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Interview: Daniel Francis MP on Bexleyheath & Crayford and what the seat’s voters want from Labour

He won expectedly in July and has clear ideas about what his party must do for this "left behind" outer London area
Dave Hill

I apologised to Daniel Francis, Labour MP for Bexleyheath & Crayford, when we met. My predictions for July’s general election contained a number of duff calls, but so blithely had I assumed that his seat was nailed-on blue I didn’t give his prospects a second thought. And then, behold, he emerged victorious by 2,114 votes in a part of outer south east London that, on the face of it, was one of the few that looked likely to hold back the red landslide. How, exactly, did he do it?

Francis is quick to correct any first impression that he just slid through a gap caused by right-wing electors splitting their favours between the Conservative, who finished second, and Reform UK’s candidate. The latter came in third with a tidy 22.7 per cent of the vote, compared with the Tory’s 31.3 and Francis’s 36.2.

“There was a combination of factors,” he says, as we sip morning coffee in a café on Bexleyheath’s Broadway. Yes, the deep unpopularity of the Conservative government certainly helped, but it is easy to forget that Labour has prevailed in this suburban constituency bordering Kent before – it returned a Labour MP, Nigel Beard in 1997, the first year of its existence, and again in 2001.

Reform’s strong 2024 showing, too, has an antecedent: UKIP, Francis stresses, did almost as well in vote share terms in 2015. That party was a significant electoral force at the time, which explains David Cameron’s fateful decision going into the general election to promise a referendum on European Union membership. But by 2017, with Nigel Farage no longer its leader and Britain having voted to leave the EU, UKIP was a spent force. In 2019, a different, minor extreme right party made next to no impression. But Reform in 2024 was a far stronger proposition.

Francis’s point is that support for Reform in Bexleyheath & Crayford did not all come from hacked-off Tories. He accepts that Farage’s latest vehicle attracted some, but maintains that, based on “the many conversations I had with those people”, had there been no Reform candidate “they might not have voted at all”. Plus, importantly, a few might otherwise have voted Labour.

That leaves us with a more complex explanation for Francis’s triumph: a broad Tory-to-Labour swing augmented to some extent by Reform attracting former Tories, but also with significant local factors in play to help him pass the finishing post first. One difference was that Sir David Evennett, who won the seat for the Tories five times in a row, had retired. Another was Francis’s very long local service as a Bexley councillor and activist.

He’s been fighting elections in the borough since 1994, when he was 17. He won a council seat for the first time in 2000 at a by-election. He became cabinet member for transport after Labour secured a rare and tiny majority in 2002 – the party had only previously won control there in 1964 and 1971, followed by a two-year spell in governing coalition with Liberal Democrat councillors from 1994.

He represented Bexley’s Belvedere ward from 2000 until 2010 and from 2014 until he stepped down this year having won his House of Commons seat. The four-year gap occurred due his wife being unwell, though he continued to work for his party during that time.

To add to his local roots, which include attending Bexley Grammar school in Welling, Francis can point to a London ancestry that includes a maternal grandfather who was born in a workhouse hospital in Elephant and Castle and lived off Lambeth Walk, and paternal grandparents who lived in Borough before becoming, in 1969, one of the first families to move into the then brand new Thamesmead estate, part which lies in Bexley.

Francis has made an energetic start as an MP, such as by bringing forward the Aviation (Accessibility) Bill under the ten-minute rule system, advocating stricter regulations for airlines in their treatment of passengers with disabilities. Francis has has twin 11-year-old daughters, one of whom uses a wheelchair, so this and related matters are close to his home and to his heart (he is very unhappy indeed with Bexley Council’s record on these issues, a matter to which On London will return).

He has also held a string of what he calls “cost of living surgeries” to help constituents apply for unclaimed, often carer-related, financial support. But he is under no illusions that retaining his parliamentary seat at the next general election will be difficult. And he is clear about what he thinks his party needs to do nationally to help make that come about.

“This constituency is no different to places we call the Red Wall,” he says. Consistent with that is his view that the Labour government’s priorities should be “restoring public services, a stable economy and those concerns about small boats”.

Asked to characterise Bexleyheath & Crayford and the borough of Bexley as a whole, he draws a partial contrast between the neighbouring Old Bexley & Sidcup seat, retained for the Tories in July by Louie French – in his case despite a 21.8 per cent Reform vote share – and his own.

His neighbouring MP, Francis says, has more of the “very Ted Heath type of Tory, of the post-war consensus mould among his constituents, “people who might be lawyers or work in the City”. Conservative Prime Minister Heath was, of course, the MP for French’s seat and its predecessors for decades.

Bexleyheath & Crayford, though changing, is still substantially formed by a different social and economic history. Francis emphasises that the town of Crayford in the eastern side of the seat was the base for the Vickers Company for the whole of the 20th Century, a vital manufacturer of military aircraft and armaments and a major local employer.

Today, he says, the area “has a workforce that is the backbone of London in a different way”. He mentions builders, plumbers and taxi drivers. He also describes parts of it as being among “the poorer parts of London”.

Francis describes a lot of local voters as “the old white working-class”, some of them “Conservative through and through” yet willing to vote for Labour in conducive circumstances under the right leader: “They voted for Tony Blair.” There are also among that group people he recalls telling him in 2019, “I’ve been Labour all my life, but I cannot have Jeremy Corbyn leading the country”.

The borough of Bexley as a whole was one of London’s five Leave-voting boroughs among the 32, with a very decisive 63 per cent wanting out. But Francis’s characterisation of local views about immigration suggests this should not be seen as evidence of hardline opposition to it.

“People absolutely accept immigration when it works and when public services are working,” he says, mentioning long-established Nigerian and South Asian communities. “I think the biggest problem is people are paying more tax than ever but nothing works anymore.” He repeats his recipe for a repeat Labour victory: “Create a stable economy, and people have got to feel that their living standards have risen. We need to have invested and improved public services and we need to show that we have grappled with immigration.”

Francis was drawn to politics when at secondary school, where he studied it at A-level and his Bexley Grammar peers included now former Bexley Tory councillor Jo Tanner, a political and communications strategist who worked on Boris Johnson’s 2008 London Mayor campaign. Despite that, Francis received Tanner’s endorsement for his 2024 general election campaign. In his victory speech (below), he paid tribute to his “amazing politics teacher”, the late Doreen Weston, who he says taught him not which party to support but, on the contrary, to “question everything”.

His teenage school days were, though, formative in terms of his political leanings. He cites rising street homelessness and failing public services as problems that were big at the time and have worsened again today. There was another issue, too: “We had the headquarters of the British National Party in Welling. Every day – and I mean every day – my friends and I saw the impact of that; seeing friends beaten up because of the colour of their skin, or their perceived sexuality.”

The BNP had opened what was officially a bookshop in 1989. Four years later, Stephen Lawrence was murdered by racists in neighbouring Eltham. Later in 1993, in Tower Hamlets, the BNP won its first ever council seat. A month after that, a demonstration against the BNP base in Welling became violent. It was the Lab-Lib council leadership formed in 1994 that brought about the shop’s closure.

