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Clare Delmar: Mortlake’s Stag Brewery is a case study of how to do regeneration wrong

Developers of other big schemes in London have learned lessons from the past, but not the owners of a beautiful site beside the Thames
Clare Delmar

The photo above shows the view looking south over the derelict buildings that once produced the King of Beers – Budweiser – and before that rolled out the barrel for Watney’s. It is the former Stag Brewery in Mortlake.

This beautifully located site on the banks of the Thames has been unused since 2015 when the InBev brewing company ceased production there and sold the site to City Developments Limited (CDL), a Singapore-based listed multinational real estate corporation.

Operating as Reselton Properties, its UK subsidiary, CDL has submitted several planning applications to redevelop the site via its local agent Dartmouth Capital. Its first application was approved by Richmond-upon-Thames Council but subsequently “called in” by Sadiq Khan, who rejected it some 18 months later.

Revised applications were submitted earlier this year and consideration of them is still in progress. A timeline and summary of the situation can be found on the local community group’s website here. The consultation period for this application ended before the summer, and no date for new public hearing has yet been given.

In the meantime, Richmond has granted CDL/Reselton permission to lease part of the site for film production. Initially this was for two years and is now being considered for a further five.

And as the site languishes, closed off to the local community, Stag Brewery is becoming a case study of how not to do urban regeneration in London in the 21st century. It is out of touch, out of ideas, and out of local support.

In a London where recent high-profile riverside regeneration schemes such as Nine Elms and Battersea Power Station have been loudly criticised, CDL is falling into the same traps. The difference is that in late 2022 this is being exposed before it even happens.

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Where to start? There has been little and poor-quality community engagement, and when it has happened it’s been defensive and one-off, such as the “webinar” hosted by Reselton’s community engagement consultants Soundings immediately prior to the submission of the current planning application. This “engagement” was, in my view, a de facto announcement of intent with no opportunity for input from local residents.

Information flow on what is happening onsite has been non-existent, and the film production operation has literally blocked any access to the site, with men in high-vis jackets guarding the gates on a daily basis. A notice to block off adjacent Ship Lane – a popular access route to the river for cyclists, dog-walkers and pedestrians – during a film production earlier this year provided no alternatives to local residents or cyclists for river access. When I enquired about involving local residents as film extras, I was told to apply online to head office.

Increasingly, the Stag scheme is becoming an outlier among London’s portfolio of regeneration projects, for all the wrong reasons: abandonment of a derelict site; no community engagement; no office, website, Twitter account or events to bring residents in and build support; and no jobs for locals in the temporary commercial activity onsite.

CDL and its associates are beginning to look like dinosaurs – anachronisms in a city where regeneration is taking new, collaborative and in many cases, community-led forms.

Their approach to the Stag Brewery redevelopment pales in comparison to other regeneration schemes in London, such as Brent Cross, Earls Court and Barking Riverside.

London-based developer Argent is regenerating Brent Cross and creating a new town on a brownfield site driven by net zero targets, strengthened public transport links and metrics supporting “neighbourliness, inclusivity and good health”.

At Earls Court, developers Delancey, alongside Transport for London, have formed the Earls Court Development Company. They have continually opened up parts of the site for community events, they maintain an office for dialogue and information, and they run competitions for local schools and charitable organisations to raise awareness and funds.

The regeneration of Barking Riverside is led by a collective of stakeholders, including housing association L&Q, Barking & Dagenham Council, Mayor Khan, Homes England and TfL. It is embracing opportunities to build-in new transport, health and leisure services and maintains continual dialogue with its local community.

CDL has talked about none of this or, indeed, any impact of its proposed redevelopment on local people and their environment. This is particularly bizarre for a company which prides itself on its environment, social and governance approach to property investment and development and touts its multiple sustainable development goals to its shareholders on a regular basis. If anyone would like a local definition of “greenwashing” look no further.

How Richmond Council approaches the next application to redevelop the Stag site will be a real test of its commitment to the local community of Mortlake, the many who enjoy the Thames towpath, and its own reputation as a progressive, forward-thinking local authority.

This is a slightly edited version of an article originally published at Listen to Locals.

