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Vic Keegan’s Lost London 241: The amazing Joseph Hansom and his famous cab

The inventor of Sherlock Holmes's favourite form of London transport was as brilliant as he is under-appreciated
Victor Keegan

Victorian London was awash with Hansom cabs. Some estimates say there were 7,000 of them in the capital, admired in fiction as well as as fact. Hansoms were Sherlock Holmes’s preferred mode of transport when he was out on a case because they were fast, stable and could hold two people comfortably. And there was a bit of magic in their looks. G. K. Chesterton’s novel The Man Who Was Thursday has a chase scene with all of the participants in Hansom cabs, and Robert Louis Stevenson wrote a story entitled The Adventure of the Hansom Cab.

This iconic bit of Victoriana was invented by Joseph Hansom, whose achievements are surprisingly little known today. He was born in York but lived in London for much of his life at 27 Sumner Place, off the Fulham Road, where there is a plaque to commemorate him.

The first Hansom cab journey took place in 1835 in Hinckley, Leicestershire, where the Hansom family was living at the time. The stability and relative safety of the cabs made them an international success story. They soon spread from England to Berlin, Paris and New York and prospered for nearly a hundred years until the arrival of the motor car in the early part of the 20th century.

Helen Monger, writing for Historic England, tells us that by 1927 there remained just 12 Hansoms licensed in London, and that the last London Hansom driver turned in his in 1947. She adds, however: “One consolation for Joseph was that ‘Hansom’ became a household name in his own lifetime and he was able to see the impact his invention had on society. It is still remembered today as an essential part of Victorian life.”

But memories don’t always make money, as Hansom knew to his cost. He was a curiously doomed genius. Three of his major projects were hugely successful. but he didn’t profit from any of them.

He sold the patent for the Hansom cab for £10,000 – a lot in those days – to a company that was in such financial difficulties that he didn’t get paid. Maybe Holmes should have investigated. With a colleague he also designed the pioneering Birmingham Town Hall, undercutting rival designs by Charles Barry, the future Houses of Parliament architect, and Sir John Soane, designer of the Bank of England building.

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Birmingham’s was one of the first great municipal town halls. It is generally described as Roman revival in style, but which looks more like the Acropolis on wheels (photo above). It was, and still is, an architectural success, but overspending on it led to Hansom’s bankruptcy.

His third success was something I have been using for years without knowing who was behind it. In 1843 he founded and launched the distinguished The Builder magazine, bought by architects, builders and workmen. It is still with us today, although in 1966 its name was changed to Building. It claims to be the only journal to cover the entire building industry and has an extensive archive.

Alas, Hansom’s involvement with The Builder had a sad ending. He deserves credit for devising and launching it, but he soon ran out of capital and had to give up the editorship. However, architect George Godwin, editor from 1844 to 1883, turned The Builder into one of the most successful professional papers of its kind.

These three achievements alone should be enough to guarantee Hansom’s place in history, and they weren’t the only ones. He designed nearly 200 buildings in all. Many of them were Roman Catholic places of worship, including Plymouth Cathedral.

My favourite, by a distance, is the Gothic revival church of St Walburge’s in Preston. That is not because of its London connections – its hammer-beam roof was inspired by Westminster Hall and the bells came from the now sadly defunct Whitechapel Foundry. Nor is it because of the appealing quirkiness of its design. The church spire, according to Wikipedia and other sources – and who am I to argue? – was apparently made from railway sleepers, which had formerly carried the nearby Preston and Longridge Railway.

What amazes me is its height. At over 100 yards it is the tallest spire of any parish church in the country and seems to evaporate into the sky. I get vertigo just looking at the photo.

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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: Charles Barry, Hansom cabs, Sir John Soane

Croydon: Tories retain safe council seat but fall in vote share bodes ill

The Conservative candidate was never likely to lose yesterday's by-election though the swing against the party was very marked
Lewis Baston

The Liz Truss era passed without a single local authority by-election in London, which was probably a relief for the capital’s Conservatives, although Tories did less badly than they might have in several local elections elsewhere even as their national poll ratings collapsed, and Rishi Sunak’s rise to power has blown some of the froth off Labour’s lead.

