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Mayoral development corporations come under London Assembly scrutiny

The Olympic Park legacy and the regeneration of Old Oak Common received both praise and criticism from AMs and their City Hall guests
Charles Wright

Mayoral development corporation chiefs defended their record at last week’s meeting of the the London Assembly planning and regeneration committee, which probed the impact of their major schemes at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford and at Old Oak Common in north west London.

The London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC) was established in 2012 to develop the London 2012 site and its surrounding area after the Olympic and Paralympic Games had taken place, and the Old Oak and Park Royal Development Corporation (OPDC) was set up three years later to oversee change around the Old Oak Common HS2 station “super hub”.

Big numbers are in play: 40,000 jobs, 33,000 homes by 2036 and a £1.5 billion boost to the local economy from the East Bank culture and education complex for the LLDC, and up to 25,500 new homes and 65,000 jobs for the OPDC.

But while London School of Economics professor and veteran London watcher Tony Travers highlighted particularly the success of government and LLDC investment on the Olympics site – a “better legacy effort than most” – there was criticism too of the amount of affordable homes and local job opportunities, existing businesses displaced and rising housing costs more generally.

“If the legacy is predicated on improvements for the people of east London, how does that stack up?” asked Labour Assembly member Elly Baker. There were concerns too in Old Oak, with another panel member, community representative Iasia John, expressing “worries about my son not being able to afford to live in the area he was born in.”

But regeneration could be unfairly blamed, said LLDC chief executive Lyn Garner. “It wasn’t a regeneration scheme that changed Brixton or Hackney. It was the result of changes in the market. You can’t fight the economy. But where you control a regeneration area you can put safeguards in place, policies to build affordable housing and bring in job opportunities.”

Forty per cent of the 6,000 homes which will eventually be completed on LLDC-owned land will be affordable, following a shift from the 30% target under the Boris Johnson mayoralty to Sadiq Khan’s new 50% policy, Garner said, with those homes allocated to local people.

And Londoners should not expect too much from regeneration, she added. “We’ve done reasonably well, but we have to remember that new homes built are a complete drop in the ocean when it comes to looking at the levels of overcrowding in London and the numbers of people in temporary accommodation.”

Her warning was echoed by Travers. “There is an equity issue in this and it does explain why people feel they are having things done to them. But in hoping that redevelopment of an area can change the life chances of everyone around, we have to be careful not to over-promise.”

The UK model of regeneration is “heavily reliant” on capturing uplifts in land value to spend locally, he said, citing Battersea Nine Elms, where private sector investment has paid for the extension of the Northern Line and two new Underground stations to make the scheme viable, and the OPDC plans, which Travers described as “almost entirely dependent on generating money through private development”.

Recent government spending announcements suggest that there would be even less public investment coming, he added. “So the model we are discussing, with schemes done through development corporations and boroughs or others, is going to be the one that continues on into the future.”

That meant “hard choices” and compromises to get things done, said OPDC chief executive David Lunts. “There was a time when efforts to regenerate our cities were done differently. The state would fund, sometime very generously,” he said. “Now the public sector has to work with the markets and with private investment. And if we don’t get that private investment happening we are not going to see the benefits that we can capture from that investment.”

Some groups “simply did not want to see development happening at that scale and pace we need to deliver community benefits”, but that was not the view of the majority, Lunts suggested. But Lucy Rogers from the East End Trades Guild said the argument is not settled. “We don’t agree with being painted as a group that never wants anything done,” she said. “It’s how you do it.”

The planning and regeneration meeting can be viewed in full here. Photograph: Housing at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park

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Categories: News
Tags: David Lunts, East Bank, London Legacy Development Corporation, Lyn Garner, regeneration, Tony Travers

City Corporation seeks augmented powers for Billingsgate and Smithfields markets move

The ambitious relocation scheme has taken a further step forward following a decision earlier this month
Dave Hill

The relocation of two of London’s historic wholesale food markets to a new site in Dagenham has moved a step nearer with their owners, the City of London Corporation, depositing a private bill in Parliament to facilitate the move, which is expected to be completed by 2027 or 2028.

Plans to move Billingsgate fish market and Smithfield meat market, along with New Spitalfields fruit and vegetable market, to a purpose-built, consolidated site at Dagenham Dock were proposed by the City’s Court of Common Council – its principal decision-making body – in early 2019 after it bought around 40 acres of land there with that purpose in mind the previous December.