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Categories: Comment
Tags: Mortlake, regeneration, Richmond Council

Demand for central London office space holding up but changing, new report finds

An emerging "new normal" contains many opportunities, but these will need to be seized by employees and employers alike according to a study for a borough partnership
Dave Hill

A detailed study for a group of central and inner London boroughs has concluded that reports of a post-Covid “death of the office” have been exaggerated, but that the quality and type of office space employers are now seeking has significantly changed in a new age of hybrid working.

In a 75-page report for the Central London Forward partnership, built environment consultants Arup – working with property specialists Gerald Eve and the London School of Economics – assess recent changes in use of offices in the heart of the capital, how demand might evolve over the next 20 years and its policy and economic implications.

Conclusions include that the market for offices in the City of London has become the most exposed to new working patterns, and that “local economies in more residential locations stand to benefit” from this as a “new normal” for office attendance rates emerges over the next year or so.

However, the report also identifies “a huge opportunity to embrace the best of home working and in-person working” if employees adapt to the combination more fully, stressing that “the benefits to the economy that come from employees locating together need to be protected” but also arguing that the option to work from home “may help to widen and diversify central London’s labour pool” as well as having substantial benefits for individuals.

By the summer of this year office attendance levels appeared to be “just under half those of 2019”, the report says, with peaks in the middle days of the working week, but at the same time “quarterly office take-up has now returned to the pre-pandemic average” due to factors including constrained supply, and what it calls a “flight to quality”, but that future investment in offices could be imperilled by the unfavourable economic climate.

Office occupiers are increasingly interested in “flexible spaces that can accommodate a wide variety of activities” in buildings with “high quality sustainability credentials” and plenty of meeting spaces conducive to collaboration. These more specific and exacting requirements spell bad news for “peripheral, low quality spaces” the report says.

Another key finding is that central London’s leisure and culture activities are of “fundamental” importance to maintaining the appeal of using office space, with many employers saying that “variety and stimulation outside of the office is beginning to matter more than proximity to other businesses”. This should ensure that the City and also the West End continue to be desirable places to locate if rental prices are right.

The report recommends that the Central London Forward boroughs promote a “best of both worlds” approach to hybrid working which should include continuing to emphasise the centre’s value as an area for collaboration and agglomeration”, support a “managed transition” of less desired office premises to different uses, such as good quality residential, championing the arts, entertainment and public realm, and lobbying for the abolition of VAT on “low carbon refurbishments” for sectors with “bespoke needs”.

Read the Arup led report, entitled The Future of the Office in Central London, in full here. Image shows Two Pancras Square from report cover, by Dylan Nolte.

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Categories: News
Tags: Arup, Central London Forward, London School of Economics

Labour candidate selection ‘trigger ballot’ for 2024 mayoral race gets underway

Sadiq Khan is thought very likely to be automatically re-selected, meaning he could seek an unprecedented third term as Mayor
Dave Hill

Labour’s London region has launched the process for choosing its candidate for the next mayoral election, with Sadiq Khan confirmed as seeking selection to run for a third term.

Often termed a “trigger ballot”, the nomination exercise will initially involve the capital’s 73 constituency parties and affiliated unions and other organisations voting on whether to endorse Khan going forward automatically as Labour’s candidate for the 2024 City Hall race or to “trigger” him, meaning others would be able to challenge him.

Local parties can begin holding nomination meetings from this Thursday and must complete them by 18 December, with the result known soon after.

The expectation is that Khan will secure the majority he needs to be automatically re-selected, and he has previously indicated that he intends to run for Mayor again, although, like all mayoral candidates, he would not be required to officially declare his candidacy until much nearer the scheduled date of 2 May 2024.

If he runs in 2024 and wins, Khan will become the first three-term Mayor of London. His two predecessors, Boris Johnson and Ken Livingstone, were Mayor for two terms each.

Khan or any other Labour candidate would probably be favourite to win, given Labour’s current huge national opinion poll leads over the Conservatives and the likelihood of support for the party being even stronger in London, where Tory electoral fortunes have been in long-term decline. The Tories lost 107 seats at this year’s borough elections, leaving them with just 404 out of 1,811.