But the Tories remain in deep trouble. Yesterday’s by-election in the Selsdon Vale & Forestdale ward of Croydon – one of relatively few rhyming electoral units – was the first test of London’s political temperature under the third Prime Minister of a council term which only began in May.

The contest was needed following the death of incumbent Conservative councillor Badsha Quadir, who had represented ward since May and served for 12 years before that as a member for a Purley ward.

Selsdon Vale & Forestdale is one of the safest Conservative wards in Croydon. At the last two full council elections the Tory share of the vote was 62% (in 2018) and 67% (May 2022). Labour were runners-up with 20% and 16% respectively. It is not the most luxurious-looking area of suburbia, being composed largely of 1960s and 1970s privately developed estates, but it is comfortable enough.

Forestdale appears to be an entirely artificial name invented by the property developers in the 1960s but although Selsdon is an older name, its fame dates back to the same period. The ward includes the Selsdon Park Hotel site – currently closed for redevelopment and due to open before long as another plush leisure establishment run by Birch. Back in February 1970 the Conservative shadow cabinet, led by Edward Heath, met there for what would now be described as an “offsite” – a weekend meeting to thrash out their approach for the forthcoming general election.

The Selsdon gathering signalled a turn towards a more free-market version of Conservatism than the middle road taken by the previous Tory governments under Harold Macmillan and Alec Douglas-Home. Reginald Maudling, shadow Foreign Secretary, languidly pointed out that they did not have an answer to the problem of inflation, but nobody seemed to be listening.

Selsdon was made famous by Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson, who warned that “Selsdon Man” was “designing a system of society for the ruthless and the pushing, the uncaring”. If the Tories won the forthcoming election, Wilson claimed, they would “make life dearer for the many” by raising indirect taxes and food prices, cutting welfare services down “to means-tested levels” and pushing up rents “in a free-for-all in housing”.

Wilson’s nickname alluded to the infamous Piltdown Man, supposedly a missing link in human evolution but actually a forgery made from a human skull and bones from an orangutang and a chimpanzee. The Tories won power in June 1970, but Selsdon Man was a similarly incoherent mixture and the government ended up reversing course after massive tax cuts in 1972 sparked an inflationary boom that came to grief in 1974.

Today, the Forestdale area is in the Labour-held Croydon Central parliamentary seat, while Selsdon Vale is in Conservative Croydon South, whose MP Chris Philp was briefly chief secretary to the treasury under Kwasi Kwarteng.

The Selsdon Vale & Forestdale by-election took place in the aftermath of a recent administration leaving power amid messed up public finances and the dubious legacy of a previous leader, of whose tenure it has been said:

“There was a clear desire to pursue an ambitious growth agenda… and when elements of this growth could not be realised, rather than increased caution, it seems there was a continued desire to accentuate the positive.”

That might sound like a damning verdict on the Truss administration, but was actually a judgment about Labour’s stewardship of Croydon before it lost power there earlier this year.

Five candidates stepped up to fight for the votes of 2022’s Selsdon Man (and Woman). Social care manager Fatima Zaman, who contested Addiscombe West ward in May, defended for the Conservatives, and Tom Bowell stood for Labour. George Holland carried the Liberal Democrat standard and the Green candidate was Peter Underwood, who ran for Mayor of Croydon in May.

There was also Independent candidate Andrew Pelling, a familiar figure in Croydon politics who won his first council election in 1982 as a Conservative. He later secured a seat on the London Assembly (2000-08) and became MP for Croydon Central in 2005, defending it unsuccessfully in 2010 as an Independent. He subsequently served as a Labour councillor (2014-22) but fell out with the local leadership.

Although there were prominent national and borough level issues overshadowing the contest, there were also local political arguments about development – inevitably, given the ward’s location on the edge of London’s built-up area. Residents of 50-year old private housing of limited architectural charm tended to the view that further building would be appalling.

The Conservatives would have been doing badly, even by recent standards, to lose such a safe ward. They duly held on, although with a big tumble in their share of the vote. Zaman (pictured) was elected with 983 votes – 46%, a drop of 21 points since May.

