We need every possible action taken to save lives, and you’ll only get that with a Green Mayor. With Boris Johnson as Mayor, we were going backwards. He was glueing pollution to the road, making the congestion zone smaller, and he cancelled the gas-guzzler charge Sian Berry helped win as a campaigner. But under Sadiq Khan we are still seeing just half measures. This year, the wider ultra low emission zone is vital to go ahead with, but it needed to reach London-wide not half way, which leaves outer Londoners out of many of the benefits. And we must see the Silvertown Road Tunnel cancelled and action taken to cut traffic on main roads not just residential streets. A Green Mayor will take all the action needed to respect everyone’s right to clean air. We will set the right targets, switch to green buses much more quickly, invest in healthy streets, and bring in a comprehensive, fair system of road charging based on emissions. Greens are the only ones you can trust to take pollution as seriously as Londoners need. and cleaner vehicles in this manifesto, including an ultra low emission zone (ULEZ) for the whole of London, smarter, fairer road charging and investment in accessible healthy streets. **O SEE MORE ABOUT OUR TRANSPORT POLICIES IN OUR CHAPTER A CLEAR PLAN TO KEEP LONDON MOVING** ## LEGAL AIR FOR LONDONERS BY NEXT YEAR AND HEALTHY AIR BY 2025 - The vast majority of pollution sources are within London and within the reach of policies and powers the Mayor of London already has. There is no excuse for any further delay and a Green Mayor will do everything necessary to achieve clean, healthy air in London in as short a time as possible. - Despite progress over the last four years, London still has breaches of current legal limits for both particles and nitrogen dioxide pollution. We will address the remaining NO₂ hotspots by the end of 2022, and put in place policies to achieve stricter World Health Organisation (WHO) limits by 2028 to protect Londoners’ health. - Through lobbying Parliament, we will also push for the human right to clean air to be enshrined in a new Clean Air Act that will shift national policies. London cannot put up a wall to keep out all the pollution from other areas but we can use our influence to change national laws to help. - We will not accept any road controlled by Transport for London (the red routes) having illegal levels of air pollution. You will find many policies for fewer cars ## TELL THE TRUTH ABOUT HEALTH RISKS - A Green Mayor will monitor air pollution properly and publicise the data widely so that people can better protect their health. We will ask people to cut car use particularly on high pollution days. We’ll bring in community car-free days and increase charges within our new smart road charging scheme to cut pollution when forecasts show danger. - We will boost funds for equipment and support local communities to carry out their own monitoring exercises, helping improve public understanding and identify local hotspots that need urgent action from Transport for London and local councils. - We will develop and install continuous monitoring equipment together with new ways of providing public displays of real-time air pollution data on the streets for example at bus stops, so people are constantly made aware of air pollution and are prompted to change the way they travel to avoid worsening the risks. - Greens will make sure all schools, colleges, universities, prisons, residential care homes, daycare centres and ## TUBE DUST RISKS BRUSHED UNDER THE CARPET Caroline Russell investigated the problem of particle pollution on the tube as chair of the London Assembly Environment committee. Now as a candidate for the Assembly again, she says: “When Sadiq Khan became Mayor in 2016 he pledged to tackle pollution and poor air on the London Underground. However, it is clear that little progress has been made, even in understanding the possible health risks. “There are very high concentrations of small particles in the underground and, worryingly, we just don’t know if they are harmful or not, and studies are being kept under wraps. “We are particularly concerned about contract cleaners working on the tube. No one is monitoring the health of these workers simply because they are not directly employed by Transport for London. This is unacceptable.” A Green Mayor will prioritise tackling tube dust. We will take action to identify any health harm and to reduce the exposure of workers and passengers to tube dust on all underground lines. We will prioritise the health of underground tube workers and cleaners with a comprehensive tube dust testing regime, regular health checks and appropriate protective equipment and mitigation measures, following academic research on long-term health impacts. hospitals are provided with air quality audits and given funding to develop air pollution and clean travel action plans to protect the people who use and work in these settings. - Planning policies and new funding streams will make sure all buildings have the right air filtration systems and protection for people inside them from the air pollution outside with priority given to settings located on main roads. ## OTHER SOURCES OF POLLUTION - We know that homes and buildings are also responsible for a large proportion of local air pollution. All buildings and indoor spaces, where health and safety or other duties apply, will comply fully with World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines. - A Green Mayor will refuse permission for new combined heat and power installations, incinerators, solid fuel burners, diesel farms or fracking, and require plans to close any existing units by 2030. - Evidence shows that incinerators, even modern plants, create huge air pollution risks for people living around them, as well as creating unwanted markets for fossil fuel based waste and depressing recycling levels. Greens in London have helped lead campaigns against new incinerators and are opposing those proposed in Edmonton and Belvedere. Alongside policies to cut waste and increase recycling, we will continue to oppose and protest against all new incineration capacity within London. - Greens will raise awareness of the environmental and health harms of wood and coal burning with the goal of phasing out open fires and woodburners. - Non-Road Mobile Machinery (NRMM) is a term describing mobile machines, and transportable industrial equipment or vehicles, which are fitted with an internal combustion engine and not intended for transporting goods or passengers, for example cranes and generators on construction sites. The current NRMM standards need to improve. A Green Mayor will bring forward world leading emission standards for NRMM throughout London from 2040 to 2030 with interim steps stage IV in 2023 and stage V in 2026. - Drone and laser light displays are far cleaner than conventional fireworks. For New Years Eve, a Green Mayor will only use non-polluting displays and will encourage all public display organisers to do the same. ## SAFETY AND JUSTICE The best measure of success of a police service is the absence of crime and disorder. The first job of the Mayor and the Metropolitan Police Service is therefore to keep Londoners safe by preventing as well as solving crime. Our vision for London is one of zero murders. It is so concerning to see the murder rate rising in London. Street homicides and domestic murders both increased in 2019, and the least well off areas of London were affected most. This is a crisis, but pulling together as a city there is much we can do. When we find ourselves with rising crime we must look to the causes, and find ways for the police to help prevent these crimes not just try to enforce our way out of problems. This means more police in local teams, based on our high streets. It means more investment in real prevention and a public health approach. And it means new training and skills to deal with violence against women, help young people facing problems, and to protect groups affected by hate crime. ## PREVENTING VIOLENT CRIME WITH A PUBLIC HEALTH APPROACH - A Green Mayor will set a city-wide goal to aim for zero murders within ten years in our city, along with dramatically reduced violent crime, and will work through a comprehensive public health approach to achieve this. - At the beginning of Mayor’s Question Time, a Green Mayor will publicly acknowledge all of the known murder victims in London since the last meeting, alongside acknowledging those killed on our roads. - Greens have been pushing for a public health approach to preventing crime from the start, and we are pleased the current Mayor has set up and funded a new Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) to work on reducing the deep causes and adverse childhood experiences that underlie increases in violence, learning from examples in other cities. However, the VRU is not independent of the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime, so a Green Mayor will correct this and make sure the VRU has complete independence and more funding to carry out its work, hold the Mayor to account, and recommend changes to policing. - Eliminating murders and violence to meet our ambitions also must mean focusing on education and community-level work to reach potential perpetrators and encourage them to seek help, creating more opportunities for community and personal conversations about difficult issues such as domestic violence, poverty, prejudice, relationships, masculinity, and morality and ethics. And being honest about the limitations of measures that primarily focus on deterrence and fear. - Sian Berry’s campaign since 2016 to expose cuts to youth services and win new funding through the Young Londoners Fund (YLF) has been successful, but the funding so far does not replace all the cuts that have been made under austerity. A Green Mayor will expand the YLF further, and do much more to lobby Government to reverse council cuts to budgets. Youth work in London needs to be provided at gold standard levels, accessible to every young person not just those facing difficulties – our young people deserve nothing less. - Within police budgets, a Green Mayor will find new funding to expand diversion and early interventions. This will include making support from the current Divert programme available to every young person aged 18-25 who comes into police custody, (and similarly for programmes for under-18s) and expanding the number of youth workers available in hospital A&E and their ability to support young people for longer and refer them to appropriate services and support. - A Green Mayor will never give up on pushing the Government to make youth services a statutory service and to fund councils to provide a comprehensive programme of youth centres and youth workers. - We will identify every possible way to support youth services and support for young Londoners to thrive through GLA budgets. ## RESTORE COMMUNITY POLICING - The Metropolitan Police Service currently has 12 Basic Command Units (BCUs), which each look after several boroughs. These should be given more power, finances and responsibility to allow policing in London to be more locally focussed and accountable, including re-establishing local police bases. - Local commanders will be empowered to take more of a lead on policing strategies for London. In addition, this provides the opportunity to diversify police leadership and build trust, in particular with London’s Black community. - Greens will give police teams the time and resources to develop new local work plans and areas of focus (for example to include burglary, robbery, vehicle crime and fraud) in conjunction with revived Safer Neighbourhood Panels at ward and borough level. - A Green Mayor will use every possible resource to bring more officers back into local ward teams and make them more effective, including recruiting new police officers with new Government funding, and making the case for more. - Greens opposed the closure of local police stations and neighbourhood hubs, like the one on Streatham High Street, in 2017. We understand that staffing these contact points when officer numbers were low was difficult, but with our plans to increase strength in local teams we will also plan to reopen and create more local shop fronts and bases for community police on our high streets. - We will improve the diversity of the Met to finally achieve a service that represents Londoners, reintroducing residency requirements (along with housing policies to allow more officers to return to living in the city) and setting ambitious targets for the number of officers who are women and from African, Caribbean, Asian, Latino and ## YOUTH SERVICES FUNDING SUCCESS Thanks to campaigning work by Sian Berry throughout her term as a London Assembly Member since 2016, youth work in London has been supported with an extra £70 million, in the teeth of biting government cuts to councils. In the Assembly, Greens have researched and laid bare the cost of austerity to council youth services in a series of annual reports. These show nearly half of all youth service budgets have been cut by councils since 2011, and over 100 youth centres closed. Sian Berry’s latest report in March 2021, shows the additional impacts of the pandemic making youth work in London even harder. - Greens will never give up on pushing the Government to reverse austerity measures and fund councils to provide a comprehensive programme of youth centres and youth workers, and make youth services a statutory service. - A Green Mayor will continuously add to GLA funding for youth work and youth centres across London. We will identify every possible way to support youth services and support for young Londoners to thrive through GLA budgets. - Our Assembly Members will continue to listen to young people and gather data on the impact of cuts on their lives and the services they need. # DRAMATIC CUTS TO LOCAL POLICE TEAMS BITE Assembly candidates Andrée Frieze (South West London) and Tim Kiely (City and East) have researched the number of officers working in local ward teams in their areas of London. They found a consistent drop, since the current Mayor took over in 2016, in the number of police staff in each Safer Neighbourhood Team and a big drop in available police front counters in the Central East area under both the previous and current Mayors. These cuts have taken place against a background of a reduction in Government funding to London since 2010. Officers have also been reorganised into larger Basic Command Units that consist of multiple boroughs. Local policing has clearly suffered from these changes. Green councillors and Assembly candidates across London are listening to local communities and hearing huge concerns about the impact on street crimes like muggings, and a reduction in investigations and convictions for crimes