However, Khan’s re-election at the Covid-delayed mayoral contest of 2021 was by a smaller margin over his Conservative opponent than opinion polls had suggested, and the Tory national government’s introduction of a requirement for voters to show photographic identification at polling stations is thought likely to suppress the Labour vote.

The Tory government has also done away with the supplementary vote system for mayoral elections – used since the very first one, held in 2000 – and replaced it with first-past-the-post, which has to the potential to split the vote for centre and left parties, again to Tory advantage.

Updated at 11:30pm.

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Categories: News
Tags: Labour, London Mayor election 2024, Sadiq Khan

Vic Keegan’s Lost London 242: A radical experiment in Pimlico

When the War Office took control of the production of its own military uniforms in the mid-19th century, female workers making them were among the biggest beneficiaries
Victor Keegan

Grosvenor Road in Pimlico is celebrated mainly for two things: it is where Dolphin Square, once the biggest apartment block in Europe, stands on a site which was previously the location of the works of Thomas Cubitt, the builder and developer who constructed most of Pimlico.

However, between Cubitt’s death in 1855 and the creation of Dolphin Square in the 1930s, something else rather special was located there, which is in danger of being forgotten – a huge clothing factory and warehouse complex whose workers, most of them women, were employed under far better conditions than had been usual

The Royal Army Clothing Depot began to be formed in Pimlico from 1859, when the War Office moved its storage facility there from its previous base in Northamptonshire. In 1863 this was joined by a new factory for manufacturing military uniforms, which by the end of the decade had fully replaced one established in Woolwich in 1856. In 1887, the complex was renamed the Royal Army Clothing Department. It operated until 1932 as its lease came to an end.

Prior to 1855, clothing for the British infantry and cavalry was, bizarrely, supplied by army Colonels who, along with agents, took a commission – basically a rake-off – for supplying uniforms for their men. It was a system designed to generate large profits for the Colonels and misery for the workers producing the clothes.

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In 1849, Henry Mayhew, the great social reformer who collected testimony from the workers involved, commented, “I have seen people so overwhelmed in suffering, and so used to privations of the keenest kind, that they had almost forgotten to complain of them”. Mayhew concluded: “If the Government would take it into their hands, and give the clothes out themselves, the poor work-people might have prices that would keep them from starving.”

The Queen newspaper observed that before 1857, “all the clothes for the British army were made by contractors, whose first thought seemed to be how to amass a fortune at the expense of the makers and the wearers of the clothes primarily, and of the British public indirectly”.

Around 2,000 people were employed at Pimlico, of whom 1700 were women, in premises that covered about seven acres. An 1871 Factory Inspector’s Report by Alexander Redgrave described the factory in glowing terms, saying it was “in many respects one of the most remarkable factories in the country” and of a totally different kind from “those grand establishments upon which money has been lavishly spent by a merchant prince.”

Redgrave pointed to the huge improvement in conditions compared to the contract system: “One cannot help feeling what an enormous amount of happiness this establishment has promoted in rescuing hundreds of women from the miseries and trammels of the contract system, under which they starved for so many years.” In 1884 one commentator (unspecified) went even further, describing the factory as a model employer “being the largest and best of its type in the world”.

The principal aim of the factory, according to Redgrave, was “getting the most for your money.” Everything, he said, had to show that clothes made in a government establishment could be produced better and more cheaply than elsewhere. This was quite an achievement considering the notoriously low wages in the private sector.

The closure of the factory and depot also marked the end of a remarkable experiment – to make way for a block of luxury flats.

Photograph show factory workers during visit by George V in 1918. All previous instalments of Vic Keegan’s Lost London can be found here and a book containing many of them can be bought here. Follow Vic on Twitter and also as @LondonStreetWalker.

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Categories: Culture, Lost London
Tags: Dolphin Square, Grosvenor Road, Henry Mayhew, Pimlico

Sadiq Khan plan to make Ultra Low Emission Zone Londonwide clears Assembly hurdle

Despite sustained opposition from the Conservative group, the Mayor secured approval to update his statutory transport strategy
Charles Wright

City Hall plans to extend the Ultra-Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) to cover the whole of the capital cleared a major hurdle yesterday as London Assembly members (AMs) sanctioned an update of Sadiq Khan’s statutory transport strategy, meaning he can formally consider the proposed expansion.