The Greens, who put some effort into their campaign, were rewarded with second place and 530 votes (25%). Labour’s 372 votes (18%) represented a small increase in the party’s vote share – not a bad result given the local background and the Greens’ momentum. Pelling came fourth with 168 votes (8%) and the Lib Dems, for whom this has never been good territory, brought up the rear with 72 votes (3%). Turnout at 30% was fairly typical for a suburban council by-election.

Executive power in Croydon is held by Jason Perry, the Conservative who won the borough’s inaugural mayoral election, but council membership is finely balanced between 33 Conservatives (including this seat and Mayor Perry), 34 Labour, two Greens and one Lib Dem.

Zaman’s win will therefore be welcome among the ruling group at the Town Hall. But the steep drop in the Conservative share of the vote does not give them much encouragement locally or nationally. The Tories need much more enthusiastic support from vote banks like Selsdon Vale & Forestdale if they are to hold on to power in Croydon and indeed nationally, given that on these numbers Philp’s Croydon South looks vulnerable.

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Categories: Analysis
Tags: Andrew Pelling, Chris Philp, Croydon Council, Fatima Zaman, Jason Perry

Poverty in London can be reduced by proven policy solutions, conference hears

A panel at Centre for London's annual all-day gathering discussed the impacts of the cost of living crisis
Dave Hill

London’s high and rising poverty rates could be addressed and reduced by tried and trusted national policy initiatives, according to the chief executive of one the capital’s leading anti-poverty charities.

Speaking at think tank Centre for London’s annual conference, Manny Hothi, chief executive of Trust for London, told the audience at the University of London’s Senate House in Malet Street that “fundamentally, tackling poverty is about solutions we know already work”, principally building more homes for social rent, “a decent welfare state and social security system that stops people falling into destitution” and more jobs that pay a good wage.

Unless such measures are taken, funded by “taxing people more than they are taxed now”, Hothi said he found it difficult to envisage a future London that isn’t populated overwhelmingly by wealthy people. “We are beyond the point now where those problems are confined to people on low incomes because the children of the middles classes can’t get by in this city either,” he maintained. “People on decent incomes who may have owned a house cannot see their children, who may also have decent incomes, having the same life that they did.”

Fellow panelists highlighted particular steps they would like to see taken, with Katherine Hill (pictured) from the 4 in 10 campaign, a network of organisations seeking to alleviate child poverty in the capital, stressing that the cost of childcare in London is “right up there alongside housing as a driver of poverty” because it is often too high to make taking a job financially worthwhile.

Describing the current government free childcare entitlement as “wrongheaded, confused and just not fit for purpose” she argued that childcare provision in the city should be regarded as a form of infrastructure, as basic and as vital as transport networks. She characterised good, affordable childcare as reducing child poverty by enabling parents to work and earn more and also as an investment in younger children, revealing that under-fives are “hugely over-represented” among children living in poverty in London.

Twickenham MP Munira Wilson described her local campaign to have the disused former Teddington police station sold by the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) for use as a GP surgery as part of a development scheme that would also provide homes for social rent, for which she said there is a “desperate need” for in her largely prosperous area. MOPAC’s understanding has been that when selling property it must do so to the highest bidder, but is now seeking legal advice about whether this is still the case.

Wilson strongly advocated extending free school meal provision, saying “the levels of food insecurity are shocking”, and drew attention to local housing allowance levels in her constituency simply “not covering what you have to pay in the private rented sector”. She called for the restoration of the pandemic period’s temporary £20 Universal Credit uplift and described the welfare system as it stands as “mean”.

Completing the line-up, Hounslow Council leader Shanantu Rajawat described efforts his local authority is making to help the least well-off, including facilitating connections between schools and skills training programmes and local employers paying “meaningful wages”, and trying to learn more about “barriers” stopping more of them paying the London Living Wage.

Rajawat spoke also about his council’s “community solutions” approach to identifying early problems residents are facing in partnership with the borough’s voluntary sector organisations. This product of the pandemic period entails “not people coming into the council but the council going out to residents and community groups” with the aim of “preventing crises happening” in the first place, he said.

He also issued a plea for government financial support to be provided with fewer strings and prescriptions attached: “For me it’s about having the freedom to tailor the packages that are available. So often when you get grant from government it has a lot of conditions. What we saw during Covid was that a lot of those packages gave us a little bit of discretion so that we could really innovate.” Rajawat described this freedom as “absolutely vital”.