Barking & Dagenham Council launched a consultation of residents about the plans in January 2020, which its leader Darren Rodwell said promised to “bring a huge economic boost to the borough”. Outline plans were submitted to the council in June 2020 and consented the following March. The City says the markets will bring an estimated 2,700 jobs to the area.

It remains the City’s intention that New Spitalfields will follow the other two markets, though this has now been postponed until an undecided future date. The private bill, when enacted, will equip the City with specific powers to bring about about the Smithfield and Billingsgate moves. the move. The decision to advance the bill was taken earlier this month.

The Smithfield relocation will also enable plans for a new home in West Smithfield for the Museum of London – to be renamed the London Museum – to proceed and advance the City Corporation’s “Destination City” vision, making it more of a visitor attraction.

Hailing the museum’s move, policy chairman Chris Hayward said it will “showcase the capital’s rich culture and history to millions of visitors”. The Corporation, which is major funder of the museum, approved revised plans for its new home last week.

Image by markets scheme architects Chetwoods for the City of London Corporation.

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Categories: News
Tags: Barking & Dagenham Council, Billingsgate, City of London Corporation, New Spitalfields, Smithfield

John Vane’s London Stories: Scenes from the shithole

Bus manners, outstanding hats and an early Christmas tree
John Vane

Another day, another “patriot” on Twitter describes London as “a lawless 3rd works shithole”. Note that with qwerty “k” is next to “l” and “s” is next to “d” and poisonous stupidity can spoil a dickhead’s aim.

I ventured out into the “shithole” this afternoon, having a purchase to make in Islington. On the outward journey the bus was pretty full – perhaps fuller than you’d expect on a Sunday afternoon, though weekend custom has ticked up and for many it is a day for visits and sociability.

Lots of women were on board, most of them middle-aged and black. We were joined by a frail Asian man using a medical walking stick, a large group of children and an elderly black man wearing a capacious fawn suit and complementary overcoat, a spectacular tie, a heavy chain that hung from his neck to his navel, dark glasses and a bright red trilby. A big day at church maybe.

The driver had a message for new arrivals: “Seats upstairs. Seats upstairs.” A newly-boarded youth greeted me with a friendly “hi!” before realising he’d thought I was someone else. An elderly woman got on wearing a face-covering. A young man moved so she could squeeze on to a seat. Another woman got on wearing an enormous golden hat.

“Upstairs. Seats upstairs. Man, you double swiped!” And soon it was standing room only.

Heading back in the half-dark, I mostly walked, carrying my purchase and wolfing a kebab. A white man walked past carrying a big Christmas tree. Another man, black, remarked as he struggled past, “You’re a bit early, ain’t you guv’nor?” Laughter all round.

Keep your distance from our “lawless 3rd works shithole”, patriots. We don’t want your sort round here.

John Vane writes word sketches of London. Sometimes he makes things up. Follow John on Twitter.

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Categories: Culture
Tags: buses, Islington

Vic Keegan: The many mysteries of Mark Lane in the City

It might seem to be little but office blocks, yet this road near the Tower contains a wealth of London history
Victor Keegan

Mark Lane in the City, near the Tower of London, has always been a bit of a puzzle to me. It sounds to me as if it was named after a bookmaker, but as historian John Stow pointed out in the late 16th century it was actually so called because of a “mart” or cattle market once located there. If you walk down it today, starting from the Great Tower Street end, it seems to offer only a conglomeration of overcrowded office blocks.

However, a couple of its newish buildings bear the name Corn Exchange – a reminder that an actual Corn Exchange existed in the area from 1747 for nearly 250 years, selling oats, beans and grain on behalf of farmers. From 1826 it had rival, also on Mark Lane, and between them they generated so much chaff it is easy to see why a street running parallel to Mark Lane, which bore the brunt of it, was called Seething Lane – “seething” means constantly agitated. Continue along Mark Lane and find a surprise on the left hand side: a Grade I listed church tower with no church attached.

It is what remains of a church called All Hallows Staining, an earlier version of which was recorded on the site in the late 12th century. All Hallows means “all saints” and “staining” means stone, which distinguished it from other All Hallows churches in the City, which were made of wood. It is situated next to its benefactor, the Worshipful Company of Clothworkers, one of the City’s livery companies. This helps explain the tower’s Grade I status.