The interview over, the MP and I catch one of Sadiq Khan’s Superloop high-speed buses from a stop round the corner from the café to Abbey Wood station, where the Elizabeth line spur terminates at the Bexley-Greenwich border. For me, it’s the next part of my ride home to Hackney, for Francis, the next stage of a trip to his new place of work, Westminster.

The Superloop service, he says, has proved popular. Like other outer London Labour politicians, he thinks the Mayor brought in his latest Ultra-Low Emission Zone expansion too fast, increasing opposition, and he adds more public transport improvements to his list of policy priorities, with an extension of the Elizabeth line among them.

But he points out that Khan received more votes – 4,602 more – in this year’s mayoral election than he got first preferences under the old supplementary vote system in 2021, and that, despite the many months of sometimes ugly anti-ULEZ campaigning, there was no swing against him.

Francis would like to see more police on the street in his constituency, but notes that it was under Johnson that two local police stations were closed. He offers a more positive assessment of Mayor Khan than some Labour politicians in the capital’s most suburban territories. “I think Sadiq does understand the aspirations of communities in outer London,” he says. He will hope that goes for Keir Starmer’s government too.

OnLondon.co.uk provides unique coverage of the capital’s politics, development and culture. Support the website and its writers for just £5 a month or £50 a year and get things that other people won’t. Details HERE. Follow Dave Hill on Bluesky. Video footage from The Greenwich Wire.

Categories: Analysis
Tags: Bexley Council, Bexleyheath & Crayford, Daniel Francis

Julie Hamill’s London: Abuses of power

A trip to visit an account brought encounters with and reminders of everyday dangers and subjugations
Julie Hamill

In all the years they’ve been doing my tax return, I’ve never visited my accountant’s offices in central London. Typically, I send everything digitally. However, this year I’ve found myself with a bigger pile of paper than usual. Rather than photograph each one, I decide to pop down to their offices and hand them in for scanning. That way, I can team it with a bit of Christmas shopping in the West End.

There’s a mindfulness to handling Ye Olde Receipts, and I welcome this aspect of Boomerdom.

1. Flatten the crinkly strips and arrange them in chronological order.

2. Highlight the date and amount in pink, yellow or green. I believe it’s jazzier on the eye for the accountant to see the numbers in colour, plus it gives them a break from the black and white matrix of “dreadsheets”. I convince myself I’m helping.

And so, with my receipt-rainbow-of-hell tucked into a classic manilla folder in my tote bag, I take the Jubilee line to Bond Street. The two women opposite me are talking about Gregg Wallace.

“He’s had it coming a long time.”

“Yeah, but why didn’t the victims speak up sooner?’

‘They probably did, see. It’s the BBC. Remember, they protected Savile for years.”

“Hmm. True, yeah, suppose.”

The elbow of the man beside me, who’s much taller and broader than I am – I’m five feet two-and-a-half – has encroached over my seat. Rather than ask him to move it, I shift myself so I’m right up against the glass at the end. It’s what I’m used to doing, and I’m not sure he’s aware of his intrusion. He looks very relaxed with his legs all spread out and his headphones on, so I don’t bother him.

I get onto the escalator and think about the shopping. I might nip into HMV and get a few music biographies as gifts. I recall a London radio station broadcast from the day before: the male presenter was asking his male guest for his top five music books of the year. The guest counted down out his choices, all written by men, about men. I guess those books are the best reads then?  They’ll probably be front of store.

I beep through the tube exit and out onto Davies Street with a quick turn to look up to see the Oxford Street lights – quite nice, better in the dark. I go to take a pic but decide to keep my phone in my pocket. I read somewhere that 52,000 phones were stolen in London last year, by gangs on electric scooters and e-bikes disappearing fast into the night. There’s not much the Met can do. Victims track the phone the next day to find it’s boarded a flight to a far off land.

A phone is stolen every six minutes – a thousand a week. London is now the phone theft capital of Europe, a stat to supersedes – or, in different sense, prove – the one about how near Londoners are to a rat. A good friend of mine was a victim of a snatch a few months back. She was standing on Oxford Street outside the branch of Boots opposite St Christopher’s Place, sending a text. Suddenly, her phone was ripped from her hands by a guy wearing a face covering. He sped off on a scooter and she was so shaken she couldn’t even shout after him. A male acquaintance later advised her that she shouldn’t have had her phone out in Oxford Street and went on to ask her if she had been drinking when it happened.

I arrive safely at tax tower HQ and they greet me warmly and take my file. The receptionist offers me a coffee and brings it in a fancy glass. “It might be a big strong!” he says. I almost say “Ha! That’s how I like it, strong like my…” Uh, no, halt. That’s wrong, it’s not appropriate, and could be found offensive, even at the most self-referencing micro level.

Not only is it dated, it’s over-familiar. I recognise that it’s ingrained in my generation, this terrible patter; as a cultural small talk habit. One has to grab it before it leaves the mouth, followed by a private cringe, a ‘Thank god I didn’t say that” and a thorough self-cancellation later.

Mouth comfortably shut, I sit back on the plush couch and look around the office whilst somebody pretends it’s no problem to scan my scraps. The interior is mostly creams and greys and there’s a tastefully decorated Christmas tree twinkling under the type of ceiling tiles Bruce Willis might dislodge and crawl through. On the coffee table there’s a lego Tower Bridge that doesn’t get played with, a candle that never gets lit and some books that never get read.

I notice the iconic John Pasche Rolling Stones logo, quite large, just out of sight on a wood panelled wall. “We’re not what you thought we were, are we?” it suggests, being all accountancy rock ‘n’ roll, sticking its tongue out. I look back to the coffee table and see a well known politician’s face on top of the pile of books. For a minute, I enjoy the mental image of me setting fire to the book in an office metal waste bin, then dancing round playing Paint it Black at full volume on my unstolen phone.

But of course I don’t do that. I’m just waiting here for my receipts. Instead, I decide to move the book to see what else is underneath. As I reach I notice its title – The Abuse Of Power.

One of the accountants comes back with my receipts in a folder.

“Thanks Julie,” she says. “It was nice to get a break away from my desk and the screen.” I smile and stand up to leave. I did help.

“I like your glasses!” she adds. “Thanks!” I reply, genuinely thrilled. I hold off from asking if she liked my colouring-in. That would be going too far.

I pick up a few Christmassy bits on Regent Street and stand inside the door of Hollister to photograph the angelic lights from a safe position.

It’s only 5.30pm, but dark when I come out at the tube near home. I walk down the street and hear noises in the wind making me feel paranoid that there’s somebody close behind me. As usual, I look to check. Thankfully, there’s nobody there.

Julie Hamill writes novels, appears on Times Radio and does lots, lots more. Follow her on Bluesky. Support OnLondon.co.uk and its writers for just £5 a month or £50 a year and get things for your money too. Details HERE.