There was a mixture of optimism and foreboding about how London’s social support networks will cope with the new cost of living pressures that have only just begun to take effect. Katherine Hill warned that much voluntary sector work was done during the pandemic unpaid by people who are now “very tired” and “mentally bruised by what they have seen”. She described food bank workers who have become food bank customers with “worries about how they’re going to keep the lights on” at their premises.

However, there was also a feeling that public opinion about cost of living pressures has been shifting. “I think there is a change in attitudes now,” Hothi said. “They are just a bit fed up with crisis mode for a decade and stagnant living standards. I think the mood is there for a political party to bring some hope for the future.” More austerity, he thought, “isn’t going to land very well.”

Watch the whole of Centre for London’s annual conference here. The session about poverty, chaired by Geeta Nanda, chair of the G15 housing association group, is at 4 hours 45 minutes. 

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Categories: News
Tags: Centre For London, child poverty, Hounslow Council, Munira Wilson, poverty, Shanantu Rajawat

Vincent Stops: The cycling lobby has been allowed to ruin London’s bus service

A ruthless and well resourced minority interest has had too much influence on streets policy in London, damaging its most important form of public transport
Vincent Stops

Between 2000 and 2008 London’s bus services were transformed. There were more buses, more bus routes and, critically, services were more reliable. An unreliable and often overcrowded service was transformed into one of the best in the world. Buses were fully accessible, operated 24/7 across the entire city and used for 6.5 million journeys a day. People visited from around the world to see how it was done.

The key improvements were contracts with the bus companies that encouraged reliability, a London-wide bus lanes programme known as the London Bus Initiative that speeded up buses, the Congestion Charge (which meant less traffic), better traffic enforcement, Oyster payment cards and Countdown bus information.

The recent deterioration of London’s bus services can be traced back to the arrival of Boris Johnson as Mayor. Following his election, a planned second programme of bus lanes was abandoned, along with further improvement of traffic enforcement. A contract to reward quality was abandoned too. Johnson had come to power promising to “keep London moving” but he focused on his retro design bus project the New Routemaster and installing bike lanes. The bus lane teams became cycle lane teams and the era of blue cycle “superhighways” was upon us.

The deterioration of bus performance – journey time and reliability being the key metrics – was accelerated after the appointment by Johnson of Andrew Gilligan, a media ally, as his cycling commissioner. Under the cover of what was called the Roads Modernisation Programme, the massive disruption caused by more superhighways swung a wrecking ball at bus journey times.

This led directly to the decrease in passenger numbers that continued unabated until the pandemic. A role in formulating policy was given to cycling bloggers, as described by the then deputy mayor for transport Isabel Dedring during an interview in 2015 (from 15 minutes in).

Johnson’s superhighway schemes took out major sections of bus lane, which meant buses more often sharing space with general traffic and sitting in congestion with them. This resulted in slower and less reliable services. Bus stops that had become fully accessible were altered to become part of the cycle lane itself – the so-called bus stop bypasses and borders that route cycles round the back of a stop or through its boarding, waiting and alighting area.

Protests from groups representing older and disabled people, though understood internally at Transport for London, were ignored and managed away with the help of manic campaigning by the cycle lobby on social media. Later, TfL’s internal Independent Disability Advisory Group described these bus stop designs as “polishing a turd”.

TfL did its best to counter the deterioration of performance. They brought in a few bus lane and other priority schemes, but these were only really a token. Twenty-one mitigations for the loss of bus lanes were proposed at Vauxhall, but only four were implemented and by then it was too late – the damage was done.

TfL also used its control of London’s traffic light systems to effectively hold back traffic entering central London at peak times, helping bus services by reducing congestion. Officially this was called Active Traffic Management. Colloquially it was called “gating”. Appearing on LBC, Johnson denied “gating” was having to be used. That was untrue.

And so it continued. Johnson was succeeded by Sadiq Khan who, during his selection process, had been encouraged by the cycle lobby to build more bike lanes, presumably without any understanding of the damage being done to the bus service.