The update did not give the green light to the controversial proposal, which will be decided by the Mayor, but did open the door for him to “seek to address the triple challenges of toxic air, the climate emergency and traffic congestion through road user charging schemes, including by expanding the Ultra Low Emission Zone London-wide.”

The expansion had not been included in the existing strategy, leading Conservative AMs to depict the update decision as a yes/no vote on the plan, which if implemented will see older, more polluting vehicles that fail to meet emissions targets charged £12.50 a day to drive within the Greater London area

Revisions to statutory mayoral strategies must be formally considered by the Assembly under the terms of the Greater London Authority Act 1999, and can be rejected by a two-thirds majority of AM – one of their few direct powers over the Mayor. In the event, the Tory group could not attract support beyond their own ranks, with Labour, Liberal Democrat and Green AMs combining to approve the update by 14 to nine.

The Tories nevertheless continued to trade statistics with the Mayor about the level of public support for the scheme, unveiling a poll suggesting 51 per cent of Londoners oppose the ULEZ becoming Londonwide and 34 per cent favour it, albeit respondents were told the scheme’s purpose was to “generate additional revenue” for TfL. A previous poll – conducted by the same company and commissioned by City Hall – which described the expansion’s purpose as tackling air pollution, suggested 51 per cent backing for the scheme and only 27 per cent opposed.

Reports have suggested that two-thirds of respondents to TfL’s consultation exercise about the scheme said it should not go ahead, though those results, which are subject to independent scrutiny, have yet to be published. They, along with further TfL analysis, will be released before a final decision on the expansion plans is taken before the end of the year, Khan said. “I haven’t made my mind up, but I do want to decide as quickly as I can,” he added.

Pressure has been mounting on the Mayor over the cost of living impact of the scheme on poorer Londoners and businesses in outer London, particularly in areas without extensive public transport links, and where car journeys can be seen as essential.

Help with scrapping non-compliant vehicles was available when the ULEZ was extended out to the North and South Circular roads, but with the Mayor concerned not to appear to pre-judge his final decision, no details have been provided for the current proposals.

While accepting the scheme would bring some “disbenefits”, Khan nevertheless doubled down on his proposals. “Every Londoner has the right to breathe clean air”, he said, accusing his opponents of “kicking the can down the road” in the face of “unequivocal” evidence of the health dangers of toxic air. “This is a matter of life and death,’ he told the Assembly. “I am not willing to duck these issues. I don’t want air pollution to be the tobacco of the 2020s.”

The outer London boroughs of Bromley, Barnet, Croydon and Havering had experienced the highest number of air pollution-related deaths in 2019, he said, showing that air quality was not solely a central London problem.

And he bolstered his argument with new City Hall figures showing a sharp rise in the numbers of London children admitted to hospital with asthma in 2021/22 – more than 3,600, up 64% on 2020/21 when Covid saw lower than usual pollution levels. Around half the children affected were from minority ethnic backgrounds.

The full Assembly debate can be viewed here.

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Categories: News
Tags: air quality, Conservatives, London Assembly, ultra low emission zone

Mayor announces Night Time Enterprise Zones as London faces recession

The funding awards are to help boost local economies' evening activities in the context of damage done by the pandemic and the looming new downturn
Dave Hill

Bromley town centre, Vauxhall and Woolwich have each been awarded £130,000 by Sadiq Khan to help develop their evening and night time economies as London strives to recover from the effects of the pandemic and deal with the expected recession.

The announcement of the three Night Time Enterprise Zones follows a trial scheme in Waltham Forest, conducted in 2019, involving extended opening times for entertainment venues, special events and greater promotion, which City Hall says increased footfall on Walthamstow High Street by nearly a quarter.

Camden, Enfield, Hackney, Harrow and Islington councils are other recipients of funding, to the tune of £25,000 apiece, for piloting ideas for making “licensing policies and processes less time consuming and costly for local businesses” in City Hall’s words.