like burglaries. Andrée, who is a Councillor in Richmond, says: “Richmond town, the busiest centre in the borough for residents and tourists has no police station, and we can see the impact in longer response times and more crimes in the area, which has meant local businesses have stepped in with more security. “This isn’t a sustainable way to build safer local communities, and these cuts must be reversed. Only a Green Mayor will recognise the importance of local policing, and make local police team strength a real priority.” ## LOCAL POLICE TEAMS: OFFICERS AND PCSOs ### SINCE 2016 * **SW London:** DOWN 53% * **Central East:** DOWN 63% ## POLICE FRONT COUNTERS: ### SINCE 2012: DOWN FROM 9 TO 2 Central East London In 2018, borough commands in Richmond, Wandsworth, Merton and Kingston were merged into a single South West London unit, and Hackney and Tower Hamlets became a Central East unit. other minority ethnic groups to reflect the local community, including a target for 50:50 gender balanced recruitment. * A Green Mayor will lobby for a temporary relaxation in rules that prevent positive action in recruitment to accelerate this process within the upcoming new recruitment drives that will set the scene for a decade of policing. * We will introduce a clear strategy for identifying areas of underrepresented talent, increasing mentoring programmes and targeted training in order to actively promote women and African, Caribbean, Asian, Latino and other minority ethnic group officers. Strategies similar to the successful NHS Race Equality Standard will be adopted. * A Green Mayor will ensure that all Basic Command Units in London sign up to and follow the Home Office Best Use of Stop and Search (BUSS) scheme * We will review the role, relevance, activities and staffing of all central police teams and taskforces, with the aim to divert resources to increase local team strength further. * A Green Mayor will recruit, train and assign more detectives to support local teams and improve the overall ability to investigate local crimes, alongside more capacity for local teams to obtain evidence. * We will work with local officers to review how their time is spent, look at whether pressure of time is keeping them in cars rather than on foot or bike, and improve training and job satisfaction and the ability to plan local work in a bottom-up way. This will help reduce turnover in local teams and build up community understanding and trust. * We will expand the number of Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) back to at least their 2016 strength across London. * We will replace arbitrary officer targets with more sophisticated frontline capacity targets, with a particular focus on the capacity for neighbourhood and community policing. This will take into account ‘abstractions’ of officers to police major events, and help to lobby for a fairer settlement from Government to cover our duties as a capital city, which falls far below London’s needs currently. * Safer Neighbourhood Boards and panels that represent local communities at borough and ward level are run by volunteers but need more funding and support to increase their activity and involve a wider range of Londoners in their work. We will work through an enlarged engagement team within the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime and provide new funding to double the membership and activity levels of these bodies within two years, and find new ways to measure their impact and influence. * Alongside British Transport Police and Transport for London, a Green Mayor will work to make the retention times for CCTV on public transport more consistent (Sian Berry’s work has exposed this ranges from 2 to 28 days, meaning evidence is often lost) and publicise these retention times so that victims know they have only a limited time to report crimes. ## NO MORE VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN * A Green Mayor will ensure that initiatives through the London Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) Consortium are fully funded to meet the needs of survivors of violence and those facing domestic violence or harm. These include advice and counselling, work to end harmful practices including female genital mutilation and forced marriage, and integrated support for young women and girls. * Specialist support services for different communities are vital in making sure women feel confident in receiving appropriate and understanding support when they need help, and we will defend and promote these services across London, particularly in the face of austerity and any future potential cuts by councils. * We will also dedicate new resources to support Independent Domestic Violence Advocates (IDVAs) within A&E and primary care, and find new housing funding to improve options for move-on accommodation for women leaving refuges. * And we will redouble efforts, led by the Assembly since 2018, to introduce a national register of domestic abusers to help women identify and avoid risks from violent partners. * Sexual violence cases have more than doubled in recent years but rates of detection and sanctions against perpetrators have fallen. On the Assembly, Greens have explored problems within police teams facing huge workloads and inadequate resources, the lack of contact time with Independent Sexual Violence Advocates (ISVAs), and challenges due to the volume and intrusiveness of digital evidence required from victims (‘digital strip searches’). * It is clear that not only more resources, but new ways of working are needed across the board in sexual violence cases. A Green Mayor will institute an urgent victim-led review of sexual violence in London working from first principles and leading to new resources, improved police and support practices, calls for changes in the law and any other measures needed. London’s Victim’s Commissioner would take the lead on this work. ## VICTIMS AND THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM * The interactions between victimhood, adverse experiences, community confidence and the risk of crime at a population level is a key part of the public health approach to prevention, and our new approaches to drugs and violence in our policies in this manifesto are part of recognising this and building real prevention into our policies at every level. - The creation of a Victim’s Commissioner for London was an important step forward for London. A Green Mayor will increase the resources available to the commissioner and the influence of the role, and involve them fully in new initiatives on hate crime, race equality and road crime to make sure victims’ voices are heard and involved in all new decisions. - A Green Mayor will change the approach to witness and victim interviews, embedding psychologists and trauma experts to allow people to give their account in a trauma-informed setting. This extends the Forensic Interviewing Psychology (FIP) service currently offered to children who experience sexual violence. This approach is particularly important for anyone who has experienced violent crimes, has a mental health condition and/or uses drugs. - Police training and support will be expanded to make sure officers and victim support services refer trauma victims to the right support services as a continuation of their duty of care to victims. This could include young people that witness violent attacks being referred to counselling services. - Police need to adopt a trauma-informed approach throughout their work on violence. It is clear from activities exposed by Green Assembly Members, such as showing pictures of large knives on social media and in presentations to primary age children, as well as tactics like bringing in a task force to do mass stop and search after violent incidents, that a focus on the trauma faced by communities and the need for community support are not embedded in police practices and training. We will put in place a new programme to support community-led and sensitive trauma- informed support in local areas affected by violence. - Restorative justice has been piloted in London and a number of other areas in recent years. It is time to expand this work to mainstream it within a major city, and London is the ideal city to do this. A Green Mayor will seek devolved powers and funding to make London a centre of good practice in restorative justice. ## SAFER ROADS - A Green Mayor will act with far more urgency on London’s Vision Zero strategy to eliminate road deaths with a comprehensive set of policies and priorities. Under successive Mayors, getting to zero road deaths in London has been held back by under-investment, poor standards, and low ambition. - A Green Mayor will fully restore and increase the strength of the Roads and Transport Police Command, and fund a new team who will make cycle theft a priority. Theft of bikes is a hidden crime wave that puts many off cycling and causes distress and hardship to those who can least afford to lose their bikes. - Motorcycle-enabled crime is linked with motorcycle theft and the increase in theft has increased insurance and costs. We will continue to support efforts to prevent and target motorcycle theft, and work with boroughs to increase security for parking bays. - Victims of road crime need more support, including where there is no prosecution. We will make sure victim services are available and promoted to all those who are victims of road crime and crashes. Dedicated support organisations for road victims and families will be better signposted by these services. - Road crime will be better recorded and reported by police. Driving offences that kill and injure will be recorded alongside the number of victims. - We will lobby the Government to include road crime in the Crime Survey of England and Wales and fund London’s Victim’s Commissioner to survey road crash victims for levels of satisfaction with their treatment and results of their cases (including where no action is taken) and publish the results. There will be an annual Listening Day for crash victims and families within City Hall. - We will invest in increasing standards of investigation for road crimes, and publish best practice standards for police attendance and action for fatalities and serious injuries. Each fatal crash will be reviewed with an annual report of the outcome of investigations and systematic learning. - Online reporting for less serious roads offences will be improved, working in a victim-led way to make sure the process is simple, that it links seamlessly to the retrieval of CCTV and other footage, and that the outcomes of case investigations are reported back promptly. - Greens will lobby for traffic justice reform at a national level, aiming to secure changes so that driving offences are included in reported crimes, and those that lead to death or serious injury are treated like other violent crimes. Judicial outcomes and effective sanctions should be focused on offences that carry the greatest risks, including speeding, extreme speeding, red light running, close passing of people cycling, mobile phone use, careless and dangerous driving, drink and drug driving as well as uninsured and disqualified drivers. We will support campaigns to improve action against drivers who park on pavements, and for dangerous driving charges to be pursued when speeding offences take place through pedestrian crossings. - Greens have been working to make sure hit and run offences are reported, including judicial outcomes, and the lack of good data is disturbing. We will publish full data on road crime in a new dashboard and make sure all statistics are reported accurately and promptly. - We will review judicial outcomes for all reported driving offences and seek to reduce the variation between boroughs and police command units. With more local police team capacity, police priorities can be better focused on high- risk locations and cuts to the support for Community Road Watch sessions will be reversed. > A Green Mayor will commemorate road victims appropriately with a minute’s silence on the World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims. Alongside murder victims, she will mark and acknowledge all the known people killed on our roads since the last meeting, at the beginning of each Mayor’s Question Time. ## FIRE AND HOME SAFETY ### LEARNING FROM THE GRENFELL DISASTER > There must be justice for the people lost in the Grenfell Tower disaster, and we will support the Justice for Grenfell campaign to push for no more delays in prosecuting those responsible and learning the lessons. Greens will always keep those lost in our hearts, commemorate fully their deaths every year, and will make sure disaster responses are coordinated better so that no community ever again feels abandoned, marginalised or ignored if disaster strikes. > The Grenfell disaster was not only caused by cladding: internal defects are also causing huge risks in new buildings and those refurbished under the lax regulations of recent years. We will carry out a major review of the transparency, governance and quality of major works of all kinds on social housing buildings. Resident voices were ignored and marginalised at Grenfell, and resident empowerment and scrutiny must be at the heart of reforms in how these contracts and works are planned and monitored. > Far too many Londoners still live in dangerous blocks, paying for waking watches and unable to sell or move, while facing enormous bills for works. This is a true scandal, and a Green Mayor will be a clear and loud voice for residents in making sure Government and building owners cover all the costs of making homes safe. The Building Safety Fund must cover all buildings, regardless of height, and internal defects not just cladding. > In the Assembly, Greens asked the Information Commissioner to issue advice on transparency so that residents can know the fire risks in their council and housing association homes. A Green Mayor will make sure every resident in London can monitor risks and take action, by collecting all published fire safety and risk assessments, as well as health and safety reports in a searchable database. We will campaign for every landlord and freeholder to provide residents with fully accessible data on their homes, including major works. > A Green Mayor’s online fire and home safety hub will include clear advice on rights for tenants and leaseholders and access to find legal advice and support for mental health. > Greens proposed the first small business resilience support fund in the wake of the Grenfell disaster, to support small firms whose business has been hit by emergencies. The Mayor set up a small fund, but we would make this permanent to make sure there are no delays whenever emergencies strike, and that small businesses can always get help straight away. > London Fire Brigade’s budget is overstretched and relies on reserves. A new long-term settlement from Government is needed so that our firefighters can fulfil all the demands of dealing with fires, floods, terror attacks and other emergencies, while also carrying out important risk prevention and education work to stop future disasters. A Green Mayor will push the Government to make sure our fire service is funded properly through the Comprehensive Spending Review to protect Londoners’ lives. **A DUTY TO RESPECT EVERYONE’S RIGHTS** London is known for being a diverse and tolerant city, but we still have a long way to go before we are all equal and everyone’s rights are respected. Too many of us face discrimination and barriers because of who we are. Whether we are women, people of colour, LGBTIQA+, disabled people, older people or younger people, Greens will ensure that the voice of every single Londoner is heard in City Hall every day. While some of us face specific barriers in life, we are all subject to the erosion of our civil liberties, with technologies like facial recognition creeping into our public spaces, and policing using more tactics like spithoods and tasers. Everyone in London should be able to live a safe, fulfilling and joyful life, free from discrimination, inequality and hatred, and be able to trust public services not to discriminate. Greens will remove any barriers which stand in the way of everyone’s rights being respected. ## REAL JUSTICE The consent and trust of citizens is paramount and we cannot have more failures like the introduction of facial recognition, the expansion of suspicionless stop and search or the discriminatory Gangs Matrix. Tactics like this sound good in soundbites but each of them, when studied by experts, have been found to have operated in a discriminatory way and failed to respect Londoners’ human rights. Recent failings undermine trust and break the basic principles of policing by consent, which have governed our police service ever since it was first set up in the 19th century.