Categories: Culture
Tags: London Underground, Oxford Street, Regent Street, St Christopher's Place

Richard Derecki: Lasting intrigue of London’s most notorious suburban spies

Respectable Ruislip, along with a bookshop in the Strand, became a key location for the operations of the Portland spy ring
Richard Derecki

Between 1954 and 1961, operating from an unassuming bungalow at 45 Cranley Drive, Ruislip, Lona and Morris Cohen smuggled out a vast haul of British nuclear secrets to their KGB paymasters.

Operating under the aliases Helen and Peter Kroger, the names taken from a New Zealander couple who had died in a car crash, the US-born Cohens were top Russian spies who in the 1940s had been key members of a network of agents collecting and passing on crucial information from research and development programme the Manhattan Project. This included a complete diagram of the US atomic bomb.

In 1950, their cover blown, the Cohens travelled to Russia and then to Poland, where they were given their new identities, and eventually to London. They opened an antiquarian bookshop on the Strand – great cover for sending parcels across Europe. Working with their handler Konon Molody, a Soviet intelligence officer masquerading as Gordon Lonsdale, a Canadian businessman selling jukeboxes and vending machines, they acted as the conduit for information collected by fellow London-based spies, Harry Houghton and Ethel Gee.

Houghton was a former Royal Navy master-at-arms who, in the 1950s, worked as clerk to the British Naval Attaché in Warsaw. He spied first for the Poles and then the Russians. Greedy for money, Houghton passed on huge amounts of material and was paid bonuses according to its sensitivity. His heavy drinking and troubled relationship with his wife became widespread knowledge at the Embassy and he was transferred back to the UK early. But in 1953 he began work in the Royal Navy’s Underwater Detection Establishment in Portland, Dorset and persuaded his work colleague, Gee, to help him access highly sensitive material on the UK’s nuclear submarine fleet.

Gee and Houghton would regularly travel up to London, taking in a show and a bite to eat, before handing their trove to Molody, who would pass it on to the Cohens in Ruislip. There, the material was photographed and reduced to the size of a micro dot, which went into one of the antiquarian books ready for dispatch abroad. Then, using a radio transmitter with a 23-metre arial, the Cohens would notify the KGB that the book was on its way. This was the arrangement that came to be known as the Portland spy ring.

Houghton’s extravagant spending attracted suspicion, but it wasn’t until 1959, when the Polish intelligence officer Michael Goleniewski defected to the US, that MI5 began surveillance of him and Gee. This led them to Molody and then to the Cohens. At that point began a protracted MI5 stakeout of 45 Cranley Drive, conducted from the side bedroom window of a house in nearby Courtfield Gardens, occupied by Wilfred and Ruth Search and their children Philip and Gay (who would later become a TV presenter and journalist).

The stakeout provides the starting point of the play Pack of Lies by the prolific writer of theatre, TV and film scripts, Hugh Whitemore. The Searches were good friends of the Cohens – the Krogers as they knew them, of course – and found the whole situation difficult. They were told bits of what the Security Service believed was going on, but not all, adding to their initial disbelief.

It is Ruth Search’s growing realisation of the scale of the Cohens duplicity and the strain that having MI5 watchers hidden in her house, together with pretending to the Cohen that everything was tickety-boo, that provides the dramatic drive of the story.

In the play, the Helen Kroger character “splashes the cash”, opening the door for Ruth to a life of gifts, boozy parties and provocative conversation and encouraging her in her desire to be a painter. This was in sharp contrast to the repressive silence of suburbia, the drudgery of repetitive housework, the twitching of net curtains and the fear of what the neighbours might think.” And Ruth, as she was all too aware, was engaged in her own kind of betrayal, being persuaded to put the interests of her country ahead of a deep friendship.

The Cohens-turned-Krogers were arrested at their bungalow in January 1961 and in March were convicted of espionage. They were sentenced to 20 years in jail. Kolody was given  25 years, and Houghton and Gee, 15 each. However, in 1969, the Cohens were released in a prisoner swap with the Soviet Union. Their feats were celebrated in Russia – they were even to appear on a set of postage stamps. Ruth Search, however, struggled to adjust and never got over the strain of weeks spent lying to a neighbour she thought she knew well. A few weeks after the Cohens’ release she died of a heart attack.

***

This story of high-stakes international mystery in suburban London still intrigues. A recent production of Pack of Lies at the Compass Theatre in Ickenham played to sell-out crowds.

It was performed by Proscenium, a theatre company (pictured below) founded in 1924 whose aim is to present classic and contemporary plays to as wide an audience as possible. This includes work by Shakespeare, Ibsen, Bennett and Lorca and more. The amateur group based largely in north-west London puts on three shows a year and has around 30 active members, though its membership is much wider.

Screenshot 2024 11 22 at 15.29.57

Recruiting and keeping actors, particularly young ones, is a big part of the stresses and strains of running the group. It is, after all, quite a commitment, with rehearsals three times a week and a lead-in time of seven or eight weeks to get a play ready for opening night.

Securing a long-term suitable performance space is another big part of the challenge, as On London’s recent piece about the Scrum theatre group highlighted. Izzie Cartwright, Proscenium’s artistic director, has over the years seen a number of groups disappear and venues close in this part of London. Proscenium uses all sorts of methods to promote its work, including social media, mailing lists, WhatsApp groups and even leafleting supermarkets to get people in through the doors.

But there is clearly an appetite for theatre close to home in outer London areas. People save on travelling into the West End, it is excellent value and there is a wide repertoire to choose from. Proscenium carefully balances its choice of plays between what will appeal to its likely audience and what will stretch it as a group. Next up is Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller, which will be staged next March. Support your local theatre scene.

Support On London and its writers for £5 a month or £50 a year and get things for your money too. Details HERE. Follow Richard Derecki on X/Twitter.

Categories: Culture
Tags: Ickenham, Ruislip, The Strand

How to support OnLondon.co.uk

Most of this unique website's income is provided by individuals who give it £5 a month or £50 a year (and get something in return)
Dave Hill

I brought this website into existence in a simpler form on 1 February 2017 with the goal of continuing and expanding on the writing about London I had been doing elsewhere since the 2008 election for Mayor.

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Categories: Culture
Tags: Hackney

Watchdog reports reveal failings of London social housing landlords

Both the ombudsman and the government regulator have highlighted shortcomings in repairs and complaints services, despite efforts being made to improve
Dave Hill

Nearly two years have passed since a senior member of a west London council strikingly observed to a gathering in Finchley that there isn’t a good housing repairs service anywhere. So frustrated had he become by the position in his own borough that he’d got its public health director to talk its housing team about the need to improve its performance, stressing the link between the condition of peoples’ homes and their physical and mental wellbeing.

The recollection makes recent watchdog verdicts on major providers of low-cost housing in the capital even more troubling.