Deputy mayors for transport have come and gone under Mayor Khan. All have bought into the cycle lobby’s bike lane agenda. Khan appointed a cycling and walking commissioner who has progressed cycle lanes with a nod to walking and latterly the importance of the bus.

TfL now has a bus action plan that includes bringing in more bus lanes, but it targets the same roads as the cycle plan. The cycle lobby will not truck any compromise with bus services, even on bus routes. They are well resourced and ruthless. Bus stop accessibility continues to be compromised and disabled people discriminated against.

Yet buses are vital for Londoners. They are the most important public transport mode, carrying far more passengers than any other. They are sustainable, the most efficient users of road space, the most important form of active travel – people walk to and from bus stops – and the only accessible service used by everyone. However, unless the Mayor stands up to the cycle lobby’s selfish and unachievable demands the future does not look bright for London’s bus services.

Vincent Stops is a former Hackney councillor and lead member for transport who worked on streets policy for London Travelwatch, the capital’s official transport users’ watchdog, for over 20 years. He cycles everywhere. Follow Vincent on Twitter.

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Categories: Comment
Tags: Andrew Gilligan, Boris Johnson, buses, cycling, Isabel Dedring

Cost of Living: London faces ‘humanitarian crisis’ London Assembly hears

Members heard alarming warnings about the hardships facing lower income households
Charles Wright

London is increasingly facing a “humanitarian crisis”, Trust for London programme director Klara Skrivankova told the London Assembly today at a City Hall session about tackling the mounting cost of living pressures facing the capital.

“People will not be eating and will be cold in their homes. We need to wake up to that fact,” Skrivankova warned. “We have even heard from experts that there is a real risk of malnutrition, a really shocking thing to be talking about in London in the 21st century.”

The trust, a long-standing charity working on poverty and inequality in the capital, is now focused on humanitarian relief, she added, with £800,000 of funding recently agreed for emergency food packages and help with household bills.

The scale of the crisis was highlighted in stark figures presented to the meeting by Debbie Weekes-Bernard, Sadiq Khan’s deputy mayor for communities and social justice.

At the beginning of the year some 35% of Londoners reported that they were struggling financially, and that figure now stands at 53%, she said. The capital’s boroughs continue to have some of the highest rates of child poverty in the country, with one in five Londoners facing food insecurity, and half of those in poverty actually in work – a “grim baseline” according to Skrivankova.

The meeting took place as the Bank of England announced the largest interest hike since 1989 in the face of the highest and fastest rising, inflation rate in 40 years, alongside forecasts of a “very challenging” two-year recession already underway.

For London that would mean falling real wages along with higher mortgage rates, a slump in house prices of up to 10% and rising unemployment, economist Torsten Bell, chief executive of the Resolution Foundation think tank, told Assembly members (AMs).

“Very large income falls now look inevitable next year, particularly concentrated among lower-income households,” he said. “Many of us thought that as Britain got richer we would spend a smaller proportion of our income on essentials, and that was the story of the last 150 years. But that has gone into reverse in the last 15 years, with weak wage growth and the squeeze that imposes on household living standards the defining feature of the political economy. Britain is a too high inequality country, with too little growth.”

After a decade of austerity, tax will need to play a bigger role than cuts to public services, Bell said, as a “poorer” Britain faces choosing how to distribute the economic pain it is suffering, he said. And the focus should be on wealth, which has been “growing non-stop since the 1980s”.

Low-income households, already “getting absolutely stuffed”, should not see benefits downrated, he said, advising AMs advocating a trial of Universal Basic Income (UBI) schemes, including Liberal Democrat Hina Bokhari, that a better focus would be the continued freezing of housing benefits and the capping of support for larger families. “UBI is never going to happen. But those are choices in the benefit system that could be fixed. I’d spend more time on that,” he said.

Bell also had a warning – and a challenge – for those hailing the London economy as bucking the national trend. “On productivity, that is nonsense,” he said. “Growth is too dependent on more people working and working longer hours. There is far too much backslapping about London business and not enough realisation that we are not doing well enough. I don’t see much focus on boosting productivity coming out of the GLA or the Mayor of London. So why don’t you do that?”