* ## WORK WITH LONDONERS TO RESET OUR CONTRACT WITH THE POLICE * A Green Mayor will sit down with Londoners, police officers and community groups and review the way we police our city from first principles, putting in place new processes to review new tactics, and focus on preventing crime. * We will begin with a Citizen’s Assembly to review and restore the original principles of policing by consent, and make recommendations for tactics like stop and search, the use of force and new technology. * We will improve transparency, working with the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime to give Londoners more information about how policing is planned and governed, and its effectiveness evaluated. * Existing intrusive tactics will be reviewed and stopped if they cannot prove their effectiveness in improving public safety. * We will expand the powers of the London Policing Ethics Panel to be more proactive and extend its terms of reference to make sure it engages more with the public and citizens’ rights groups before making binding recommendations. * The use of all new technologies and tactics would be put to the test by the Ethics Panel alongside human rights legislation and our restored principles for policing, with no trial or operational use by police permitted until this process had been completed. There will be complete bans put in place where technologies or tactics fail these tests. ## STAND AGAINST HATE CRIME * Greens oppose racism, antisemitism, islamophobia, misogyny, homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, and hate speech and actions of all kinds against any minority group. * Hate crime on public transport is increasing and a Green Mayor will make this a priority, making sure that strong communication and information is provided to all Londoners for how to * https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/policing-by-consent/definition-of-policing-by-consent # RESETTING THE WAY # WE POLICE OUR CITY Green Assembly Member Sian Berry has consistently challenged the Mayor and the Metropolitan Police Commissioner over the way new police tactics are being introduced. During the current Mayor’s term Londoners have seen new tactics introduced including: * Facial recognition cameras on the streets, including work with private companies to share facial data. * A massive increase in Stop and Search being conducted under Section 60 orders, which removes the requirement for reasonable suspicion, or for reasons to be given to citizens for why they are being searched. * A big increase in officers carrying tasers, with a relaxation in rules that said two officers should be present when they are deployed against people. * Mobile fingerprint scanners being used to check people’s identities on the streets against crime and immigration databases. * Spit hoods being placed on suspects in custody, with plans made to use these on the streets too. When new tactics are brought in, we believe there should be a full public discussion, decisions made by ethics experts and elected representatives working with the people, and transparency rather than the ‘use first explain later’ attitude we have seen in recent years. New equipment and tactics that introduce intrusion into people’s daily lives, impact on human rights or involve the use of force need to be discussed well before they are used against the public or we risk breaking down the principles of policing by consent irreparably. * A Green Mayor will make the renewal and strengthening of fundamental policing principles a major focus of their work, bringing officers and police staff at all levels into dialogue with Londoners as part of long-term and far-reaching work that will include a Citizen’s Assembly to work out how to rebuild trust and confidence in policing using these principles. prevent, react to and report hate crimes or abuse they experience or witness. Work to standardise and communicate CCTV retention times will also help with this. - We will make sure all police and GLA public service staff are trained to recognise all kinds of hate crime (including disability hate crime which is severely under-reported and under recognised) and to assist victims in reporting crimes to the police or third parties, and in giving advice on CCTV. - A Green Mayor will also treat misogyny as a hate crime, following the lead of Nottinghamshire to have the police record, and treat more seriously, crimes that are motivated by or exacerbated by hatred for women. Women as a group facing discrimination are protected by equalities laws but not currently by hate crime legislation, and this inconsistency needs to be corrected by action and evidence gathering, as well as changes in the law. This will be backed up by training and a wide communication campaign to women to urge them to report misogynistic crimes. - Greens are committed to the principle of ‘nothing about us without us’ and we will involve disabled people’s representatives more closely in policy-making at the highest level across all areas of the Mayor’s work, including working with the police to tackle disability hate crime. - We will also ensure MOPAC collects and reports data on Gypsy, Roma and Traveller victims of race hate crime and judicial outcomes. - We will invest in policing and support for faith groups at risk of extremist attacks. Every place of worship that wishes it should have access to appropriate advice, support to improve physical security and a dedicated police contact for reporting concerns. ## SUPPORT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS AND PRIVACY - A Green Mayor will halt the use of live facial recognition in London’s policing, and demand that no further use is made of this technology until national policy has been debated in Parliament. We will prepare evidence and demands for a national ban to be implemented except under the most extreme and limited circumstances, and only then under exceptional scrutiny and democratic oversight and evaluation for every deployment. - We will make sure that data held on citizens that is not needed is destroyed. Video data from police helicopters will be deleted in a time frame in line with the rest of policing standards. Records, including biometric data, of those not convicted of a crime must be removed from the National Police database. - We will work to stop all reporting by police of victims of crime to the Home Office, given the implications for confidence in reporting crime and the potential for exploitation that this data sharing creates. - We will put the Prevent programme in London under permanent review, make sure it focuses appropriate levels of resource on right-wing extremism and work to stop the conflation of legitimate activities such as campaigning against racism and peaceful protest with violent extremism. We will hold regular forums with groups and communities to discuss problems with Prevent and help find better ways to develop a positive counter-narrative. Meanwhile, we will campaign against Prevent as a national strategy. - We will roll back on the increase in stop and search and end the use of section 60 powers that allow for suspicionless stop and search except in emergency situations in small areas, authorised by the most senior officers. We have learned in the past that these tactics can be seriously counterproductive, and the creation of new policies and processes of engagement with communities when there is a risk of violence will be a key part of our review of policing from first principles. - We will consider in the light of the review and recent changes and deletions from the Gangs Matrix whether this approach, which still maintains significant disparities and labels people with potentially out of date and discriminatory terminology is the right way to reduce risks. Given its history and failings, we believe a new approach and an end to the current Gangs Matrix is needed. - We will make urgent provision for the end of intrusive ‘digital strip searches’ that are discouraging survivors and victims from taking action against sexual and domestic abuse. The police and CPS must work with survivor representatives to find ways to collect relevant digital evidence from victims of sexual and domestic abuse, without taking and revealing excessive amounts of irrelevant private content to defence lawyers. - We will help police learn from recent issues with protest policing, and review the goals of policing non-violent protest, focusing more efficiently on managing the impact on traffic, maintaining safety for everyone and not on trying to simply shut down peaceful demonstrations, with the huge resource cost involved. - Our review of policing protests will also include working with disabled activists to create new guidance and standards for how police facilitate disabled people’s right to protest and how disabled people are treated on arrest. - We will hold private security and the private companies that hire them accountable especially around the use of public space and how their rules are communicated to the public in a transparent and proportionate way. ## WOMEN AND PRISON As part of her work on the London Assembly Police and Crime Committee, Sian Berry led an investigation in 2018 into the problems faced by women in the criminal justice system. With Holloway Prison closing, women offenders from London are being placed, often for short sentences, far away from family and the support services based in the city that can help make leaving prison easier. Women are more likely than men to be sentenced to prison for a first offence. The investigation found that convictions and short sentences for women, often for poverty-related crimes like shoplifting or non-payment of TV licences, were very often counterproductive, leading to lost jobs, homes and contact with children, potentially starting a new cycle of harm in the next generation. There are gaps in far too many services for women offenders and a completely new approach is needed. With a Green Mayor, this will include: * Police training must ensure that officers are equipped to take a gender-informed approach to risk, vulnerability and offending. We have to see more early problem-solving intervention and diversion by the police for women offenders and more information available to police about services that may help. * More community sentences from the criminal justice system, which should be of higher quality and include more support and diversion and the use of problem solving courts, as well as more use of of court disposals by police, to bring about a dramatic reduction in the number of London’s women who are counterproductively sent to prison for short sentences and for low-level and non-violent crime. * The establishment of women’s centres in the capital, as an alternative to prison, and similar provision for young women offenders. * Increased funding for the establishment of a full network of supportive women’s centres specifically for female offenders and those at risk of offending, including at the Holloway Prison site. * A new specific strand of Housing First provision from the GLA for women leaving prison, recognising their specific and complex needs, and more work towards the effective application of Homelessness Reduction Act duties to these Londoners. * Ensuring that full and comparable data is recorded and published by City Hall on the housing and employment options and outcomes for women leaving prison in London. * More support for education and skills training for women offenders, especially to help women offenders continue any education and skills training they have begun in prisons on their release. ## EQUALITY A Green Mayor will take action across every policy area to address economic and social inequality. Our policies for the economy show how Greens always take the lead on fairness, with new ideas and policies for fair pay, decent work and rights in the workplace. But too many groups of Londoners face structural inequalities and direct discrimination based on their race, culture, religion, gender, sexuality, age or other aspects of their identities. Solidarity is a vital part of being a Londoner, and of being a Green, and our policies in this chapter seek to fight for equality for all Londoners and build a more united city. O SEE MORE IN OUR CHAPTER A MISSION TO TRANSFORM OUR ECONOMY care, education and legal aid and to extend this to all residents of London. * We oppose the Government’s new points based immigration system, and will work with Londoners and London businesses to campaign against it * The 130,000 young people who are currently without documentation in London, through no fault of their own, will see a dedicated action plan from a Green Mayor, aimed at regularising all our young citizens and helping families with the cost of applications. We will continue to press the Government to give young Londoners with insecure immigration