The latest comes from the Housing Ombudsman in the form of a special investigation of the Hyde housing association, which has around 45,000 homes, most of them in London. The ombudsman’s job is to make the final decision on disputes between residents and landlords. The office also has the power to consider if “a systemic failure” is occurring within a particular organisation.

In the case of Hyde, the ombudsman’s probe was prompted by its “high maladministration rate” of 82 per cent overall, which rose to 94 per cent for effecting repairs to properties and 100 per cent when dealing with cases of damp and mould.

The report records many “unreasonable delays” with repair cases, mainly due to Hyde’s failure to keep on top of what its contractors were doing, with appointments missed and “poor knowledge exchange”. This had been particularly bad during the pandemic.

There are distressing case studies in the report, such as a lone mother of two children who, in December 2020, reported water getting into her second floor flat then spent months chasing Hyde to fix the problem, which grew worse and worse. She had to turn off her electricity supply. Buckets were needed to catch water. Her lounge ceiling began to cave in. The leak wasn’t mended until August 2021 and by the end of the year the internal damage had still not been put right.

Hyde’s handling of complaints was found to reflect a skewing of policy towards its choice and control, rather than those of residents. The ombudsman’s office had intervened in 25 out of 44 cases brought to its attention to get Hyde to “accept or progress the complaint”.

Much of this is said to result from “historical under resourcing” of the association’s complaints team, with “poor systems and knowledge and information management” also contributing. There were examples of inadequate redress, including “poorly handled apologies”. On top of this, queries about service charges have typically not been responded to for five or six months and sometimes for up to a year.

***

The Housing Ombudsman’s report on Hyde follows one published last week about Camden Council‘s landlord services, in which it found “evidence of a defensive complaints culture” characterised by “dismissive” tones when dealing with residents’ concerns.

There is a grim story in it of a man with breathing difficulties and arthritis who needed assistance from a support dog and depended on a lift that had been out of order for more than half of the 1051 days he had lived in his Camden property. So exhausted by having to climb 94 steps to get to his flat, he moved into what is described as “a wooden shack” with no heating or hot water instead.

The report concluded that Camden, the landlord of 31,858 homes, has “a severely flawed approach to complaint handling”, little changed by recent attempts to improve it. “The continued pattern of lengthy delays to complaints being recorded and repair work completed indicates there remains a problem with the landlord’s complaint handling culture,” the report says. “To ensure a real change the landlord needs to invest time, resources and energy to grip these issues and transform its attitude and approach.”

***

Camden isn’t the only borough to be officially found wanting in recent days. Reports on the performances of two other London councils as housing landlords were published last week too. They are the work of the government’s Regulator of Social Housing, whose job, in its words, is to foster “a viable, efficient and well governed social housing sector able to deliver quality homes and services for current and future tenants”.

A “regulatory judgement” has been passed on each of neighbouring Lambeth and Southwark. The former has more to feel good about. The latter has already said sorry.

The regulator scores landlords – housing associations as well as local authorities – on a scale from C1 (very good) to C4 (very bad). Southwark gets C3, so could be worse. Even so, the regulator found “serious failings” there and said “significant improvement is needed”.

The judgement says that more than half of Southwark’s 36,800 homes had not had their “electrical condition” tested for more than five years and that the same proportion had no smoke alarm. On top of this, over 2,000 fire safety “remedial actions”, nearly 100 of them categorised by the council itself as “high risk”, were overdue.

The regulator’s safety and quality standard requires landlords to have “an accurate, up to date and evidenced understanding the condition of their homes” so that their tenants can be sure these meet the Decent Homes Standard. But it emerged that Southwark doesn’t have such information about most of its homes. The council has conducted no stock condition survey since 2010, and that one was based on a representative sample. The council itself told the regulator that around 30 per cent of its stock doesn’t qualify as “decent”.

More encouragingly, Southwark was judged to be delivering an effective repairs service, but scope was found for improving “consistency in repairs completion times”. This was a matter of concern for tenants, who were also considered let down by the council’s approach to allocating homes. The judgement says the existing allocations strategy has not been updated since 2013 and that an “annual lettings plan” brought in last year has “led to a lack of transparency in the allocation of empty homes”. This is described as “a serious failure”.

Amid the criticisms, it is almost touching to read that the regulator’s team “observed a respectful approach to tenants during our inspection” and thought the council “understands the diverse needs of its tenants, with information collected through a robust tenancy audit process”. Southwark had self-referred its failure to meet electrical safety requirements and now has a programme for checking and fitting smoke alarms.

The judgement says the council has “developed a specification for a full stock condition survey”. There is praise for its handling of anti-social behaviour and hate incidents. Despite these shafts of light, though, Southwark leader Kieron Williams has apologised to “tenants who have been let down” and acknowledged that “there is much more to do”.

***

Lambeth has been quite perky about scoring a C2 – top half of the scoreboard, after all. In its case, the judgement is that there are “some weaknesses” in how it manages its 23,628 social rented homes, and 9,290 leasehold properties. These relate to two of the regulator’s four consumer standards criteria, one being safety and quality, the other being transparency, influence and accountability.

On safety and quality the judgement says that “action is needed to ensure that Lambeth Council is delivering an effective, efficient and timely repairs, maintenance and planned improvements service for the homes and communal areas it is responsible for,” but noted efforts being made in that direction. It also records that Lambeth has been reducing its number of “non-decent” homes.

On transparency, influence and accountability, the regulator found weaknesses in “addressing complaints in a fair, effective and prompt manner” but also “some improvement” since the Housing Ombudsman’s review of this in 2022. It was complimentary about the engagement and scrutiny mechanisms the council provides. Against other measures, such as deterring antisocial behaviour and hate incidents and its “choice based letting system”, Lambeth came out well.

***

Are things moving in the right direction? “Southwark Council has been engaging constructively with us,” the regulator says. “It has an understanding of the issues it needs to address and is taking action to rectify the failures identified.” A similar readiness to engage and comparable evidence of efforts to provide a better service were recorded in all four of these reports, as was the case with those on Southern Housing by both watchdog bodies produced earlier this year.

The backdrop, though, is ominous. Housing associations are under fearful financial pressures. At Monday’s winter reception of the All-Party Parliamentary Group of London, Lambeth’s leader, Claire Holland, speaking in her capacity as chair of the cross-party London Councils, warned of “a real risk that councils across London will start to go bankrupt” unless a through a joint effort with the national government boroughs’ pressing budget problems are addressed.

OnLondon.co.uk provides unique coverage of the capital’s politics, development and culture. Support the website and its writers for just £5 a month or £50 a year and get things that other people won’t. Details HERE. Follow Dave Hill on Bluesky. 

Categories: News
Tags: Camden Council, council housing, Housing Ombudsman, Hyde housing, Lambeth Council, Richard Blakeway, social housing, Southwark Council

Charles Wright: As Thames Water drowns in debt, what will happen next?