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Beneath the tower and slightly to one side of it there is crypt (shown in the engraving above). But the crypt wasn’t part of All Hallows Staining church. It was originally situated in Monkwell Street, which ran through where the Barbican estate now stands, and formed part of an ancient hermitage known as the Chapel of Saint James in the Wall, the wall being London Wall.

Following King Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries in 1543, the chapel was given to local man, William Lambe, who is best known for, in 1577, building a conduit to carry water over 2000 yards from near the junction of what is now Lambs Conduit Street – named after Lambe – and Long Yard in Bloomsbury to a conduit head at Snow Hill in Holborn.

This brought fresh spring water to the inhabitants of Holborn long before the New River company started supplying it almost 40 years later. Lambe was also a longstanding member of the Clothworkers company, and when the chapel was pulled down in 1872 its crypt was moved, stone by stone, to All Hallows Staining. Every year, the adjoining Clothmakers’ Hall hosts a service to commemorate Lambe, who has been described as “a person wholly composed of goodness and bounty”.

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There are plans for a major redevelopment scheme which envisage incorporating the tower and crypt as the focal point of a new public open space, which would bring a largely lost part of the City to renewed prominence. It may come as a surprise to City commuters that there was once a Mark Lane London Underground station. It was actually on Seething Lane, but not named after it because it didn’t sound soothing enough for a station.

You can still see the former entrance to it in Byward Street (above, left) and if you peer through the gate the top of the stairs leading down to the platform is visible. You can also, apparently, still see one of the Mark Lane platforms during the Tube ride from Monument to Tower Hill, but the train I took for that journey was travelling too fast for me to spot it or photograph it. Unless you happen to be a Tube driver, it remains a lost bit of London.

This is the seventh article in a series of 20 by Vic Keegan about locations of historical interest in the Eastern City part of the City of London, kindly supported by the EC BID, which serves that area. On London’s policy on “supported content” can be read here.

Categories: Culture, EC BID supported series
Tags: Byward Street, City of London, EC BID, Mark Lane, Seething Lane

Sadiq Khan’s ultra-low emission zone to cover all of Greater London

Sadiq Khan has announced his decision along with grace period to adapt and £110 million scrappge scheme
Charles Wright

City Hall’s controversial plan to extend the Ultra-Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) to cover the whole of the capital will go ahead from 29 August next year, Sadiq Khan has confirmed.

The decision comes despite mounting pressure on the Mayor over the cost-of-living impacts of the scheme, which will see older, more polluting vehicles that fail to meet emissions targets charged £12.50 a day to drive within the Greater London area.

The expansion will be accompanied by a £110 million scrappage scheme helping residents replace non-compliant vehicles and the “biggest expansion of the outer London bus services in history”, according to Khan, adding an extra million kilometres to the network.

The scrappage scheme will be available to low income and disabled Londoners, charities, small businesses and sole traders, with free travel cards for up to two years available as part of the package. Grace periods before the charge kicks in will also be extended for disabled drivers and community transport minibuses to October 2027 and October 2025 respectively.

Giving the scheme the green light was one of the “toughest decisions I’ve taken,” Khan said ahead of the announcement. “But I am not willing to let political expediency trump public health,” he added. “From August next year more than five million Londoners will be breathing cleaner air.”

Air pollution caused by the city’s traffic contributes to some 4,000 premature deaths a year, according to City Hall, with the top ten boroughs for premature death all in outer London. Those suffering the worst consequences of air pollution were least likely to own a car, Khan said.

New City Hall figures released last week showed a sharp rise in the numbers of London children admitted to hospital with asthma in 2021/22 – up 64% on 2020/21 when Covid saw lower than usual pollution levels. Around half the children affected were from minority ethnic backgrounds

Some reports had suggested that two-thirds of respondents to TfL’s consultation on the scheme said it should not go ahead. The consultation was “not a referendum,” said Khan. A separate poll commissioned by City Hall had shown 51 per cent backing for the scheme, with only 27 per cent opposed.

No government funding had been made available for the scrappage scheme, Khan confirmed. The funding deal agreed between City Hall, TfL and Whitehall earlier this year also specifically barred the Mayor from using government grant to cover the wider costs of implementing the expansion.