status immediate regularisation and faster routes to citizenship. * A Green Mayor will work with business groups to influence the Government to lower the ‘intended’ migrant threshold for skilled workers to a salary that is more typical of workers who fall into the Regulated Qualifications Framework level 3 category. We will also work to remove income thresholds from immigration rules altogether. * We will set up a new City Hall service specifically to provide help for refugees with the process of moving into secure housing in London, including help with tenancy deposits, after they win refugee status. Currently refugees only have 28 days to find secure housing before losing their asylum accommodation and we will campaign to extend this period too. * We will put together an action plan to increase naturalisation for more Londoners who do not yet have UK citizenship, working with voluntary groups and boroughs to raise awareness of rights and campaigning to reduce costs and artificial barriers to becoming settled in our city. * While the coronavirus crisis and its consequences continue, we will push the Government to suspend rules that prevent councils and the GLA from claiming for support for people with No Recourse to Public Funds. This is inhumane and councils and the Mayor must be supported to provide safe places to live for vulnerable people, whatever their status. * A Green Mayor will strengthen support for citizenship ceremonies, and do more to celebrate these occasions with all Londoners, not just in the annual ceremony in City Hall. * In order to participate, everyone should have the opportunity to become proficient in English. We will help to coordinate better access to English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) education across London, with support for concessionary fees for ESOL for asylum seekers and refugees, better understanding of what works and clear standards for providers, especially for young people. ## PRACTICAL SUPPORT FOR MIGRANTS * Greens support freedom of movement. London has been enriched by those who have come to make a life here. We will champion the rights of EU citizens living in London to keep their vote. We will also fight for the return of freedom of movement for our citizens to live and work throughout the EU. * A Green Mayor will fight to ensure that all EU citizens in London have their equal rights restored for access to housing, employment, welfare services, health aim will be to work with public services and civil society in London to build an environment where all those wishing to make London their home feel welcome. * We will make sure there is no sharing of information between immigration enforcement and services under the remit of the Mayor, including homelessness services. Where we do not have the power to change policy, we will campaign hard for reform, and will review the impact of policies such as police sharing of immigration status data and bring evidence of harm to policy-makers and MPs to bring about change. * A Green Mayor will continue to stand up against discriminatory ‘Right to Rent’ policies aimed at turning landlords into immigration officers and denying people their right to a home. * The treatment of our Windrush elders is a disgrace that still continues. Too many Londoners still await compensation and legal clarity. A Green Mayor will champion their cause and fight the government policies causing hardship * We demand an immediate halt of all Deportation flights. No such flights should be happening from London’s airports. A Green Mayor will challenge the legality and morality of these deportation flights and push for an end to the detention of asylum seekers, which is costly, traumatic and totally unnecessary. ## FIGHTING RACIST POLICIES * A Green Mayor will work to end the hostile environment in London, and mitigate its effects on our citizens. Our ## VALUING OUR DIVERSE COMMUNITIES * We will make sure every community in London has a voice in City Hall. A Green Mayor, along with a dedicated Deputy Mayor for London’s Voice will meet with representatives from London’s diverse communities and hold regular open-mic forums within City Hall. * Greens in City Hall have fought for the London Plan to recognise and protect the unique clusters of businesses and community services that communities have built from the ground up, including minority and LGBTIQA+ business clusters (for example the Latin Quarter at Elephant and Castle) as our ‘emerging heritage’ and will work to strengthen these policies further and protect more of our diverse community and faith-based sites, of both historic and more recent significance, through our heritage strategies. * Where different groups and cultures require specialist services, for example to support survivors of domestic or sexual violence, we will fund these without seeking to merge them into generic provision. * Greens will support all our community groups to celebrate champions and commemorate losses and historical injustices. Examples of our work already includes backing commemoration of the Grunwick strike, helping to win Assembly and City Hall support for a London AIDS memorial, supporting the Stop the Maangamizi campaign which includes a call for an All-Party Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry for Truth and Reparatory Justice for the trafficking of enslaved Africans, and we will support a permanent home for the Migration Museum. * A Green Mayor will confront racism and prejudice, including from an early age by broadening the London Curriculum to share a decolonised education in school, focussing on histories and role models from a diverse range of ethnicities and religions. * We will make sure that under-recognised holidays and commemorative days that celebrate our diverse citizens, such as Windrush Day and Gypsy, Roma and Traveller Month, are adequately celebrated in City Hall and promoted each year. * A Green Mayor will promote a positive narrative about the experience, history, cultural celebrations, diversity and value that people of African, Caribbean, Asian, Latino and other minority ethnic descent bring to our city. Greens on the London Assembly promoted a positive message about Notting Hill Carnival at a time when politicians from across the spectrum wanted it changed, moved or even cancelled. ## BACKING AFRICAN, CARIBBEAN, ASIAN, LATINO AND OTHER MINORITY ETHNIC LONDONERS * A Green Mayor will embrace and promote understanding between people of different faiths and none, for example, through supporting local-level interfaith forums, and encourage open working and collaboration between faith groups, the police, schools, voluntary groups and community organisations. * Greens have been successful in pushing for recruitment to City Hall, Transport for London, and London Fire Brigade jobs to be anonymous at the shortlisting stage to avoid race and gender bias. Anonymised applications are an important step in levelling the playing field for candidates of all backgrounds. From 2021 we will work to extend this policy to contractors and into the Mayor’s Good Work Standard for employers. * We will expand the categories of ethnicity data used for monitoring and policy development to highlight communities that are not adequately recognised, for example the Latino community. * We will put the Prevent programme in London under permanent review, make sure it focuses appropriate levels of resource on right-wing extremism and work to stop the conflation of legitimate activities such as campaigning against racism and peaceful protest with violent extremism. We will hold regular forums with groups and communities to discuss problems with Prevent and help find better ways to develop a positive counter-narrative. Meanwhile, we will campaign against Prevent as a national strategy. * Greens will reaffirm and highlight the contribution made by refugees, asylum seekers and those who move here to work and do more to ensure people are able to be fully included in their local community and economy. * A Green Mayor will improve the lives of Gypsies, Roma and Travellers in London and promote their right to equal treatment at a strategic level. We will carry out a strategic review with boroughs to identify the need across London for suitable land for Gypsy, Roma and Traveller sites. We will work with boroughs to implement a negotiated approach to stopping places in London, oppose Government plans to increase enforcement powers and criminalise trespass, and support a London-wide standard for site management and tenants’ rights. * We will work to address the workplace discrimination Gypsy, Roma and Traveller people face from many employers and apprenticeship providers, and ensure police and the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) record and act upon data on hate crime faced by the community. We will include Gypsy, Roma and Traveller health and mental health in the Mayor’s Health Inequality Strategy. ## SUPPORT FOR ALL AGES * A Green Mayor will increase the powers and capacity of London’s Youth Assembly to make sure of a real voice and real influence for young Londoners within City Hall. * The Green Party was the first to support votes at 16, and we will commit to a target of making sure young Londoners have this right at least by the time of the 2024 London elections. * We will work with schools to “poverty proof” the school day, including hunger and period poverty, and make sure young people are involved in efforts to reduce holiday hunger. * We will fully involve the Youth Assembly and young people’s representatives in the study and scrutiny of the excessive and discriminatory use of school exclusions and off-rolling, and to co-create an action plan for GLA-funded work. * A Green Mayor will appoint an Elders’ Champion, a representative in City Hall with the task of monitoring and co-ordinating the effects of all the Mayor’s policies on older people. * We will recognise the expertise and energy of older people by encouraging employers to offer more part-time and flexible work as an alternative to full-time work or sudden retirement. We support living wage roles that give employees a guaranteed amount of hours, not zero-hours contracts. * Greens will improve access to digital services for older people including access to broadband at home and via mobile devices. This is even more important as local authorities move more of their services online. Work to improve familiarity with online services can also provide valuable intergenerational contacts. * Many households fail to claim council tax exemptions for dementia and we will make sure City Hall resources are used to promote this benefit. FOR MORE ABOUT NEW POWERS FOR THE YOUTH ASSEMBLY SEE OUR CHAPTER A PROMISE TO SHARE MY POWER ## SUPPORT FOR LGBTIQA+ RIGHTS * A Green Mayor will dedicate a suitable GLA owned building to create a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex, Questioning/Queer, Asexual (LGBTIQA+) community space to serve as a much needed hub for people, particularly young people and an older generation marginalised by commercial venues, seeking information and support to be confident in their sexuality or gender identity. * We have backed the building of a London AIDS memorial to ensure the lives lost are not forgotten. We have already helped win Assembly and Mayoral team support for this project, and we will support this work until it is complete. * We will help more communities and local authorities designate LGBTIQA+ venues as assets of community value and continue to support the London-wide designation of our emerging heritage through the London Plan. We will also support London’s boroughs and neighbourhood forums in applying other planning protections to prevent their closure. * A Green Mayor will implement policy to make London the most trans-inclusive city in the world. * Too many trans people face barriers in accessing healthcare, employment and housing. Discrimination and violence are a day to day reality. A Green Mayor will launch a commission into the needs of trans Londoners, with a goal of developing a trans rights strategy for London. * Greens will work with GLA group organisations and local authorities to ensure they are sensitive to the needs of trans and non-binary people, have training on trans awareness and inclusion, and act on discrimination. Greens in City Hall have already helped introduce policies that allow for gender-neutral honorifics (including Mx) in official documents within the GLA. * We will produce a LGBTIQA+ Housing Strategy for London. This will work with local councils to build a pan-London support pathway of accommodation and support services for LGBTIQA+ people. ## ENABLING ALL OUR DISABLED CITIZENS Many of the most damaging changes being made to how disabled people are supported are being made by the Government at a national level. But we can help in London by building a better city where more people can participate without being confronted by artificial barriers. * Greens are committed to the principle of ‘nothing about us without us’ and to involving disabled people’s representatives more closely in policy-making at the highest level across all areas of the Mayor’s work, including working with the police to tackle disability hate crime. * We will fund LGBTIQA+ awareness training for staff within the GLA who commission all kinds of services, and for delivery staff in commissioned services. * A Green Mayor will establish a coordinated approach to data collection to ensure that the needs of LGBTIQA+ Londoners are clear, and to assess the impact of all GLA work on these groups of Londoners. * We will embed community-led principles in all of these actions to ensure there is ‘nothing about us without us’ with. Achieving this will mean appropriate funding for projects is required from the start, and more long-term thinking rather than the short and piecemeal grants that tend to be given for specialist initiatives. * We will appoint a disability equality policy adviser and create a new forum for London Deaf and Disabled People’s Organisations to feed into policy development, particularly on housing, crime and transport. * We will commit strategic, long-term investment to community organisations that tackle inequality, poverty and discrimination against deaf and disabled people, including funding to expand advice, advocacy provision and hate crime support services. * A Green Mayor will recognise the social model of disability and ensure that all people are able to benefit from jobs, homes, skills and all the other opportunities we can provide. * We will commit funds to the London Access Forum and to making public transport and more underground stations accessible for more people with disabilities and mobility difficulties more quickly with new funding. * Greens will ensure the London Health Inequalities Strategy and London Health Improvement Board address the health