With crunch decisions about the company's future looming, the one certainty is that Londoners will be paying higher bills
Charles Wright

Thames Water is in a mess, primarily of its own making. And next month looks like crunch time for the future of the beleaguered utility company, which provides water and sewerage services to 16 million customers across London and beyond.

On 17 December, Thames will seek High Court approval for a £3 billion emergency financing deal to keep it alive. Two days later, water industry regulator Ofwat will hand down its verdict on how much the company should be investing over the coming five years, and how that will be paid for.

Thames is mired in both financial and operational crisis. The company owes a staggering £16 billion, with only enough cash in the bank to last until next summer. It’s also struggling with the day job, the most prominent example being the large amounts of raw sewage it’s regularly pumping into London’s waterways. One report suggests £23 billion-worth of its assets are in urgent need of repair. So what will this month’s decisions mean for the capital?

One thing is certain – bills will go up. Thames’s latest pitch to Ofwat as the regulator finalises its five-year settlement with the water companies, agreeing spending levels on services and infrastructure investment as well as setting charges to customers, is for a hike in the annual household bill from today’s £436 to £600 by 2030.

Ofwat’s draft proposals would limit that increase to £535. But Thames continues to argue the point, and industry observers expect some movement next month. The company may then appeal to the final arbiter, the Competition and Markets Authority. Whatever happens, customers can expect to pay more. And the outcome could determination whether the company continues to exist.

If the £3 billion bailout Thames wants is approved, it will provide the breathing space for a more permanent restructuring. But Ofwat’s current proposals, on bills and on returns to investors, would not, according to chief executive Chris Weston, allow Thames to raise enough cash. In fact it would “prevent the turnaround and recovery of the company,” he has said.

Ofwat boss David Black outlined to MPs earlier this week at a Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs committee hearing, his vision of a restructured and refinanced business, ready to “take responsibility for turning operational performance around”. But without an improvement on Ofwat’s currently proposed 3.72 per cent return to investors, that might be hard to achieve.

It’s a tricky balancing act. Overall, Ofwat wants the water companies to triple investment to £35 billion over the next five years to tackle sewage spills and upgrade water mains, as well as addressing future supply needs. But it also has to protect customers, who have nowhere else to go, from unreasonable price hikes as well as allowing enough of a return to keep investors on board.

Thames, along with the industry as a whole, says the regulator hasn’t got it right, keeping bills too low for too long. That has a knock-on effect on the company’s capacity to sort itself out and improve its performance, they say.

This time round, for example, Ofwat plans to cap Thames’s 2025-2030 spending at £16.9 billion rather than the £19.8 billion requested, while continuing to tighten performance standards and limit investors’ returns. A lot of cash needs to be raised, but will Ofwat’s position make that more difficult? As one commentator noted, alternative investments such as UK gilts currently offer better returns, “without the hassle of fixing the water network”.

Thames Water isn’t flavour of the month, and letting investors take higher returns won’t be popular. However, as Black told MPs, it was clear when the companies were first privatised that debt, as relatively low-cost source of financing, was going to be in the mix when it came to boosting investment. Without that investment, Londoners may find that the pollution problems which have provoked so much anger in the capital won’t be fully fixed any time soon.

So far, Ofwat is sticking to its guns. It has declared Thames’s 2020 to 2025 business plan “inadequate” and argues that the proposed 3.72 per cent return will allow the company to “attract the borrowing and equity it needs to deliver a step up in performance”.

What if Thames Water doesn’t survive? If that happens, not many tears will be shed, and Black seemed relaxed about the prospect. “The regulatory regime always anticipated that a company might fail. It’s not Ofwat’s responsibility to stop companies going bust,” he told MPs.

The regulator’s role, he went on, is to protect the customer: “That’s the test – that even though the company fails, customers still get service and ultimately there will be a new or turned-round company stepping into the situation. We are confident we can manage that.”

The previous government was apparently drawing up plans for that final step – effectively renationalisation – to keep the taps from running dry. But Labour seems less keen on an option which would inevitably mean additional costs and a significant debt burden transferring to Whitehall.

Its focus is its new law, curbing bonuses and tightening up on pollution monitoring, and on its wide-ranging review of water sector regulation, launched last month, which has the aim of delivering a “sufficiently robust and stable regulatory framework to attract the investment needed to clean up our waterways, speed up infrastructure delivery and restore public confidence in the sector”.

What might a reformed water sector landscape look like? Black had some advice: the companies need to set long-term goals, invest more, improve their governance and demonstrate, he said, “how they can make decisions in the interests of consumers and the environment”. Would that make them more like the stock market-listed public companies they used to be, reformed in the way some observers have suggested in return for a better deal from Ofwat?

It remains to be seen whether Thames Water in its present form will be around to play a part in this or how long it might take any new entity that emerges from its ashes to improve performance. All we definitely know, given that Thames has no source of revenue apart from its customers, is that directly or indirectly, it will be us who pay.

***

How the company reached this point brings to mind the famous exchange in Ernest Hemingway’s novel The Sun Also Rises:

“How did you go bankrupt?

“Two ways. Gradually, and then suddenly.”

David Black gave MPs a helpful potted history. In 1989, the water companies were sold off debt-free. But what were originally “low risk, low yield” companies, listed on the stock exchange, were progressively taken over by private equity firms wanting higher returns.

Thames fell under the control of Australian bank Macquarie in 2006. During its 11-year stewardship it was able to take advantage of a regulatory regime which allowed debt to rise, while investors benefited from high dividend returns – around £2.7 billion, by some accounts. When Macquarie pulled out in 2017, the company’s debt stood at £11 billion and has continued to grow.

In a detailed rebuttal of the criticism widely levelled against it, Macquarie disputes the £2.7 billion figure, saying it includes “movements in inter-company accounts”, with payments to shareholders amounting to £1.1 billion of that total. It argues that Ofwat had encouraged the water companies to raise debt to fund vital investment and all the conditions set by the regulator had been fulfilled.

Post-Macquarie, with interest rates and costs soaring, Thames’s debt proved unsustainable and the situation came to a head. “They’d tried unsuccessfully to turn themselves around in recent years and that has reached a point where the current owners have refused to invest further in the business,” Black told the committee. In March, shareholders pulled the plug on a promised £500 million injection, saying the company was now “uninvestible”.

Macquarie has taken most of the flak, but Ofwat doesn’t come out of the saga well either. Its regime encouraged companies to take on significant debt while, arguably, under-policing what was happening with all that investment and relying too heavily on credit ratings for assurance. “Thames Water took it too far,” said Black. If a similar situation arose today, he added, “Ofwat should intervene earlier”.

OnLondon.co.uk provides unique coverage of the capital’s politics, development and culture. Support it for just £5 a month or £50 a year and get things for your money other people won’t. Details HERE. Follow Charles Wright on Bluesky. Image from Thames Water.