Conservative AMs chose to focus on the impact of Mayor Khan’s plans to extend the Ultra-Low Emission Zone to the whole of London, charging drivers of vehicles failing to comply with emissions standards £12.50 a day to enter the city. The proposals amount to “£250 million spent on a camera network that will disproportionately impact the least well-off people who own cars,” said Neil Garratt, AM for Croydon & Sutton.

Weekes-Barnard responded that a scrappage scheme to help residents change their cars would be in place. “We are in a cost-of-living crisis, but we are also in a climate change crisis,” she added. “We shouldn’t be saying to Londoners we care about your costs but not about clean air.” Khan is expected to decide what to do next about the ULEZ by the end of the year.

Weekes-Bernard also confirmed that a City Hall online information campaign providing advice on cost-of-living help is underway, and that the Mayor will be launching a separate campaign encouraging take-up of Pension Credit shortly. Age UK London have found that some 40% of eligible pensioners do not claim the benefit.

The whole of the Assembly meeting can be viewed here.

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Categories: News
Tags: cost of living, Debbie Weekes-Bernard, London Assembly, Torsten Bell, ultra low emission zone

Is peace breaking out between the government and City Hall? Maybe, up to a point.

Speeches at Centre for London's annual conference by the Mayor and the minister for London suggested at least some common ground
Charles Wright

Has peace, or at least a truce, broken out between City Hall and central government? If you were at think tank Centre for London’s annual conference on Tuesday and heard the speeches by Sadiq Khan and minister for London Paul Scully, you might just have thought so.

“No love lost” has been an understated description of the frosty relationship between the Labour Mayor and the Tory incumbents of Whitehall and Westminster, but Scully struck a determinedly different note.

Khan began his keynote speech in familiar fashion. “We mustn’t forget, as the government often has, that London has some of the most deprived people in the country,” he told the conference, invoking the famous opening of Charles Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities – “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times” – to describe the stark disparities of the capital.

Scully, speaking later in the day, agreed, providing his own 19th Century literary reference by describing London as “in some ways akin to Disraeli’s two nations” with some of the wealthiest and some of the most deprived neighbourhoods in the country, including nine out of the 10 local authorities in England with the most child poverty.

There was agreement as well on the importance of London for the country’s economic success as a whole. “London is the engine that powers the UK. The UK only works when London works,” said Khan. “You can’t level up the country by levelling down London.”

That was right, the minister said: “When London does well the rest of the UK does well too.”  Levelling up had been “misconstrued” as anti-London, he went on. “Pulling jobs, investment and local growth away from Londoners could not be further from the truth of what we are trying to aim for.”

Tackling disadvantage in the capital is in fact a “key focus” for the government, he added, citing £65 million Levelling Up Fund cash already allocated to projects in six London boroughs, including the World Heartbeat music project in Nine Elms, the first levelling up project in the country to open.

There was even, perhaps, a hint of a sympathetic ministerial nod towards devolution, following Khan’s plea for “more funding, more power and more resources” for the capital. “I’ll be the first to admit that central government doesn’t always have all the answers,” said Scully. “We also have to empower local leaders, who know their areas best, to tackle poverty and economic disparity, help local businesses and find local solutions to local problems.”

All sweetness and light then? Not quite. Government investment “could only go so far,” said Scully, while Khan had a sombre warning for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, urging him not to pursue an “Austerity 2.0” policy in the face of a growing cost of living crisis. “Now more than ever we need central government to step up and support us with sustained investment,” he said, setting out a shopping list including a two-year freeze on private rent levels, free school meals for all primary pupils and a hike in benefits in line with inflation.

Khan’s call came as the capital’s councils warned of a £700 million funding gap next year unless more cash was forthcoming from government, an outlook described by Camden council leader and chair of the cross-party London Councils group Georgia Gould as “beyond bleak”.

After a period where government has seemed happy to indulge anti-London sentiment, Scully’s upbeat tone was welcomed by Centre for London chief executive Nick Bowes, previously Khan’s policy chief. “Really pleased Minister for London has joined us today with a strong speech on positives of the city,” he tweeted.