inequalities experienced by deaf and disabled people. * We will include more policies aimed at improving access in the Good Work Standard for employers, and ensure all service providers working on behalf of the GLA demonstrate a track record of providing accessible and inclusive services and employing people with disabilities. * Special Educational Needs (SEN) and therapy provision across London is not adequate and this has a long-term impact on the education, development and employment prospects of people with additional needs. We will use partnership working, lobbying Government and the adult education and skills budgets at the GLA to address these gaps. * We will help spread best practice and learn from Transport for London’s ‘Steps into work’ internships programme to encourage more employers to run supported internships as a pathway into work for local young people with Special Educational Needs (SEN). * We will do more to ensure that apprenticeships, other initiatives for skills and employment (for people with qualifications and experience) are tailored to help disabled people achieve their potential and that the Access To Work scheme is promoted to employers. ## DEMOCRATIC POWER ### BRING DIVERSITY INTO CITY HALL Greens on London Assembly committees have pioneered new ways of bringing community-level evidence into investigations, conducting research and holding open-mic sessions in recent years to hear the voices of the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller community, EU citizens, social housing tenants, people living in cold and damp homes, people living in temporary accommodation, women in the criminal justice system and property guardians. * We will make sure that future Assembly scrutiny even more fully involves relevant communities and groups, including setting the scope of investigations, and hearing evidence directly from those affected. The characteristics and diversity of guests giving evidence to Assembly scrutiny will be monitored and made public to drive improvements. * We will make sure that public meetings in City Hall encourage diverse communities to be engaged and participate in democratic processes, so that their experience directly informs policy and other decisions made. * We will work through improved training, mentoring, promotion, recruitment practices and retention to ensure that GLA staff at all levels are diverse and reflect the population of London. ## WORK FOR MORE ASSEMBLY POWERS Greens are strong advocates for strengthening the role of the London Assembly to better hold the Mayor to account and for more checks and balances in our governance. * We will push for a change from a two-thirds Assembly majority vote being needed to veto or amend mayoral strategies or the budget, to a simple majority. * We will press for the Assembly to have the legal power, like Parliament, to summon any witnesses responsible for policies and services that affect Londoners to appear before them. ## POWER FOR YOUNG PEOPLE The power of young people’s voices has been shown by the impact of young climate activists and school strikes, and the work Greens have done in the London Assembly to support youth services was prompted directly by the voices of young campaigners in 2016. A Green Mayor will embed the voices of young people in City Hall scrutiny and policy making. * The Green Party was the first to support votes at 16, and we will commit to a target of making sure young Londoners have this right at least by the time of the 2024 London elections and will ## A PROMISE TO SHARE MY POWER G reens believe that real change doesn’t get handed down from above: it comes from below, from the grassroots. We will live up to our values and principles of leadership, and make sure the power we win in City Hall is shared with the people of London, in as many ways as possible. As well as bringing a wider range of diverse voices in to shape decision making, we will hand over power directly to citizens at the right level to make decisions, and help Londoners win more control over their own lives, homes, and communities. We will also change how budgets are controlled, which kinds of organisations win funding from the Mayor, and boost the transparency and quality of information we provide to hold us, and each other, to account. ## BOTTOM-UP LEADERSHIP Greens believe that decisions should be made closest to those they affect. In City Hall, Greens on the London Assembly have worked to improve bottom-up leadership in London and making sure everyone’s voice is heard. We have worked to Involve those directly affected by policies in the production of reports and recommendations by the Assembly, including social housing residents, women in the criminal justice system, property guardians, people affected by cold, damp homes, and precarious workers. We have also: * Expanded the use of open-mic sessions to gather evidence directly from Londoners in Assembly work. * Championed social housing residents’ rights in the Housing Committee, producing a major report looking at resident rights and engagement. * Put forward budget amendments to boost funding for community-led housing, the promotion of co-ops and to fund renters unions. And we have called for real co-production in the London Plan process, which Sian Berry has pledged to carry through if elected Mayor. This manifesto includes new ways to amplify the voices of Londoners, including a new Elders Champion, and more powers for London’s Youth Assembly, including to propose budget amendments. campaign nationally for the right to vote at the age of 16 in all other elections. * A Green Mayor will increase the powers and capacity of London’s Youth Assembly to make sure of a real voice and real influence for young Londoners within City Hall. The changes we will make include: * Nominations for the Youth Assembly will continue to happen through local borough democratic processes, but with six additional members, to allow for new nominations from students at London colleges and universities, raising the age limit for these members to 21 * There will be a number of Youth Assembly Mayor’s Question Time sessions every year with the Mayor. * The Youth Assembly will also be able to submit written Mayor’s Questions using the same system as Assembly Members, with the Mayor required to answer. These questions and answers will be published on the GLA website. * The Youth Assembly will be resourced to hold proper scrutiny meetings similar to an Assembly Committee, in order to investigate issues, make recommendations, and write reports. The London Assembly would support them through their powers of summons, making sure the Mayor’s team, and representatives of other bodies over which the Assembly has summons powers, attend to be held to account by young people. * Resources and secretariat staff will be made available to better promote the Youth Assembly particularly to students currently underrepresented, and to forge better connections between members and schools, universities and youth organisations across London, enabling young Londoners across the city to feed into its work. * The Youth Assembly will also be able to propose a budget amendment, sponsored by the Assembly and put to the vote during the annual budget meetings. * Youth Assembly members would not be full time as almost all of them would be in education or training, but they will be remunerated for the time required to do their work, at the London Living Wage. No-one should be deterred from taking part in the Assembly because they need to do part-time work outside of school and college. ## SUPPORT OUR EUROPEAN UNION CITIZENS * A Green Mayor will never abandon our one million European Union (EU) citizens. We will campaign for European Union (EU) citizens to retain the vote in local and London elections and for settled residents to be given a new right to vote in future General Elections and referendums. O SEE MORE POLICIES FOR EU CITIZENS IN OUR CHAPTER **A DUTY TO RESPECT EVERYONE’S RIGHTS** ## MORE POWER FOR LONDON Despite more than twenty years of having a Mayor and Assembly, too many vital decisions affecting London are still made by Whitehall. Greens have consistently pushed for more powers to come from Government to City Hall. - A Green Mayor will put the case for full planning and housing policy devolution for our city. In the Assembly, Sian Berry has already pushed the current Mayor to do more to ask for rent control powers, but the housing crisis means we need much more control over the homes we live in. - We will lobby for full control of traffic laws at a London level, so that the Mayor and boroughs can make decisions that will simplify enforcement of parking and speed rules, and the process of making changes to streets through traffic orders. - Other taxation policies like council tax and stamp duty should be fully devolved to London, as well as powers to determine new taxes like a Land Value Tax, and a Tourist Tax on hotel visitors. - Just as in Scotland and Wales, the Mayor and London Assembly need a direct say over the NHS, including the legal right to information, and scrutiny over its function in London, as well as education and the criminal justice system and many aspects of environmental policy, such as waste management, flood protection and energy. - Greens have long argued that the City of London Corporation needs to become more like a London borough, with its police service brought into the Metropolitan Police, and its archaic privileges and assets brought into a rationalised devolution agreement between the GLA and Government. Greens in Parliament and in City Hall will continue to put the case for assessing the benefits of this. - Many of the policies we want mean working with other city mayors and local government across the UK to put the case for more devolution to their areas and regions alongside London. A Green Mayor would be a campaigning Mayor, forging coalitions of cities and regions across the country to win a fairer balance of power for everyone. ## ECONOMIC DEMOCRACY ### BRING POWER CLOSER TO THE GRASSROOTS - A Green Mayor will introduce participatory budgeting for up to 20 per cent of the GLA budget by 2024, helping boroughs and resident groups make spending plans, which are then put to the people to choose where best to spend funds. - We will reform the boards of all GLA organisations running London to involve a wider range of citizen representatives, not just those from expert bodies and industry. - In all our work, we will bring in more collaboration with the voluntary and community sector, particularly with minority, ethnic and disabled communities. A Green Mayor will meet with community organisations more often than they do with business groups. - Volunteer, civic, community and faith groups play a huge part in London’s life and community, but too many voluntary and community sector (VCS) organisations struggle with premises and covering staffing and core costs. A Green Mayor would aim to provide no grants to the VCS that were shorter than three years, and would make sure full costs, including core expenses and evaluation, were covered by grants. We will embed good practice in proportional value-for-money and social impact assessment into all our work with the VCS. - Much of the work described elsewhere in this manifesto, such as diversion of potential or first-time offenders from the criminal justice system, and initiatives like enhanced social prescribing policies, depend on a wide range of VCS organisations being available for referrals, and known to practitioners. Greens in City Hall would work with the VCS to make sure voluntary and community activity in London is well documented and networked, with good, up to date information available to all relevant public services, including GLA group organisations. ## CONTROL OVER YOUR HOMES - A Green Mayor will support independent renters unions to expand, with grants for London-wide and local groups supporting private renters’ rights. - Guidance for estate proposals will be rewritten with fewer exceptions, proper appraisal of all the options available, and with strong requirements for resident-led planning to be supported from the start of the process. - Existing ballot exemptions will all be reviewed, and requirements for a final say for residents to be used as part of decision-making will be extended into planning policies in an early amendment to the London Plan. * London will have its own Social Housing Commissioner, charged with supporting tenant rights and participation in council and social-rented homes. They will be a tenant themselves and supported with the resources needed to empower resident groups across London. * We will set up a People’s Land Commission, to map and identify land suitable for community-led development, and protect land supporting local needs, like playgrounds and community gardens. * City Hall funds and programmes to back new co-ops and community-led housing projects will be extended, and we will listen and act on the problems and concerns of leaseholder rights and high costs of major works.. * A Green Mayor will give councils and community land trusts the first option on GLA land that is able to be earmarked for new homes. O SEE MORE IN THE CHAPTER FRESH THINKING FOR HOUSING ## ENVIRONMENTAL DEMOCRACY ### CITIZENS AGAINST CLIMATE CHAOS * We will set up an independent Citizen’s Climate Assembly on the climate and ecological emergency, recruiting a representative group of Londoners to serve for a year at a time on a permanent body, supported by and working with the London Assembly Environment Committee. * The Climate Assembly will be given the resources to inform and educate Londoners about the climate emergency, and build links with community-level action across London. * The Climate Assembly will be helped to make links with citizens and similar bodies in other towns and cities, to bring the best, people-powered ideas into all our work. * We will change the rules for Mayoral decision-making so that every budget plan and official decision report in City Hall includes an assessment of the impact on climate and ecology, to help reduce our footprint every time we make new policies or spending plans, and so that we can be held to account. O SEE MORE IN THE CHAPTER WE WILL CREATE THE GREENEST CITY IN THE WORLD ## INFORMATION DEMOCRACY ### OPEN UP LONDON’S GOVERNANCE AND DATA * A Green Mayor will share regular information with Londoners so they are informed of key decisions, updates and are encouraged to share their evidence and opinions and take part in scrutiny. * We will open to the public all formal meetings that discuss major investment decisions and clamp down on the unnecessary use of ‘reserved’ papers for non-confidential items. * With a Green Mayor, the information and models underpinning all strategies and key decisions, will be published in the London Datastore, including live tables and data