Last week the London Assembly sanctioned an update to City Hall’s statutory transport strategy, paving the way to the expansion as well as possible wider road user charging schemes in the future.

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Categories: News
Tags: air quality, congestion, ultra low emission zone

Dave Hill: London’s bus service is still in decline and that must be reversed

As expected, cuts and route changes have been far less extreme than feared but the direction of travel is still wrong
Dave Hill

Transport for London’s announcement that cuts and changes to the capital’s bus service network will be far less extensive than feared has not come as a great surprise to those in the know. Last month, speaking at On London‘s bus service discussion event, Go-Ahead London’s John Trayner and former TfL surface transport chief Leon Daniels anticipated such an outcome, one to be prompted in part by a dismayed response from Londoners to proposals in TfL’s Central London bus review – a response some suspect was actively sought by City Hall as a weapon in its long war with an array of hostile know-alls in national government.

Politicians of all parties are claiming credit for what is being widely termed a U-turn by Sadiq Khan, who is to fill the funding gap that caused the cuts to be considered in the first place with £25 million a year from City Hall reserves – money that can no longer be spent on other things. The Mayor has emerged as a saviour or as a failure at frightening more cash out of Whitehall, depending on your point of view. What remains beyond dispute is that London’s bus service is again to be reduced following many years of growth from the start of this century, and that can only be a bad thing for the city.

It is hard to overstate the importance of the bus network both to Londoners and to London’s economy. The capital’s increasingly green fleet of 8,800 vehicles carried over two billion passengers a year pre-pandemic and while it may never fully recover to that level it continues to inch upwards as Covid recedes and a transportation “new normal” evolves. Crucially, it remains London’s most-used and least expensive public transport mode and is valued by Londoners of every kind.

Yet the past several years have seen ridership slip as journey times have lengthened and reliability has reduced. The reasons for that decline are various and often fiercely contested, but there is no question that buses have lost road space priority as policy makers have sought to encourage and facilitate cycling and pedestrian schemes.

Walking and cycling form with buses the holy trinity of desirable surface movement, between them providing cleaner and more efficient use of road space, along with more appealing public realm. All three are rightly supported, but practicalities and priorities sometimes bring them into conflict.

Resolving that conflict is an often complex policy challenge. The worry is that recent solutions might not be quite right and that bus passengers, many of them low paid and elderly, have been unduly penalised, sometimes to the benefit of the affluent and much smaller London cycling demographic, with its narrow, sometimes selfish, campaign focus on and its influential media allies.

The backlash against cuts has demonstrated that many Londoners greatly value their bus service, hailed as a world-leader in better times. This gives hope that they can raise their collective voice more loudly in future. Pedestrians need something similar. The politically difficult case for more extensive road-user charging, which would beneficially reduce the number of private motor vehicles on the roads, should be carefully and persuasively made. Ultimately, though, the trio of desirable surface travel objectives needs to be pursued with the greatest possible mutual respect and constructive collaboration.

The scale and distribution of London’s bus services are rightly always under review, and changes are sometimes justified. Maintaining low bus fares, enabled by subsidy from other areas of TfL activity, is going to be difficult in these financially exacting times. Nonetheless, the goal of bus policy must surely be to increase demand for bus services and to meet it. The reverse would be the wrong direction of travel for London as a whole.

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Categories: Comment
Tags: buses, transport, Transport for London

City Corporation approves updated plans for new Museum of London

Adjustments to the original 2020 consent have been described as "minor" and relate to the listed status of one of the buildings affected
Dave Hill

The Museum of London’s relocation has taken another step forward thanks to revised plans for the refurbishment and alteration of its new site at West Smithfield being approved by the City of London Corporation.

Permission for the scheme, which will see the museum move from 150 London Wall in the Barbican where it has been since 1976, was granted in June 2020 and the latest consent is for relatively small changes to part of the original proposals.

The redevelopment will see the partial demolition, refurbishment and extension of the General Market building at 43 Farringdon Street, which became disused after it sustained bomb damage during World War II.

The newer Poultry Market at Charterhouse Street, constructed in the early 1960s, will also be repaired and adapted at basement, ground and first floor levels to also house part of the Museum.