The awards were announced yesterday by Mayor Khan and Night Czar Amy Lamé at Woolwich Town Hall, Greenwich, following a visit to Woolwich Works, a performance, event and creative activity venue run by the Woolwich Creative District Trust.

The Woolwich award is to support a year-round mixture of post-6pm events and the creation of special low-level lighting to connect Woolwich Town centre with nearby Royal Arsenal and make the district more safe and welcoming.

The money for Vauxhall will be spent by Lambeth Council partly to fund murals created by local artists to illustrate area’s LGBTQI+ history and partly to identify locations in the area that could be used for “after dark” cultural, leisure and educational activities.

The Bromley town centre grant will go towards high street winter lights and markets, together with a promotional campaign, and enable libraries to stay open later. There will be a general enhancement of Bromley high street’s lighting too. The area’s business improvement district group, Your Bromley, worked with the council on its successful proposals.

Lamé said the new zones will provide “a real boost will provide fantastic opportunities to make the most of our high streets around the clock and drive forward our economic recovery” and “allow us to work in partnership with boroughs to provide a boost to businesses, communities and the wellbeing of night workers”.

Khan praised the zones as enabling “innovative ideas that will support our high streets after 6pm”, stressing that  “local businesses and high streets are at the heart of our communities, but they are struggling due to the spiralling cost of doing business and the lasting impact of the pandemic.”

Separately, the Mayor was scathing yesterday about Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s autumn statement, which he said will usher in “Austerity 2.0” and didn’t do enough for small businesses, particularly those still recovering from the pandemic.

Photograph: Bromley Market from Trip Adviser website.

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Categories: News
Tags: Amy Lamé, Bromley, Vauxhall, Woolwich

Charles Wright: Row about Cressida Dick’s exit rumbles but London, government and Met have moved on

The Mayor and the author of a report that strongly criticised him made a disputatious joint appearance at City Hall yesterday, but it might make little difference
Charles Wright

When Metropolitan Police commissioner Dame Cressida Dick announced her resignation back in February there weren’t too many people bemoaning that decision. After all, Londoners’ trust and confidence in their police force was heading towards an all-time low.

Home Secretary Priti Patel nevertheless agreed to a request from Dame Cressida’s deputy, Sir Stephen House, for a review of the circumstances of her leaving, appointing Sir Tom Winsor, than about to retire after a decade as chief inspector of constabulary, to the task.

Over 115 pages, Winsor didn’t hold back, concluding that Mayor Khan had breached “due process” and intimidated the Commissioner into resigning – prompting the Mayor to accuse him of being “clearly biased” and ignoring the facts of the case.

The views of neither party had softened when they found themselves only an uncomfortable metre or so apart yesterday at the London Assembly’s police and crime committee, where Khan had been officially “summonsed” to face questioning about his role in Dame Cressida’s departure.

Cue some tense exchanges, with the Mayor suggesting a “close association” between Winsor and the commissioner and a tendency on Winsor’s part to give more weight to police evidence than to that provided to him by City Hall. “Absurd,” Winsor said.

Khan and his staff had “failed to engage properly” with the investigation until a very late stage, offering only one 90-minute meeting, compared to five hours with the former Commissioner, Winsor said. “We fully cooperated,” Khan replied, adding that “copious” documentation had been provided.

Amid claim and counter-claim, with Khan reminding Winsor that he had previously described Dick as “one of the most talented and far-sighted police officers the police have had in living memory” and Winsor accusing Khan of “abuse of power”, the pair were essentially speaking different languages.

For Khan, it had been a question of a mounting series of “terrible scandals”, with Operation Hotton uncovering bullying, discrimination, racism, misogyny and improper conduct at Charing Cross police station the “straw that broke the camel’s back”.

With trust and confidence in the Met at “rock bottom”, Khan urgently wanted a new plan. But what the then Commissioner came up with was “simply not good enough given the scale of the challenges facing our police service,” he said.

That had been on 4 February this year. At that point, Khan said, “it was still possible for the Commissioner to persuade me that she could address these issues and win back trust and confidence.” So a further meeting was fixed for 10 February.