Categories: Analysis
Tags: environment, Ofwat, Thames Water

John Vane’s London Stories: Comic turns in Camden Town

Jokes about dating, ethnicity and meditation and one routine that went too far
John Vane

An autumn night in Camden Town, where, long ago, Kilburn and The High Roads played Dingwalls and a famous pet shop sold enormous snakes. The market was full of bongs back then. Maybe it still is. They say the place has lost its soul. Well, name a time when they weren’t. Come on. Camden’s fringe festival gets compared with Edinburgh’s. The place heaves with pubs and clubs. And everywhere you look, people are standing up and making you laugh.

There was a crowd of 50-odd in the little bar, keen young cosmopolitans preoccupied – if the material set before them was any guide – with dating and ethnic identity. The compere, a smiley black American, teased the mostly white audience with news that this was the “blackest comedy night in north London” (or somesuch), and relaxed us between acts with mellow lines about baby fathers and eating dogs.

We laughed: maybe at him, maybe at ourselves, maybe at him laughing at us, maybe – and maybe mirthlessly – at how stuck we all seem to be with certain ways of seeing and being. Performers got five minutes each. I, in the front row of the ranks of folding chairs, got my line prepared for when one of them asked me what I do for a living (“I review comedians for the Telegraph.”).

Women told jokes about being East Asian, being single, being insulted by children, being single, being worried about their weight and being single. Men told jokes about being Indian and being single, their jumpers and being single, being short and being single. Everyone said “shit” frequently. One woman ventured into clown country, donning a sheep novelty hat and, by inflating an exercise ball using a pump squeezed between her knees, fashioned a symbolic representation of a ewe being penetrated by a ram.

The next comic turn was a guy who got off to a good follow-that start (“I hate it when people steal my material”), then instantly crashed and burned by going into a routine about Gaza and Jews. The stoney silence prompted him to improvise in a manner he had not anticipated (“Uh, oh, I thought it would land well with this audience…”).

Did someone deep once observe that you can get away with making a joke about a tragedy as long as you take the tragedy seriously? Perhaps he would have obeyed that rule, but he had overstepped the limits of edginess so quickly that we would never know. The sheep woman, sitting next to me, suggested he might need to wait 50 years before such material could be acceptable.

The evening’s only other discordant moment was when a couple of young women, tiresomely drunk, gatecrashed and tried a bit of heckling. Our compere suavely suggested that their parents might be called. They were quickly gone.

That tiny incident threw into relief the generosity of those who’d paid their money. What used to be called “alternative comedy”, back in the days of pet shop pythons and pub rock, was inseparable from pisshead counter-performances from the floor. But this audience was rather sweet. My eye was caught by two lads from Ireland, who looked as if they’d broken out of seminary. I felt a fleeting urge to get up at the end and tell everyone I hoped their rents would soon come down and to call me if they got frightened travelling home.

To end, my evening’s favourite lines :

“Hi. I’m Frank. I travelled here this evening on the Tube. You can imagine what it was like – busy, overcrowded, people under pressure, hard to relax. I found a seat and decided it would be more mindful if I meditated. So I closed my eyes and focused on my breathing. It was amazing. So powerful. I was able to completely block out a pregnant woman standing next to me who needed to sit down.”

Thank you, Camden, and good night.

John Vane is a pen name used by Dave Hill, editor and publisher of On London. Buy his London novel Frightgeist: A Tall Tale of Fearful Times here, here or here. Subscribe to his Substack too.

Categories: Culture, John Vane's London Stories
Tags: Camden Town, Dingwalls, theatre

Lewis Baston: Labour’s ‘Super Thursday’ by-election holds can’t disguise a slide

The party retained all five London council seats contested in the latest by-elections, but less convincingly than it would have liked
Lewis Baston

Thursday 28 November saw a Super Thursday of London borough by-elections. There were five vacancies in four wards in three boroughs. Two of the contests arose from councillors being elected MPs in July’s general election, and one party – Labour – was defending all the seats.

A lot of the activity concerned Barking & Dagenham. It hosted three of the votes, one of which came about for the same reason Enfield held a by-election on the same day. The need for new member to represent Northbury ward was caused by the resignation of Darren Rodwell, who had been Barking & Dagenham’s leader for ten years until he stood down in September.

Rodwell had been selected as Labour’s candidate for the Barking parliamentary seat, but withdrew after an allegation of misconduct was made against him. He was later cleared, but it was too late for his parliamentary aspirations. A replacement candidate had already been chosen – Nesil Caliskan, the then leader of Enfield.

It was her elevation to the Commons that left a seat to fill in Enfield. Rodwell, not surprisingly, was sad and angry about these events, blaming “a deliberate attempt to besmirch my name and reputation ahead of the close of nominations”. He decided he was better off out of politics.

The other two Barking & Dagenham by-elections were both in Village ward. One was caused by Margaret Mullane being elected MP for Dagenham & Rainham, the other by the death of Lee Waker, who had been a Village councillor since 2002.

Northbury and Village are at opposite ends of the borough. Northbury is in its north west, covering Barking station and the residential areas to its east and west. It is a highly diverse ward – 39 per cent Asian, 29 per cent white and 23 per cent black. The housing is mainly rented, 40 per cent from private landlords and 29 per cent in the social sector, with only 11 per cent owning their flats or houses outright. Slightly more than the borough average have degrees and significantly more commute to work by Tube.

The ward closely fits the pattern of high-density development around lower-cost commuter hubs in outer London (it is successor to the previous Abbey ward, which was split up in 2022 because of population growth). Its demographic mix makes it fertile ground for Labour and potentially for parties to Labour’s left. It was 69 per cent Labour in the 2022 borough elections, but that sort of share usually sustains a dent in a lower-turnout by-election.

And so it proved. Labour’s Val Masson retained the seat with ease, but the party’s share dipped to 58 per cent (561 votes). Simon Anthony for the Greens came second with 17 per cent (161 votes), just as the Greens had done in 2022. Contesting the ward for the first time, Reform UK came third (101 votes, 10.4 per cent, for their candidate Ryan Edwards), pushing Conservative Angelica Olawepo into fourth by a single vote. Liberal Democrat Olumide Adeyefa brought up the rear. The swing to the Tories was 2.4 per cent, which is at the lower end of the recent spectrum.

***

Village ward is in the east of the borough, in the part of Dagenham that lies between the Dagenham Heathway and Dagenham East District Line stations and to their south. Dagenham is for the most part inter-war planned public sector suburbia, and so is a large section of Village ward: 38 per cent of households are social rented. But there are some post-war estates and also the old village of Dagenham (hence the ward name) with its green and its parish church.

The church is old, but was remodelled in the 19th Century. Inside, there is a memorial brass to Thomas Urswick (1415-79), Chief Baron of the Exchequer and one of four MPs at the time for London. Village ward’s population is just over 50 per cent white, a high proportion for the borough. People there tend to drive to work. Although it has been a Labour ward – as have all Barking & Dagenham wards in every election since 2010 – there is potential competition from the right.