wherever possible. * Residents and campaigners should not be denied the ability to show how alternatives to a Green Mayor’s policies could work, so the information we publish will also include fares data and agreements, and commercial income, permission for which will be included in all new contracts. * We will work with public, private, charity and community partners to share and update data, for example with citizen science projects to maintain records of pollution and other environmental data, and with housing, cycling and public transport groups to develop new plans and services. * Greens will require all technology projects across the GLA group to use open standards and encourage the use of open source software as much as possible to aid enterprise and innovation. Too many of our new public spaces are being controlled by corporate rules and councils placing ‘public space protection orders’ (PSPOs) across wide areas, banning activities such as busking and rough sleeping and making many non-criminal acts subject to court proceedings. In 2016, Sian Berry pledged to push for policies in the new London Plan that mean new publicly accessible spaces must be governed by local authority bylaws, so that any rules must be created transparently and accountably. We succeeded in winning new planning policies and a promise from the current Mayor to publish strict guidance in the form of a Public London Charter for new developments. However, we have waited nearly two years and a draft has only just been consulted upon. Meanwhile, developers and shops have been found to be using facial recognition in CCTV, while arbitrary rules continue to be applied to spaces including the MORE London estate where City Hall itself sits. ## KEEP PUBLIC SPACES PUBLIC * Greens believe that public spaces must be governed in the most democratic way possible and will put in place clear policies and guidance so that local people and councils are able to set clear and democratically agreed rules for all public spaces, no matter who owns them. * We also oppose the introduction of Public Space Protection Orders (PSPOs) by councils if they are not fully justified and highly specific to real problems. We see no reason to introduce fines and court action for activities such as rough sleeping and begging. We will campaign for the repeal of national legislation allowing PSPOs to be introduced by local authorities and for the introduction of a ‘right to roam’, similar to laws in Scotland. A MISSION TO TRANSFORM OUR ECONOMY Londoners are crying out for a new start, and Greens are ready to roll up our sleeves and transform this city. A Green Mayor will bring new thinking to our economy, and a mission to transform how London does business. A green recovery means making London the city best prepared for the future, as well as a city that builds on our strengths to recover quickly and sustainably from the coronavirus pandemic. Our goals don’t just include economic resilience, but also stronger safety nets and new opportunities for young people, and Londoners of all ages. We have bold new ideas to close the gaps in our welfare system that the crisis has exposed, through a basic income. Creating new and worthwhile jobs is a huge part of our plan. Our essential small businesses will get more security and support, and we will back a more circular economy that uses fewer natural resources, and which makes London more resilient to future risks as well. ## REDUCING INEQUALITY The gap between the richest people in London and those with least is too wide, and inequalities have got worse after a decade of austerity, cuts in support, and policies that allow those at the top to exploit others. And far too many people still struggle on low wages, not the real London Living Wage that would cover the basics for you and your family and allow you to save for a rainy day. Green policies aim to narrow the gap, and lift everyone out of poverty, with the support of a basic income, a proper living wage, and stronger security in employment. ## NARROWING THE GAP A Green Mayor will take action across every policy area to address economic and social inequality. * We will conduct research to expose unfairness and the consequences of poor practice, cuts to public services and bad policies that make inequality and unequal chances for our citizens worse. * To directly address unfairness within the GLA group, we will introduce an 8:1 maximum pay ratio at City Hall, and seek to roll this out to all GLA Group organisations by 2024. * Through procurement policies and the Good Work Standard we will work to make this pay ratio a standard for all public bodies and companies across London. Working with unions, we will help workers to make this demand to their employers directly. * We will also set a goal to eliminate pay gaps, including for gender, African, Caribbean, Asian, Latino and other minority ethnic groups, and for disabled and LGBTIQA+ Londoners, in all GLA organisations by 2024, and to extend the monitoring and publication of these pay gaps to all organisations benefiting from GLA contracts. * The London Living Wage does not discriminate by age, but the National Living Wage allows for young people to be paid far below what is needed in London to survive. This discriminates hugely against young people, especially care leavers, who do not have support from family. We will campaign for this to change and pressure organisations that are not already accredited Living Wage Employers to seek accreditation * The accreditation for Living Wage Employers does allow for apprentices to be paid below the London Living Wage, which is also deeply unfair. Greens in City Hall have tried to change this policy and a Green Mayor will redouble efforts to bring apprentices into official Living Wage policies, while taking practical action and requiring all GLA group organisations to continue to pay apprentices a London Living Wage and ensure that Living Wage is included in all procurement policies and contracts. * A Green Mayor will implement anonymous (name, age, gender removed) recruitment through all services directly within their power and lobby for other employers to do the same. * Our Rent Commission for London will rebalance the definition of a London Living Rent better to take account of the wage gaps faced by households led by women and African, Caribbean, Asian, Latino and other minority ethnic Londoners. * A Green Mayor will investigate and take action to reduce the ‘poverty premiums’ faced by those on low incomes. Examples include the cost of energy when paid by a pre-pay meter. Working with poverty campaigners and consumer organisations, we will expose further examples and campaign for changes in regulation and for good practice from businesses serving Londoners. * **O SEE MORE ABOUT OUR RENT COMMISSION FOR LONDON IN OUR CHAPTER FRESH THINKING FOR HOUSING** ## RESTORING WELFARE AND SECURITY * While a Green Mayor will not have control of Government welfare policies, we will take action to make a difference through our policies to pilot radical new ways to support people with a Universal Basic Income and a new Creative Autonomy Allowance. In March 2021, Green Assembly Members won the support of the Assembly for trials of a basic income in London. * We will invest at a London level in welfare advice, strengthening specialist services, including immigration advice and support for disabled people, and playing a role in coordinating provision across London. * **O SEE MORE IN THE SECTION OF THIS CHAPTER CREATING NEW OPPORTUNITIES** ## A NEW ECONOMY ### NEW WAYS TO MEASURE LONDON’S PROGRESS * The goals we set for London policies matter. The way we measure progress in our city must change. A Green Mayor will focus on new measures and targets rather than endless economic growth to: * build a more resilient local economy * reduce inequality * cut carbon to achieve our 2030 climate targets * reduce resource use across every part of our economy * promote biodiversity and bioabundance * ensure basic needs are met * respect all human rights * achieve genuine financial health and wellbeing for all. ## THE CIRCULAR ECONOMY * We will work towards a circular economy for the city. A Green Mayor will be looking beyond an economy based on consumption and waste, and to redefine growth with a focus on benefits for the economy and the population as a whole. Our core goals are to: * design waste out of the system based on renewable sources of energy as much as possible, * make the fullest and continuing use of existing resources, and * concentrate on social capital as well as the functional purpose of items. ## A STRONGER, MORE RESILIENT ECONOMY * We will more fully involve businesses, both large and small, in closing the evidence gaps on risk and preparing policies and programmes for climate adaptation. This will involve a full reboot of London’s Resilience Strategy and a new research team in City Hall dedicated to evaluating climate risks in partnership with the business community. * A Green Mayor will negotiate with government for financial support for London’s businesses and industries that are suffering from the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. This will be included in the London Resilience Strategy. * We will increase and make permanent the small business resilience support fund created in the wake of the Grenfell Tower disaster to support small businesses. This will provide temporary bridging support and advice to businesses when major incidents affect footfall and business viability. * We will support the start-up and scale-up of healthy, low-carbon, circular food economy businesses, with a programme for existing and new markets and traders to sell more fresh produce and help regenerate high streets. * Creating and developing new funding streams for new green businesses, and training to support the huge need for new skills in energy saving and the circular economy, will be a mission and a priority for a Green Mayor, to make London a hub of a strong, sustainable green economy. * **O SEE MORE ABOUT OUR GREEN NEW DEAL AND HOW WE WILL SUPPORT FOOD BUSINESSES IN OUR CHAPTER CREATE THE GREENEST CITY IN THE WORLD** ## DECENT WORK THAT PAYS Workers are facing so much uncertainty, and we must make sure no Londoners are left behind, and that everybody has enough to pay for a decent life. A Green Mayor will use every lever we can to make work better in London, starting with the organisations within the GLA and acting as an exemplary employer. We will use our powers as a customer to make sure other employers follow our example. **FOR ALL OUR KEY WORKERS** Greens in City Hall and across London are working hard to support the essential people who work in the public and private sector to keep London safe, healthy, transported and supported. We have exposed how many nurses and police officers are forced to live outside the city, putting us all at risk. And we have put forward amendments to the Mayor’s budget to help fund more homes for key workers at a truly affordable London Living Rent. Bus driver wellbeing is a serious factor in the safety of the bus network. Shockingly some bus routes still have no toilets so drivers spend their break looking for a cafe with a toilet rather than having a rest. Green Assembly Member Caroline Russell has pushed the Mayor to agree to provide toilets for London’s bus drivers on all bus routes. Greens in Hackney have been campaigning to unionise food delivery drivers, who are paid as little as £2 an hour. Hackney Greens have been talking with the drivers and distributing information to them, and to residents, to raise awareness. Caroline Russell has also consistently supported the working rights of Uber drivers and their unions. These mainly African, Caribbean, Asian, Latino and other minority ethnic Londoners work long hours for low pay, with no sick or holiday pay and constant worry about the loans on their cars. We have spoken up on many occasions for Uber drivers – putting forward a motion calling on the Mayor to make workers’ rights a condition of licencing to protect these drivers from exploitation, and successfully pushed for their voices to be heard in the Transport Committee. - The current London Living Wage calculation is flawed in how it estimates housing costs and no longer includes (as it did while the GLA calculated the rate) a buffer to allow for saving for unexpected costs. It is clear that the London Living Wage needs to rise to account for these additional needs. A Green Mayor will adjust the methodology in time for a Green London Living Wage to be introduced in 2022 at £14 per hour. - We will commission the GLA to carry out its own calculations of the correct Living Wage for London each year, commit to pay every GLA employee at least this rate by 2022 and include the higher rate in the Mayor’s Good Work Standard the following year. - We will address inequalities that remain within Living Wage policies for apprentices and under-18s, and work to bring many more businesses into accreditation as Living Wage Employers, focusing on the night time economy (where half a million workers are currently paid less than the London Living Wage) and those that employ larger numbers of young workers, who still face serious discrimination by age within the Government’s ‘Living Wage’ policy. - Within the Mayor’s Good Work Standard we will support and promote all the Good Work Principles set out in the conclusions of the London Good Work Commission, including on fair pay, autonomy, wellbeing and learning. - We will establish a dedicated Mayor’s Good Work Fund (GWF), which provides help to employers who wish to improve business practices and reach the Good Work Standard, particularly small and micro businesses, and to support innovative working practices including a shorter working week. - We will ensure that no-one in any of the organisations under City Hall’s control receives more than eight times the salary of the lowest paid worker in each body. - We will set targets for eliminating the pay gaps for gender, LGBTIQA+, African, Caribbean, Asian, Latino and other minority ethnic groups within the GLA, and include maximum pay gaps in the Mayor’s Good Work Standard so that employers who are part of the scheme can make similar plans. - We will help deal with the fact that many workers can’t afford the increased cost of Employment Tribunals by addressing cuts in funding to advice agencies. - We will ensure that the GLA monitors employment practices within all kinds of employers in London and the extent to which workers’ rights are being enforced or eroded by any Government changes in the law and services. We will publish our findings and use them to lobby for changes and improvements. - A Green Mayor will promote co-operative business models and trade union recognition to employers, empowering workers to press for better pay and conditions. * A Green Mayor will