“That was an opportunity to find a way forward, as we had done on many occasions in the past,” Khan said. “But she didn’t bother to turn up and didn’t build on the plan she had sent me. I don’t understand, even to this day, why Dame Cressida didn’t come to the meeting.” The Commissioner’s resignation came instead.

But for Winsor, Dick had effectively been subject to what he called in his report a “classic case of constructive dismissal”. It was an “abuse of power, a political ambush, oppressive and unreasonable conduct,” he told Assembly members.

Undue pressure had been applied for the Commissioner to take further action against officers at Charing Cross even though the Independent Office for Police Conduct had already determined the cases, and City Hall had failed to engage with Dame Cressida’s proposed 4 February action plan until too late, while Khan was publicly putting her “on notice” over his concerns.

Crucially, for Winsor, the Mayor failed to follow the statutory processes laid down in the Police Reform Act 2011 to deal with possible dismissal of a chief constable, including written notice, hearings and referrals to the chief inspector of constabulary and the home secretary.

That was simply because the process had not been invoked, said Khan. “That didn’t happen because the Commissioner didn’t come to that meeting and she decided to resign.”

Political ambush, or simply the nature of political decision-making in the face of serious concerns? And any political gain there may have been for the government in attacking Khan over a decision many agreed with seemed to dilute rapidly.

Even as she announced the publication of the report in September, Patel sounded happy to move on. “I hope now that those responsible for delivering policing in London – as well as those responsible for holding the Met to account – will concentrate their efforts on delivering safer streets for the capital and restoring integrity in policing,” she said. “Public confidence in the Met has been dented by a series of appalling incidents and it is vital that failings are addressed and professional standards restored to the level that Londoners deserve.”

While the committee did decide to pursue the matter, agreeing to requisition various documents for further consideration, it seems that the Met, under its new leadership, and – crucially – Londoners have moved on too.

The full meeting can be viewed here.

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Categories: News
Tags: Metropolitan Police, Priti Patel, Sadiq Khan, Tom Winsor

London business confidence has crumbled, new survey finds

Energy costs, consumer reticence and Brexit-related supply chain and skills shortages are leading causes of concern for the capital's firms
Dave Hill

There has been a “dramatic deterioration in business confidence” in London according to a new survey of 1,369 firms in the capital, with three-quarters of them feeling less optimistic about the prospects of UK economy as a whole in the coming 12 months than they had been about the previous year.

The research, conducted over the summer by YouGov for the London Chamber of Commerce & Industry and cross-party local authority group London Councils, showed that the concerns created by Covid-19 have been replaced by fears about inflation.

Sixty per cent of the businesses surveyed identified rising inflation as “a key threat to economic activity”, the two organisations said, followed by lack of consumer spending and difficulties caused by low turnover and cashflow issues, picked by 34 and 31 per cent respectively.

Three-quarters said they had seen increases in operational costs during the year before the survey, with the prices of raw materials and energy rising the most. A fifth of the businesses reported energy price rises of more than 200 per cent during the period in question.

The effects of Brexit were identified as a source of difficulty by around half the businesses, with 52 per cent blaming it for supply chain problems and 49 per cent saying it had reduced the availability of suitably skilled employees.

Reacting to the findings, London Chamber chief executive Richard Burge said “in recent months business have been battling to stay afloat against significantly hostile headwinds caused by the cost of doing business crisis, inflation and the threat of recession”. He added that he hopes the new Chancellor’s autumn budget statement “outlines a road to recovery” despite less than ideal circumstances.

For London Councils, deputy chair Darren Rodwell gave particular emphasis to skills shortages, saying that more could be done with “greater devolution of powers and funding to all UK regions” and underlined continuing efforts to make the apprenticeship levy more effective. Rodwell also stressed that “London boroughs stand ready to work alongside government to safeguard the future of our businesses, as we did during the pandemic”.

The London Business 1,000 report can be read in full here.  

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Categories: News
Tags: Brexit, cost of living, COVID-19 London, Darren Rodwell, London Chamber of Commerce & Industry, London Councils, Richard Burge