So is a much-needed new approach in the offing? For Khan, as well as for London’s councils, Sunak’s budget plans due to be set out in its autumn statement later this month will be the first test. Back to Charles Dickens. It would be the “actions and policies” of central government, the Mayor said, that would determine “whether many more Londoners enjoy the best of times, or the worst of times”.

The whole of the Centre for London conference can be viewed here.

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Categories: News
Tags: Georgia Gould, Nick Bowes, Paul Scully, Sadiq Khan

Abigail Wood: Levelling up must not overlook older Londoners in poverty

The capital has the highest rate of poor over-50s in the country but few London-level powers for dealing with the problem
Abigail Wood

There is a relatively widespread view that older Londoners are “doing alright” and living in large houses on final salary pensions. But like many stereotypes about ageing, this is based on assumptions rather than facts. It is true that some older Londoners aren’t struggling financially, yet for many the reality is very different.

Research published earlier this month by Age UK London showed that when housing costs are taken into account the capital has the highest levels of poverty for people over 50 in England, with a quarter of older Londoners living below the poverty line compared to 18% elsewhere.

Along with this disparity, poverty is increasing faster in London than elsewhere. In 2011-12 the gap between London’s over-50 poverty rate and that for the rest of the country was only three percentage points, with the figures standing at 19% and 16% respectively. The latest figures show that gap has grown to seven percentage points.

Older people living in London are increasingly likely to struggle to afford a decent standard of living compared to those living elsewhere. One in three Londoners aged over 50 live below the Minimum Income Standard (MIS), an income level calculated for different household types based on input from the public about what is needed for a minimum acceptable standard of living.

In 2010-11 31% of over-50s in London were living below the MIS, as were 29% of those outside of London. By 2019-20 this two percentage point gap had grown to seven: the percentage of non-Londoners living below the MIS had fallen to 25% while in London it had grown to 32%.

A regional inequality as stark as this should be a high priority for the government’s levelling up agenda to address, especially as there are few direct powers at a London level to address the problem. But apart his comments about directing more funding to areas like Tunbridge Wells it’s not clear what future levelling up has under Rishi Sunak’s government.

Work in this area so far has paid little attention to the needs of London in general, in particular the challenges posed by the high levels of poverty in the capital. The 2019 Conservative manifesto spoke about challenging the idea that “all growth must inevitably start in London” yet ignored the fact that many Londoners do not see the benefit of that growth

The pervasive impacts of poverty are complicated and can go unseen. Conversations about it often focus on heating or eating, but poverty can also mean not getting a haircut, not fixing a leaking tap or deciding to cancel the broadband. All of these things have a cumulative effect on both physical health and wellbeing.

Additional pressures from things like cuts to travel concessions, the end of free prescriptions for some and uncertainty about pensions mean too many are struggling to meet their basic needs. Pension Credit exists to support those over 67 on the lowest incomes, yet in London 40% of those eligible for this support – around 125,000 Londoners – do not claim it.

Age UK London is calling on London decision-makers to do all they can to support older people on low incomes as they struggle to make ends meet during the difficult winter months they face and to think creatively about how they can alleviate the impact of the cost of living crisis. Yet many of the powers to meaningfully address the problem lie with national government in Westminster. If the levelling up agenda is really one for the whole country, it must not overlook poverty in London.

Abigail Wood is chief executive officer of Age UK London. Follow Abigail on Twitter. Image from Age UK London website.

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Categories: Comment
Tags: "levelling up", poverty, Rishi Sunak

Dave Hill: Oppose the ULEZ all you like, a consultation is still not a referendum

Conservative attempts to discredit TfL's test of public opinion have been misleading and might turn out to be unwise
Dave Hill

At the back end of last month the Daily Telegraph reported that a leak from Transport for London’s consultation about expanding the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) to cover all of Greater London had revealed that “two-thirds oppose” this policy of Sadiq Khan.

The Mayor’s plans have been “plunged into turmoil” by the disclosure, the Telegraph declared, saying that an internal document showed that “66% of Londoners” are against them.

Those claims were highly misleading, though that hasn’t stopped the London Assembly Conservative Group running a Twitter campaign with a graph stating 66% “voted” against London-wide ULEZ expansion. The Tories have described this figure as “the official results”, of the consultation. That is misleading too.