All four of the main London parties ran two candidates in the two-seat Village race, with the Conservative pair prefixing the word “Local” to their party name. Neither the Greens nor the Lib Dems made much impression and in the absence of a Reform candidate, who might have polled respectably, the battle was between Labour and the Tories.

Labour’s team (pictured) of Julia Williams (776 votes) and Ajanta Deb-Roy (774 votes) prevailed over their main challengers Ben Suter (580 votes) and Graham Gosling (571 votes).

The Village result, unlike Northbury’s, showed a very impressive swing to the Conservatives – 21.5 per cent since the borough elections in May 2022. But it would be a mistake to conclude from this that the Tories are on course to sweep to victory in Barking & Dagenham in the near future, or in London more generally.

The Conservative vote here varies substantially depending on the type of election. It comes out for mayoral elections – Shaun Bailey carried Village for the Tories in 2021 – and sometimes for general elections, but not in full borough elections.

That is because the local Tory machine is stretched too thin. Labour, conversely, has a well-oiled and successful campaign infrastructure for full Barking & Dagenham borough elections, but sometimes struggles in by-elections.

This explains why the Tories have managed respectable swings in Barking & Dagenham before, such as one of 13 per cent in Mayesbrook in September 2023, when the party was not picking up in general popularity. They have also done better in the recent past than they did on Thursday, when Conservative London Assembly member Andrew Boff achieved a 25 per cent swing in Thames ward in May 2021.

***

Enfield’s Jubilee is ward, which Nesil Caliskan vacated, is the northernmost of the block of five Enfield wards making up Edmonton.

The population of the ward is highly diverse. White British account for 20 per cent, around 27 per cent are black – with many distinct communities grouped under that label – and 13 per cent are Turkish or Turkish Cypriot. The ward is 28 per cent Muslim – again, from communities of widely varied origins – and 42 per cent Christian.

It is a predominantly working-class ward, with deprivation levels above the national average. Its name comes from Jubilee Park, which is in the west of the ward. Jubilee also contains the Lee Valley Athletics Centre in the east. It has been a Labour ward with a substantial majority in recent borough elections, although the Conservatives won a share of representation here in 2002 and 2006.

Six candidates took part in the by-election, with those of the five largest parties joined by Khalid Sadur, a left-wing Independent who had the Jeremy Corbyn seal of approval. Labour’s Ian Barnes was a familiar figure, having previously served as the council’s deputy before standing down from Winchmore Hill ward in 2022.

The Conservatives’ Masud Uddin made fly-tipping and the state of roads and pavements in the Labour-controlled borough the main focus of his campaign. The Greens and Lib Dems criticised Labour over housing. But Labour held Jubilee, and Barnes was returned to the council with 853 votes (39 per cent). Uddin provided the main competition with 691 votes (32 per cent). Sadur finished third (208 votes, 10 per cent). Turnout was 21 per cent.

It was not a particularly impressive Labour victory – compared to May 2022 their share of the vote was down 14 points and the Conservatives were up by nine, amounting to a swing from Labour to Tory of 11.3 per cent. If Enfield Tories can replicate that performance on a larger scale in the May 2026 full borough elections they will have cause for celebration – it would be enough for them to win a majority.

***

The only by-election held on Thursday that had no Barking & Dagenham connection took place in Islington. Having been chosen by Sadiq Khan to be his new Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime, council leader Kaya Comer-Schwartz stepped down from her Islington municipal roles, including as councillor for Junction ward.

Junction is the north-western ward of Islington, centred on Archway Northern line station. In estate agent parlance it is “Highgate borders”, adjoining both the Highgate ward of Camden and the Haringey one of the same name, and covering the lower slopes of Highgate Hill around the Whittington Hospital. The ward name refers in general terms to the road junction at Archway, but more specifically to Junction Road, which heads south from there to Tufnell Park.

Junction ward is part of the Islington North constituency, which Jeremy Corbyn won as an Independent in the general election, having represented it for Labour since June 1983. Corbyn’s suspension, deselection and independent run have caused ructions in the local Labour Party. These have been reflected in the council chamber, where four ex-Labour Independents now sit in a joint group with the three Greens to provide the official opposition to the Labour administration.

Though significant, this pales in comparison with an earlier phase of Islington infighting in 1981-82, when a majority of the council defected to the newly-formed Social Democratic Party. And the alliance between the Independents and the Greens, newly-concluded, was not reflected in the form of an electoral pact for the by-election, in which an Independent and a Green stood separately.

Labour was defending a large majority, having taken 62 per cent of the vote in 2022. No party had emerged as strong competition since the Lib Dems last won seats in the ward in 2002 and 2006. Their candidate was James Potts, a public affairs consultant. The most effective opposition came from Jackson Caines, an Independent enjoying the support of Corbyn. Caines is a housing campaigner and a community organiser for Harrow Law Centre. Not surprisingly, he put housing at the centre of his campaign. The Greens’ Devon Osborne, who had stood in Tufnell Park in 2022, made similar arguments.

The result  was another Labour hold with another substantial drop in the party’s share of the vote. Potts polled 785 votes (40 per cent) to 550 votes (28 per cent) for Caines. Osborne for the Greens was third with 219 votes – at 11 per cent, her vote share was half what the Greens had won in 2022, a sign that Caines had attracted most of the left-of-Labour vote. None of the other candidates – Conservative, Lib Dem, another Independent and one from the Socialist Party of Great Britain – scored better than 10 per cent. Turnout was 21 per cent.

***

Although Labour held all the seats in London’s Super Thursday, the party’s performance was not very super if measured against the 2022 borough elections.

Excuses might be offered for most of the results. As we have seen, the big swing in Village in Barking & Dagenham is not unprecedented and probably not replicable in a bigger contest. The result in Northbury ward was not too bad. The Corbynite challenge in Islington’s Junction was vigorous, but less formidable than Corbyn himself had been July. Enfield council has been much-criticised.

Furthermore, Labour is starting from such a high baseline of support in May 2022 that it can afford to lose a lot of votes and still hold seats and councils. But for all that, a broad pattern of decline in support for Labour is unmistakable.

Support OnLondon.co.uk and its freelancers for just £5 a month or £50 a year and get things for your money that other people don’t. Details HERE. Follow Lewis Baston on Bluesky.

Categories: Analysis
Tags: Barking & Dagenham Council, Enfield Council, Islington Council

Next stage approaches for Hackney Wick’s Yard theatre

Tucked away in a corner of east London right next to the Olympic Park, it has grown with the part of the capital it serves
Dave Hill

To get to the Yard theatre, emerge from Hackney Wick station on what we now call the Mildmay line, scratch your head, look right, venture forth and then turn left between scruffy uprights into what looks like – and is – an ex-industrial site, Queen’s Yard, running up to the Lee Navigation Canal.

So far, so eerie or so promising, according to taste. Whichever, you soon enter an agglomeration of restaurants and bars with an ongoing meanwhile feel and, if you swing immediately right then right again, the former warehouse that has been the home of the theatre since its creation in 2011.

