Caroline's news

Assembly Members today called on the Mayor of London to make urgent representations to Education Secretary Michael Gove on behalf of students whose GCSE grades were affected by changes to grade boundaries this summer.

The changes meant pupils assessed in June needed more marks to achieve a C grade than those assessed in January, resulting in many seeing their chances of continuing in further education unexpectedly cut short.

Caroline Pidgeon AM, who seconded the motion, said:

The whole of the London Assembly today called on the Mayor to oppose government plans to significantly extend permitted development rights and reject changes to planning rules that would impact on levels of affordable housing.

As part of a recent range of measures aimed at boosting house building, jobs and the economy, the Government has proposed a three-year relaxation of permitted development rules and the renegotiation of existing planning obligation.

Discussing TfL's plans to give special liveries to tubes and buses for Remembrance Day, and to run full services in the Westminster area to allow people to reach the Cenotaph ceremony, Caroline Pidgeon said:

"This is a brilliant initiative by TfL, which I totally support.

"In complete contrast to previous years London Transport will be playing a key role in ensuring Londoners and visitors to the capital are helped to remember the huge sacrifice made by so many veterans over the years."

Speaking to the Evening Standard about the long delays and cost escalations in refurbishing the Greenwich and Woolwich foot tunnels, Caroline Pidgeon said:
"It is time Greenwich council admitted exactly why the budget has gone through the roof and the tunnels are still in such an appalling state."

Read the full article here.

At today’s meeting of the London Assembly Transport Committee, Mike Brown, TfL's managing director for trains and the Tube, said that driverless trains will not run on London’s Tube network until 2020 at the earliest.