constructively engage with unions representing all employees of agencies of the GLA and contractors, including transport workers, the fire service, cleaners and support staff of all kinds, as well as unions representing work that is regulated by the GLA, including taxi and private hire drivers, and with unions representing precarious workers. Greens support the right of all workers to organise and collectively bargain with employers. * In the workplace, people from African, Caribbean, Asian, Latino and other minority ethnic groups are subjected to racism, discrimination and micro-aggression. We will commission work to examine this and develop robust recommendations, implement them within the GLA and publicise them so that all types of employers can take action. * Construction companies which have been involved in blacklisting Trade Union activists will not be invited to tender for contracts by the GLA until they have: Identified the steps taken to remedy blacklisting for affected workers; Identified the steps taken to ensure blacklisting will not happen again; and given assurances that they do not any longer employ individuals who were involved in blacklisting. * We will continue to advocate for workers in the ‘gig economy’ who are on zero hours contracts to earn at least a London Living Wage and have the protections and benefits of employees on full-time contracts. * We will also continue to support precarious workers in the gig economy to unionise to improve their rights at work. As long as Uber fails to protect users from risks, be a decent employer to its drivers, and comply with the standards expected of private hire companies by Transport for London, we will continue to oppose its licensing as a fit and proper operator, while supporting the workers’ rights of private hire drivers who drive on the platform. ## SUPPORTING FLEXIBLE AND FAMILY-FRIENDLY WORK All jobs should have a default presumption in favour of flexible working, and lockdown has shown how many different jobs can accommodate flexibility. The pandemic has resulted in a great many people now having additional caring responsibilities, so this must be done in a way that improves opportunities and quality of life for parents and those with caring responsibilities, as well as older and disabled Londoners who wish to remain employed. * A Green Mayor will lobby the Government to bring in legislation to ensure that childcare needs can be adapted to and met, with changes to Universal Credit (in the absence of a basic income) to make childcare more affordable for recipients. * We will aim to increase the rights of parents to request that schools set up on-site childcare. ## CREATING NEW OPPORTUNITIES * Parents who have children with special educational needs need a great deal more support than they are receiving, and more suitable childcare. * A Green Mayor will pilot a Universal Basic Income in London with a major new three-year pilot, working with at least 1,000 Londoners who would be guaranteed a basic income without conditions, along with support and careers advice. The pilot would aim to gather evidence and support for a basic income as a national policy, and the potential wider impacts on health, wellbeing and the use of other services would be tracked and evaluated. * We will put pressure on the Government to enable the owners of micro-businesses to achieve equal access to high quality and affordable family care through better support, so that small business owners do not have to choose between their family and their business. * We will also set up a family-friendly work team in City Hall to work on our priorities for better working rights for people who are currently excluded. This team will: * Develop initiatives to encourage the development of more parent-led childcare * Work with businesses to create more flexible employment opportunities * Tackle pregnancy and maternity discrimination in the workplace * Create more opportunities for older and disabled Londoners to enter work. To achieve this, we will fund and support improved (and flexible) training and career advice for these citizens. * In parallel with a Universal Basic Income pilot, a Green Mayor will introduce a scheme to give a cohort of young people in London a new Creative Autonomy Allowance. This would provide additional support for young people starting small businesses and seeking creative and arts careers. The results of each trial would be evaluated to show the relative benefits of each approach to different cohorts of Londoners. * We will also fund a number of smaller micro-pilots of universal income support, focused on clusters of people and businesses of different kinds and their customers, for example disabled people, a local retail or manufacturing business cluster, or Black-owned business, to examine the impacts on the wellbeing and security of diverse Londoners. * Greens will campaign for Government support to expand both our Universal Basic Income and Creative Autonomy ## A WORKING RENT The value of local business is not just economic and cultural, it’s also social. Local businesses directly feed into their communities and, if they shut down, there are profound impacts on their areas for years to come. Even before the pandemic, one of the biggest concerns of small businesses was the cost of workspace rent in London and the loss of affordable business space to developers. In 2018, the New Economics Foundation (NEF) and the East End Trades Guild (EETG) survey reported: “over half of respondents said they could not afford year on year rent rises of more than ten per cent.” This situation has been seriously worsened by the pandemic. To help build a register of comparable evidence, the EETG has produced an app with Founders & Coders that could assist small businesses to share information and increase transparency on rent levels. Both Hackney and Tower Hamlets Councils are currently providing data for this app to help small business tenants with their rent reviews, enabling them to gather the information they need in negotiations. Green Assembly Member, Caroline Russell, has been working with the London Trades Guild, Guardians of the Arches (GOTA) and NEF towards understanding rental affordability among small businesses. To do this they are building an evidence base alongside quantitative analysis and case studies. GOTA is asking that rents shouldn’t be more than 80 per cent of an equivalent conventional commercial space. * A Green Mayor will value business success by social impact not just by the balance sheet. * Working with London Trades Guild, Guardians of the Arches and the New Economics Foundation, a working rent formula will be developed and implemented to include amongst other things consideration for public good such as living wage employers, businesses with training schemes, social enterprises, those using green energy or contributing to the circular and repair economies. * Transport for London, as a large public landlord of small business space will be monitored to ensure the highest standards and best practice are maintained, to set an example of how sustainable, socially positive business owners can, and should, be supported. * Transport for London will be required to publish a rental register for full transparency on rent levels. Other landlords in the public, private and third sectors will be encouraged to voluntarily do the same. A Green Mayor will always listen to the real experts, the businesses on the ground. Allowance pilots with additional funding so that more Londoners can benefit from these policies while we prove their benefits and push for national policy change. guarantee five days of paid leave each year (based on a worker doing full-time hours) for any kind of formal learning and training they wish to undertake. * We will work with education providers, businesses from all industries, and existing successful mentoring and outreach schemes to establish Careers for London, a service tailored to support London’s most disadvantaged groups: long-term unemployed people, parents of pre-school children wanting to return to work and older unemployed people. This would aim to establish and improve best practice in careers advice, including information on working rights and training opportunities, and help reach out to schools, colleges and adult education providers to make sure their services are reaching all Londoners in the best possible way. * Careers for London will also focus on individuals or groups who have lost employment due to the pandemic, and support them in identifying retraining and employment opportunities. * We will also push through a new Jobs Guarantee scheme for London’s most marginalised groups, involving five thousand new one-year long job placements anchored around a decently paid 32-hour week. * We will campaign for a new right to paid time off work to undertake learning and training, and take action through the Mayor’s Good Work Standard, within which employers would be expected to ## ARTS AND CULTURE FOR ALL The arts and culture sector in London is world class and has been especially hard hit by the pandemic, with many jobs, careers and venues on hold, awaiting the return of live audiences. * A Green Mayor will ensure that grants are made to arts venues, including small music venues, to ensure live performance survives the coronavirus pandemic, and lobby for support for workers and artists, not just organisations. * Greens in City Hall have supported the protection of our grassroots music venues, which are being lost at an alarming rate, initiating work to change planning rules to ensure that existing venues are not threatened by noise complaints from new residential developments around them, and by improving practical support for listing venues as assets of community value. A Green Mayor will step up this work, review how well planning rules are working and increase practical support for licensing and planning for new and existing venues. * A Green Mayor will include in planning rules a requirement for a range of cultural spaces, including arts and music venues, to be built in new developments, working with communities to determine what is needed in each area. * We will set up a register of ‘meanwhile use’ temporary spaces (such as empty commercial properties in high streets and business districts) available to help arts and cultural organisations * We will help small arts organisations and existing and emerging artists to benefit fully from our new tiered cost system for advertising on London’s transport network, addressing any further barriers to promotion for smaller creative businesses that emerge. in the capital – who own over 100,000 square feet of commercial space - will be called on to provide a new tenant-related business statement that can be used to hold them to account in their dealings with their tenants. (Transport for London has already undertaken this for business tenants in railway arches). Continued rent breaks will be necessary in some cases to allow the survival of businesses under threat due to the effects of the pandemic. * Rents across the GLA group of organisations will be made known, supplying data to relevant organisations and apps, so that business tenants across the GLA estate can compare their deals, and so that businesses across London can use this transparent rent data as evidence in negotiations for their own rent reviews. ## A RECOVERY STRATEGY FOR SMALL BUSINESS Small businesses, especially in the City of London and West End, have suffered a catastrophic loss of footfall from office workers and tourists staying at home. Many other small businesses are struggling to stay afloat, with rent and business overheads to cover without any reliable income. * A Green Mayor will define a fair, affordable Working Rent for small businesses in all areas of London. Where necessary, landlords will be incentivised to offer rent holidays to ensure survival through the inevitable consequences of the Pandemic and the effects of Brexit. Rents will be transparent so that businesses can make relevant comparisons. * In support of tenants, major landowners * We will set a target for 33 per cent of all GLA contracts to go to self-employed, micro and small businesses by 2025. * A small business owner will be made chair of the London Enterprise Panel and focus the GLA’s economic development budget on support for small businesses and co-operatives. * The GLA group’s London & Partners will be refocused to ensure more help comes to start-ups and smaller firms, who will gain more access to promotion at home and across the country. London & Partners will put together a new Local Economy Strategy to build a city that is resilient, inclusive and locally focused. * We will increase awareness of the London Growth Hub through engaging more closely with local authorities, local libraries and Business Improvement Districts (BIDs). * The GLA will work in partnership with local colleges, the London Growth Hub and London businesses (including micro and small businesses) to identify specific skills gaps, increase the number of apprenticeships and grow understanding of the support available through the apprenticeship levy, T-levels, and targeted courses. * We will push for more Government support for apprenticeships and make skills vouchers available for small and micro businesses in London to access export, digital marketing and sales skills support. * We will establish new town centre funds financed by the business rates paid by large retail developers and with contributions required as a part of gaining planning permission. The funds would be run by boards made up of representatives of local businesses, residents and community groups. * We will ensure the London Recovery Board supports high streets and markets across London by fostering partnership working between landlords and tenants, sharing best practice and creating innovative support mechanisms such as turnover-based rent, rent step-ups (low to start, then increasing) and using empty spaces for local business pop-ups at affordable prices. * We will create a procurement system that enables business owners from small firms to have equal opportunities to access contracts as their larger counterparts – particularly businesses owned by African, Caribbean, Asian, Latino and other minority ethnic groups. * A London-wide register of vacant high street units will be created to help small businesses, start ups and community groups who are looking for short-term lets to find potential spaces for their work. * A dedicated business strategy will be set up for realising the full potential of African, Caribbean, Asian, Latino and other minority ethnic groups, and women-owned businesses. We will develop and adopt best practice approaches to procurement and business support for African, Caribbean, Asian, Latino and other minority ethnic groups and women-owned small businesses. This work will