In addition, buildings currently known as the Annexe Site on Snow Hill and Smithfield Street will be transformed for use by the museum and to house offices, shops, food and drink outlets and event and function space. A “triple height canopy above a public realm space” will be added to facilitate this mixture of uses. The scheme’s designers are Stanton Williams.

The update to the application concerned the Poultry Market building, which since July 2000 has been a Grade II listed part of the larger Smithfield complex.  The City’s planning officers’ report to its new planning and transport sub-committee explained that an additional consent was required relating to the listed status, which had not been secured in 2020.

“While the proposed works have been dealt with in a careful and skilful way and the scheme has been driven by best conservation practice, there is inevitably some harm to the historic fabric” the report said. It concluded that this would amount to “a medium level of less than substantial harm” accruing from “the comprehensive remodelling of the interior and the loss of clerestory glazing [a high section of a wall containing windows]” which would be “significantly outweighed by the substantive public benefits that the work would secure”.

The report welcomed “the sensitive revival of the market buildings and the public realm, securing a strategic development that offers significant social, economic and environmental benefits including job creation, tourism and income generation”, creating “a visitor attraction that is accessible and inclusive for all, telling the story of London” that represents “an exceptional opportunity for this area of Smithfield”.

The part of the Smithfield hub that still functions as a meat market – officially London Central Markets – is to move to a new site in Dagenham, along with Billingsgate fish market, currently based in Canary Wharf. New Spitalfields fruit and vegetable market, which has operated from a site in Leyton since 1991, is expected to join them at a later date.

The Museum of London intends to open at West Smithfield in 2025 under the new name of The London Museum. It will close to the public on its present site next month, although its Museum of Docklands branch will stay open under its own new name The London Museum Docklands from January.

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Categories: News
Tags: City of London Corporation, Museum of London, Smithfield

Croydon: Council issues further Section 114 notice as Mayor says books cannot be balanced

Conservative Jason Perry has blamed the legacy of the Labour administration that preceded him for having to seek further financial help from the government
Tara O'Connor Local Democracy Reporter

Croydon Council has just been forced to declare effective bankruptcy for the third time, with the authority issuing another Section 114 notice this morning as it admitted it cannot balance its budget in the next financial year.

The council, led by Conservative Mayor Jason Perry, has blamed the ongoing impact of historic financial mismanagement. After issuing a Section 114 for the first time in 2020 it was given a £120 million bailout loan by the government to balance the books.

Perry has now written to Secretary of State Michael Gove asking for more money. The Mayor said the council has uncovered a further £48 million of costs, which will be added to next year’s budget and blamed “unresolved historic accounting risks”.

The council has a total of £1.6 billion of debt, which it has to pay back at a rate of £47 million a year. In the past two years Croydon has made £90 million in savings and raised £50 million in asset sales, with further proposals for £44 million in savings in 2023/24 and around £100 million in proposed additional asset disposals in the coming years.

However, this is not enough to put the council on sustainable footing and it would need to reduce spending by £130 million in the next financial year, leaving the organisation “financially and operationally unsustainable”.

Perry said: “The previous administration has left a legacy of unprecedented financial mismanagement, toxic bad debt and a lack of governance and transparency that shames Croydon and continues to have a long-lasting impact on the sustainability of our council.

“Despite the hard work of staff to support the council’s recovery, the toxic level of historic debt means that Croydon is trapped in a vicious cycle. Even with government support, the coming years will be incredibly financially challenging for Croydon Council. Ultimately, this will mean the council needs to do and spend less, with significant spending reductions.

“I am determined to fix what the previous administration has broken and to protect our residents, our staff and the borough as much as possible, but getting the council back on track to recovery and long-term financial and operational sustainability will take a long time and need radical solutions. We must balance our books and become a much smaller organisation, which is more efficient and delivers priority services that support our residents, our communities and the borough.”

The council’s cabinet will meet on 30 November to discuss its medium term financial strategy. In a video, cabinet member for finance Jason Cummings said: “Croydon Council has today had to issue a new Section 114 notice as a result of legacy issues from Labour bankrupting the borough. This notice has the full support of the Mayor and cabinet. This is happening because on our current projections it will be impossible to set a balanced budget next year with the resources we have.”

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Categories: News
Tags: Conservatives, Croydon Council, Jason Perry