I was there on Tuesday night to see The Flea, a play written by James Fritz and directed by Yard founder Jay Miller. It dramatises the Cleveland Street scandal of 1889, when Fitzrovia hosted a house of assignation where aristocratic gay men encountered boy bits of rough. Nob patrons were rumoured to include Prince Albert Victor, grandson of Queen Victoria.

It was my second night out with The Flea, having attended its first run last autumn. Richard Brown reviewed it for On London at that time. He liked it. So did I. It is witty, insightful, sad, sparklingly performed and cleverly staged. Sartorially, it brought to mind that distant time when Derek Jarman made Jubilee and punk rock morphed into Antmusic. Move fast if you want to catch it at the Yard – its second run finishes on Saturday.

That ending nears as the Yard approaches a new chapter in its history. Earlier this year, the theatre secured a £700,000 Arts Council England (ACE) grant to refurbish and expand. Planning consent for the project had already been received and more news is expected soon.

The Yard’s story is one of commitment, creativity and endeavour. It is also a strand of the legacy of London 2012. The theatre was put together by volunteers, with some materials salvaged from the future Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park’s regeneration works and £10,000 from ACE. It was a temporary conversion that has lasted, underpinned by a 30-year lease. Its board of trustees is chaired by Simon Tate, founder of real estate firm Wetherby. Fellow members include Southbank Centre chief executive Elaine Bedell and Trust for London chief executive Manny Hothi.

The London Legacy Development Corporation, the mayoral body responsible for the evolution of the park and its environs – and the planning authority that consented the Yard’s upgrade scheme – has been among its backers, along with various trusts and the boroughs of Hackney and Tower Hamlets, within whose territory it lies. Another connection is that the Yard ran the short-term Hub 67 community centre, also in Hackney Wick, for the LLDC (it closed in 2022 to make way for redevelopment).

The LLDC will begin its own transformation from Sunday, when planning powers are formally handed back to the four boroughs who ceded them and as it continues its transition into a new kind of organisation for the next Games legacy phase. The theatre’s process of change will encompass a more capacious, sustainable and accessible building, a new café-bar and space for young artists, designed by architects Takero Shimazaki. From improvised pop-up to established institution, the Yard has grown like the part of the capital it serves.

OnLondon.co.uk provides unique coverage of the capital’s politics, development and culture. Support the website and its writers for just £5 a month or £50 a year and get things that other people won’t. Details HERE. Follow Dave Hill on Bluesky. Photo: Outside the theatre from its Facebook page, 2017.

Categories: Culture
Tags: Hackney Wick, Olympic Park, theatre

Dave Hill: Don’t grow tired of caring about London’s housing emergency

In a talk for The London Society, Housing Ombudsman Richard Blakeway has warned of the danger of tolerating the intolerable
Dave Hill

In theory, Britain’s Housing Ombudsman is not one of London’s emergency services: the office’s primary role is to resolve disputes between social housing tenants and their landlords. In practice, there is a flashing blue light quality to its work. Ask Richard Blakeway, the Housing Ombudsman himself. “The housing emergency is starting to make us feel like an emergency service,” he said at a London Society event last week. “Every 30 seconds someone calls us for help.”

Not all of those calls are from Londoners. But Blakeway told the gathering at the Clerkenwell office of architects BDP that 47 per cent of his team’s casework comes from the capital. That is striking, yet no surprise. Councils and housing associations own about 800,000 homes for low-cost rent in London. All of those providers have to sign up with the Ombudsman, and with some private landlords also doing so voluntarily, one Londoner in four or five is entitled to seek the organisation’s assistance.

Demand is a daily deluge. That, too, is to be expected, given the daunting stats. Drawing on research from cross-party local authority group London Councils, Blakeway reminded his audience that on average every classroom in the capital contains a child living in temporary accommodation. At the other end of the age range, he pointed to an increase in the number of over-55s housed by the private rented sector, which has been growing in recent years as the number of mortgage-holders has declined. “At some point, they will retire,” Blakeway said. “How will they afford their housing costs?”

To these numbers can be added the more than 323,000 London households on waiting lists for social housing – twice the population of Cambridge. In inner London, where lists are longest, the average waiting time for a one-bedroom property is well over three years. City Hall’s latest evidence base says there was a small increase in the total amount of social housing in London between 2022 and 2023, but that was nowhere near enough to keep pace with demand, and supply has lately ground to a near-halt.

The same data source says at least 6.6 per cent of all London’s homes are overcrowded. A government estimate in 2020 found that over 400,000 London homes fall short of the national Decent Homes Standard. The other week, I spent two hours with tenants of two-year-old housing association block in Purley. I headed home with my head ringing with their stories of doors that won’t close, a lift that doesn’t work and rats scratching in cavities behind their walls.

I could go on. And on. And on. And the awful thing is, you might get bored. So might I. After all, voices have been raised about London’s housing crisis for much of this century. As Blakeway said, the term embraces a number of different crises covering quality, availability and affordability across every tenure in different ways. With the big picture getting darker and borough budgets buckling under the financial strain, the word “emergency” has been recruited to bring home just how alarming these crises are. But how much impact does that have when even some of those with the most direct responsibility for putting things right display symptoms of commitment fatigue?

“I worry that the numbers are so huge or so often repeated that people may become desensitised,” Blakeway said. He expressed concern, echoing the findings of recent Ombudsman investigations, that the pressures housing associations have come under, due to new post-Grenfell safety standards, ongoing grant reductions, the disruptive effects of mergers and the combination of market conditions that has hit home-building across the board, have seen what he called “a creeping normalisation of responses, a sort of tolerance of things that aren’t tolerable”.

To illustrate the scale of the task to be addressed, he spoke about the landmark Royal Commission on the Housing of the Working Classes, published in 1885. We would be struck if we read it, Blakeway said, by the similarities between the issues the commissioners addressed by then and those clamouring for attention today, not least the link between housing conditions and public health. An Act of Parliament about the issue was assented in the same year and another five years later, the latter giving new powers to the London County Council.

Descriptions of London’s housing conditions in George Orwell’s Keep The Aspidistra Flying, published in 1936, advise us that these initiatives did not instantly make everything right. They did, though, represent a coherent effort to cure an often unspeakable social ailment of the Victorian age, one that debilitated much of the capital city and left hundreds of thousand of Londoners trapped in grim conditions that ruined and cut short lives. Today’s London may not be synonymous with dire hovels and hellish rookeries. But it is in danger of moving back in that direction. The very thought can prompt you to avert your gaze. It is an impulse to fiercely resist.

OnLondon.co.uk provides unique coverage of the capital’s politics, development and culture. Support the website and its writers for just £5 a month or £50 a year and get things that other people won’t. Details HERE. Follow Dave Hill on Bluesky. Photo: Early London social housing near Westminster Abbey. 

Categories: Comment
Tags: council housing, housing associations, Richard Blakeway, The London Society