Off to Bowes Park Community Association meeting. First steps into new territory for me. Very glad to have been invited into what has been a Labour stronghold until now.

It’s a very successful association representing around 350 local people – really active and able in terms of getting funding and improving the local area. Bowes Park station is a big issue for them. I have been working on getting it sorted and have succeeded so far in at least getting new perimeter fencing but it still filthy with dumped rubbish. Also nearby is Myddleton Road – which judging from the residents’ survey I carried out last year is a nightmare in terms of rubbish, filth and illegal housing; needs daily cleaning really.

I agree to work my end at the GLA on crime issues and continue with my work on station. Very committed group. Look forward to working with them.

My transport scrutiny officers at the GLA send me an urgent email about the London Transport Users’ Committee.

Apparently they are furious that we are issuing a report which suggests they should have a proper business plan, a clear budget and a look at their size. Coming from a background of not having to be accountable, they are now struggling with idea that they are accountable to the Assembly and that the very large budget they operate has to be structured in a way that has been alien to them.

They threaten to complain to the Chief Exec of the GLA because, although they get the report a few days before it goes public on the web, they want to be consulted. I did say I was willing to meet them – but not to change the report. Offer them the opportunity to place a written statement before committee on 23rd.

Health Committee at the GLA. Together with the Association of London Government, we are holding a pan-London scrutiny of the Ambulance Service.

Today was meant to be listening to the ‘patients’ voice’. Sadly – we barely heard it. Don’t know if it was a cock-up or what – but the main witness was the chair of the newly convened Ambulance Patient Forum and the questions were all to do with structure.

It was glaringly obvious that this new body hasn’t yet sorted itself out at all to think strategically about how it can represent patients – and moreover has no resource to do so even when it has. Their first four areas they wish to look at are all but one areas already looked at by everyone: 999 calls and so on.

At the same time, there were reps there from Age Concern and others who made it really clear that the most vital area for flagging up is the way patients are transported to hospital and the complete and utter mess this is in and that it needs sorting. Patients who need transport services sometimes have to wait hours to get to hospital and often miss their appointments because of poor arrangements.

I think patients will be in trouble if the new body continues not to listen to the patients it is set up to represent.

Dash to ‘media’ lunch put on by Assembly Press desk. The purpose of this series of media lunches is to bring in the media a few at a time, put them at a fab table in London’s Living Room at City Hall (panoramic views of London) and give them a good lunch with a few of us Assembly Members.

As we near the end of first term of office at London Government the Assembly Press desk feels we need to up raise our profile so that people get to realise there is an Assembly as well as a Mayor. It’s a tough challenge!

Today it was ethnic minority media. You are always stuck with who you sit next to at these things. Happily for me, on my left, was the owner of Choice and XFM who was bright and lively – which makes for a pleasant exercise in public relations. Unluckily for him, and I won’t name them, on his left was an Assembly member who can talk for Britain. I saw his eyes glaze over quite early on. Still – there’s no such thing as a free lunch!