For a start, the responses to any public consultation about any policy or issue conducted by TfL under any Mayor of London are vanishingly unlikely to accurately reflect the views of Londoners as a whole.

On the contrary, consultations of the public about anything, anywhere, are almost invariably responded to primarily by people with a close interest in the issue concerned and strong feelings about it – people whose views are therefore not representative of the views of the larger population they are part of, which is the essence of the Telegraph‘s claim.

Indeed, consultations are susceptible to being disproportionately responded to by people organised by pressure groups, and their balance of opinions accordingly skewed. That makes them a still less reliable reflection of public opinion.

The Telegraph‘s assertion about the 66% figure is a misrepresentation of anther kind too. The consultation was open to both Londoners and non-Londoners, and TfL has assured me that non-Londoners were among the respondents. This renders the Telegraph‘s claim that “66% of Londoners” are against the Mayor’s plans yet more questionable.

Then there is the use by the Assembly Tories of the word “voted” to describe people’s responses. A public consultation, whatever the mechanisms provided for participating in it, is not a “vote” in the sense of expressing a preference in a binding democratic process.

Consultations are not referendums whose outcomes oblige politicians to act on them. They are one way of gauging public feeling about a policy or issue. And, of course, there are other ways. Opinion polls, for example. These seek responses from groups of people which, unlike, those keenest on responding to consultations, are representative of the population groups whose views are sought.

An opinion poll by YouGov for City Hall, conducted in July, found that 51% of Londoners believe the proposed ULEZ expansion should go ahead compared with 27% who think it shouldn’t. The 51% was composed of 22% who thought it should be implemented sooner than the current date proposed of 29 August next year, 21% who are happy with that date and 8% who think it should be delayed.

This doesn’t mean the consultation findings are worthless or should be ignored. A very large number of people lodged responses – 58,000 of them – and what they think matters. What has not yet been disclosed is any breakdown of the responses, in terms of their geographical spread or anything else.

Such information, says TfL, will be included in its report about the consultation when it is completed. If a large number of opposed respondents do not live in London, it might be argued that their preferences should be given less weight – even if, like Howard Cox, founder of the Fair Fuel UK campaign, they live not far away, in Kent.

What we do appear to know is that some of the responses opposing the ULEZ expansion have been removed from the initial total. The Telegraph said this resulted in the share of respondents favouring the plan falling to 59% on the grounds that they were duplicates or not genuine, but that this weeding out “disproportionately” reduced the amount of opposition recorded.

The Conservatives have taken up the Telegraph‘s claim that, in their words, “submissions were removed without proper oversight or scrutiny”. TfL has strongly refuted this, saying earlier this month that an “independent third party” is used to analyse all consultation responses and that that process “is still ongoing”.

It will be a surprise if TfL’s consultation report, when it appears, does not inspire further allegations that it has been rigged in some way, strenuous attempts to discredit its conclusions, and claims that pressing ahead with the ULEZ expansion have ignored the “vote” of the majority.

Howard Cox visited City Hall to see Khan, as he put it, “justifying why he is set to ignore the result of the ULEZ consultation”. In fact, as On London reported, at the meeting in question Khan indicated that he might be open to softening or revising his plans, including delaying them.

Is it reasonable to suspect – indeed, to publicly allege – that TfL has been fiddling the consultation figures as the Telegraph and the Tories say whistleblowers have told them has been the case?

Well, there have been general grounds for handling TfL’s deployment of statistics with care, as the case of the Park Lane bicycle lane shows. On the other hand, there are reasons for taking any Tory claims about road-user charging with a pinch of salt. Their mayoral candidate last year constructed an entire fantasy about a so-called “outer London tax” on motorists he said Khan would introduce if re-elected, referring to a purely theoretical scheme that the then transport secretary had already ruled out.

There is a larger issue here for the Tories. Their unrelenting efforts to save the most polluting private motorists some expense might play well in the outer boroughs up to a point. But in a city where more than 40% of households don’t even own a car, it seems unlikely to endear them beyond their shrinking base. Does that worry them at all?

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Categories: Comment
Tags: air quality, Fair Fuel Campaign UK, Howard Cox, ultra low emission zone, YouGov