also include a London-wide mentoring service for these groups of business people. * All businesses in London will be supported to ensure they optimise access for disabled staff, suppliers and customers and have appropriate facilities in place. ## DEFENDING ESSENTIAL INDUSTRIES AND SERVICES * The existence of a range of spaces for businesses that make, repair and re-use goods within the city is essential to the development of a more resilient, circular economy. We will closely monitor progress and further strengthen policies in the new London Plan to better protect industrial and light industrial land. * We will continue to stand up for existing small businesses in areas experiencing regeneration and coronavirus recovery plans, especially those in railway arches. * Planning policies and public bodies must respect and support small businesses, involving them in regeneration and recovery plans from the outset. * We will work to seek to increase the supply of workshop and studio spaces for smaller firms. * Permitted development rights, allowing for unregulated development or conversion of buildings from business use, may be imposed by Government, and we will work with local councils to help gain further exemptions for specific areas and units. * Low-cost street markets, will be encouraged and developed, whether established or on a pop-up basis, ensuring that individuals and small businesses can use markets as an opportunity to make sales and gain experience in buying and selling. ## OUR DIGITAL ECONOMY * A Green Mayor will strengthen the role of London’s Chief Digital Officer, to support the continued development of London’s digital industries, push harder for the development of ultra-fast broadband and protect public purpose and worker well-being in digital development. * We will set up at least one Community Enterprise Zone within GLA-controlled land, with the infrastructure to support small and social enterprises working on digital products and innovation to support a circular economy. * Competent ‘full fibre’ infrastructure partners must be chosen to deliver a 1 gigabit (Gbps) network to homes and businesses at prices that are fair and affordable to all Londoners by 2024. Businesses with access to affordable gigabit broadband will be increased by at least 20 per cent in the first year of a Green Mayor. * A Green Mayor will ensure comprehensive promotion of the Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme via the London Growth Hub and business support partners. * The Mayor will continue supporting the work of the London Digital Security Centre (LDSC) and promote practical methods of dealing with the risk of online fraud and cyber crime. ## BUSINESS RESILIENCE TO EMERGENCIES Small business needs support to be resilient to economic shocks caused by the disruption of business from the coronavirus crisis, extreme weather events, disasters like the Grenfell Tower fire and terrorist attacks such as those experienced at Finsbury Park and Borough Market, or catastrophic flooding from major burst water mains as seen in Camden Passage in Islington. Insurance will cover the physical restoration of businesses and loss of stock, but loss of footfall and trauma can affect whole areas in less measurable ways, and small businesses can find it hard to recover from a temporary loss of business of this kind. For Grenfell and other tragedies, the Mayor created a £300,000 emergency fund in 2017 to help the businesses affected. A permanent fund to help reduce the long-term shocks to small local businesses from a range of unexpected major events would have huge value at a London level in preventing the loss of the small businesses upon which our city’s local economies depend. Green Assembly Members proposed a budget amendment in 2018 to make this fund permanent with an initial £1.5 million from business rates, with the Mayor’s office able to give grants, mentoring and other support. * A Green Mayor will make the business emergencies fund a permanent part of the support City Hall offers, to enable business communities affected by traumatic events in future to rebuild their local economy and contribute to the economic resilience of their community and our city. ## A BANK FOR LONDON AND BETTER FINANCIAL HEALTH * A Green Mayor will create a new Community Bank for London, working with councils and the City of London corporation. It will specifically be tasked with providing loans and finance to small businesses as well as to individuals and families in crisis. It would also be an ethical choice for London’s savers. Regional banks of this kind are a common feature around the world and this idea is long overdue for London. * We will create a new strategy for financial health in our first 100 days. This will aim to address cross-cutting issues relating to health and deprivation affecting the financial health of Londoners. For this strategy, we will bring together voluntary and community sector organisations working with marginalised Londoners, education providers, technology innovators, and financial service providers to provide access to affordable credit, help with budgeting and financial advice. * Every local authority in London will be asked to identify gaps and lack of capacity in local welfare, money and debt advice services, to review their own debt collection practices. Each borough would be asked to produce its own financial inclusion strategy. * Many people still lack access to a bank account. Migrants, Gypsy, Roma and traveller people, homeless people, people leaving abusive partners, young people leaving local authority care, disabled people including those with learning disabilities and poor mental health and others, can all struggle to provide the necessary documentation for a bank account. We will closely monitor the rate at which businesses are going ‘cashless.’ This may have a serious effect on financial exclusion. We will engage with businesses and banking services to ensure all businesses vital to people’s daily lives in London continue taking cash. * We will create a Money Advice Week every year, and use our new advertising policies for Transport for London to help promote financial education, local advice services and credit unions. ## PUBLIC TRANSPORT ADVERTISING FOR GOOD * A Green Mayor will work with Londoners to create a new, tiered charging policy for advertisements on the Transport for London network. This will provide access to advertising space at very low cost to public bodies, charitable organisations and local small businesses, with progressively higher prices for advertising products and services which have an adverse impact on resource use and overall wellbeing. * Under the new tiered system, the highest costs would be paid by commercial products whose advertising seeks to increase the use of resources, with intermediate tiers for profit-making enterprises that provide lower impact and essential services and products, such as arts and culture, green industries and the circular economy. * One in twenty advertisement spots, in both physical and digital media, will be reserved for art and creative works produced by Londoners that have no commercial value, extending the principle behind the treasured Poems on the Underground and Art on the Underground series into more areas of the arts, including music, visual arts, digital creativity and theatrical work. * The range of restricted advertisements will be extended to include adverts aimed at children, the promotion of arms companies, flights (and holidays that involve flying), any advert whose creative premise is to create unhappiness with London life, public transport or the normal ageing process, as well as cars of all kinds and the promotion of private car travel. Westminster Station, where high profile lobbying campaigns aimed at MPs frequently takeover large areas of space including ticket barriers and escalators, would no longer be available for this purpose. # A GREEN LONDON ASSEMBLY There are three ballot papers in this election. After your votes for Mayor, you also choose Assembly Members to represent your local constituency, and to represent you London- wide. On the London-wide ballot paper you vote for a party and every vote counts in putting more Greens on the Assembly. ### LONDON-WIDE CANDIDATES: 1. Sian Berry 2. Caroline Russell (and North East London) 3. Zack Polanski (and West Central London) 4. Benali Hamdache 5. Dr Shahrar Ali 6. Rosamund Adoo-Kissi- Debrah (and Greenwich & Lewisham) 7. Ben Fletcher 8. Hannah Graham 9. Peter Underwood (and Croydon & Sutton) 10. Kirsten de Keyser (and Barnet & Camden) 11. Jarelle Francis (and Enfield & Haringey) ### CONSTITUENCY CANDIDATES: Bexley & Bromley: **Mary Ion** Brent & Harrow: **Emma Wallace** City & East: **Tim Kiely** Ealing & Hillingdon: **Marijn van de Geer** Havering & Redbridge: **Melanie Collins** Lambeth & Southwark: **Claire Sheppard** Merton & Wandsworth: **Pippa Maslin** South West London: **Andrée Frieze** Zack Polanski Benali Hamdache Ben Fletcher Hannah Graham Peter Underwood Kirsten de Keyser Jarelle Francis Andrée Frieze Caroline Russell Rosamund Adoo- Kissi-Debrah Dr Shahrar Ali Mary Ion Emma Wallace Tim Kiely Pippa Maslin Marijn van de Geer Claire Sheppard Melanie Collins ## GOOD IDEAS AND CLEAR GREEN VISION By Jenny Jones, Green Party Peer and former London Assembly Member This manifesto is worth reading because many of the ideas in here will be turned into action. **Elected Greens in** **London have an amazing track record of** **doing that for the last twenty years.** As Mayor, Sian Berry will work with others to ensure that our vision of a more equitable and less polluted London becomes reality. If she is returned as a London Assembly Member then she will use the mandate voters have given her to work with others to change things for the better. When I was elected to the first London Assembly in 2000, few London politicians understood the need to act on climate change and even fewer saw the need to bother about air pollution. Greens were the only political party out celebrating when Ken Livingstone introduced the congestion charge. Back in 2002, we stopped Transport for London from getting rid of their tiny £5m budget for cycling and when we had the decisive say over the Mayor’s budget between 2004-08, investment in cycling, walking and road safety went up to levels that could make a real difference to people’s lives. As the Mayor’s green transport adviser, I commissioned the report that led to cycle hire and cycling superhighways being introduced by Boris Johnson. The vertical walking maps you may have used in central London were part of a package of improvements for pedestrians in London. Greens are good at innovation and many of the ideas we put forward become mainstream thinking years later. Having elected greens helps speed up that process. Almost 20 years ago, we got Ken Livingstone to set up a London register for same-sex partnerships and City Hall led the way as a venue for an initiative the rest of the country followed. We also won the creation of the London Living Wage Unit to encourage companies to pay a more realistic minimum wage. Setting the terms of debate is a Green speciality. Sadiq Khan launched his re-election campaign a year ago talking about winning powers to regulate rents. Sian Berry wrote to him nearly six years ago with this exact idea and has spent the last five years at City Hall pestering and making the case. It’s great that he has adopted the idea, but can we trust him to follow through? Sian also took over the work I had started on the right of tenants to have a decisive say on the redevelopment of their estates and made it one of her top priorities. Sadiq Khan was pushed to include it as a Labour manifesto promise in 2016, but then backtracked when he published his draft guidance. Sian won the unanimous support of the Assembly for binding ballots for residents, and twisted the Mayor’s arm to enforce this as part of any Mayoral funding for schemes. Unfortunately, this didn’t stop the Mayor signing off of dozens of major regeneration plans without any ballots just before he changed the policy. This whole saga is a reminder of why having Green Assembly Members is great, but a Green Mayor would be better. Safer streets are a priority for any Mayor, but this takes strong communities that bobbies on the beat can work with. Sian has produced two reports showing how youth centres and services for young people have been decimated by austerity. She explained the impact of closing youth centres and put forward amendments to the Mayor’s budget that prioritised youth services. Finally, the Mayor shifted and now has provided funds for the past three years. Sian has won changes at national level as well. As chair of the Housing Committee she published a report on the plight of property guardians, who pay rent to live in empty buildings, and have few legal rights. I took Sian’s work to the Minister, who promised new guidance to incorporate many of the report’s recommendations. Greens on the Assembly have played a crucial role in defending civil liberties. As a member of the Met Police Authority I successfully pushed the Commissioner to change the definition of domestic extremist and take thousands off the police database, including myself. Greens have also taken the lead on changing planning rules to stop private developments imposing restrictive rules about access to areas that should be public spaces. Often the biggest green gains have been on the environment. We used our leverage over Ken Livingstone’s budget in 2005 to get a team working on renewable energy within major planning developments. And of course the Greens initiated the declaration of a climate emergency by the Assembly two years ago. Much of our success has been in stopping backwards steps from whoever is Mayor. Greens spent eight years working with the local community to scupper Ken Livingstone’s plans for a motorway-sized road crossing in East London. Sian has had to spend an equal amount of her time working with local people in the same area to try to stop Sadiq Khan finishing Boris Johnson’s plan for a major new polluting road crossing, the Silvertown Road Tunnel. It is not hard to see from this why **a strong Green voice on the London** **Assembly is so important, but is also** **why Sian Berry as Mayor will be so** **much better.** ## JOIN OUR TEAM To get involved in our campaign to transform London, contact team@london.greenparty.org.uk or visit www.sianberry.london @sianberry sian_berry facebook.com/sianberrygreen Promoted by Nick Barnett on behalf of Sian Berry and London Green Party, all at The Biscuit Factory, J215, 100 Clements Rd, London SE16 4DG. Printed on FSC sustainable paper by Scanplus Print Group, 61 Imperial Way, Croydon CR0 4RR. All photos with Sian and Londoners were either taken pre-coronavirus or conducted in accordance with social distancing guidelines.