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Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park: East Bank and east London’s future

The most ambitious cultural and educational project the capital has seen since the South Bank is approaching completion at the edge of Stratford
Dave Hill

Media coverage of the tenth anniversary of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games has, with one welcome exception, been miserabilist or non-existent – what some might call a very British attitude to what was not only a superb sporting event but also the culmination of an extraordinary feat of infrastructure delivery few believed Britain was capable of – including, at the start, some of those centrally involved, as Alison Nimmo, a key figure in project, recently remarked

In keeping with all the moaning about what has already been accomplished, a fast-emerging new element of the legacy of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park has so far attracted little coverage. And yet the East Bank development is huge and has immense potential. In December 2013, when he was London’s Mayor, Boris Johnson claimed the endeavour would help seize “a historic opportunity to accelerate the transformation of east London and to deliver a significant economic boost to the UK”. Just because Boris Johnson said it doesn’t mean it isn’t true.

East Bank is the collective name for a group of major arts, cultural and educational organisations which have taken the bold step of expanding or consolidating their activities in a part of the capital which, prior to 2012, was neglected and largely unrecognised. The idea was born in the run-up to the Games as an additional dimension of the Park’s physical legacy, which at that stage was to be composed of the permanent sports venues, the reclaimed rivers, new wetlands and open spaces, the tech business and education hub which became Here East, and five residential neighbourhoods.

All of those things are still happening, but Johnson and others, including leading local government politicians of the time, believed something extra could be added. Johnson’s name for it was Olympicopolis, a Borisonian tongue-twister which deliberately echoed Albertopolis, the nickname given to the cultural cluster nowadays known as South Kensington, which Prince Albert steered and promoted using profits from The Great Exhibition of 1851. East Bank, as it became after Sadiq Khan became Mayor, is arguably the biggest venture of its kind since, and certainly since the the South Bank reached a settled form.

University College London (UCL), which had previously looked at founding a new campus on the site of Newham’s Carpenters estate, secured two spaces on the Park, one each side of the Waterworks River. One of these, One Pool Street, standing directly south of the Aquatics Centre, will open its doors in the coming weeks. The other, the larger Marshgate, next to the Orbit Tower, will follow next autumn.

UCL East, designed by architects Stanton Williams, is being joined by a new Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A East, left in main picture), a new Sadler’s Wells dance theatre and studios (Sadler’s Wells East), a new BBC home of live music and a new single campus home for the London College of Fashion (right in picture), all on a finger of land to the north of the Aquatics Centre known as Stratford Waterfront. Later, four blocks of housing, 35% of it affordable, will be added to the finger’s tip.

The homes of the four institutions have now largely taken shape under the masterplan auspices of Allies and Morrison in partnership with O’Donnell and Tuomey, who’ve produced  V&A East and Sadler’s Wells East, and fellow architects Arquitecturia. The whole of East Bank will become fully open in 2025, as will the V&A’s other venture in the Park, the new location of its vast reserve collection in the former Games time broadcast centre at Here East. V&A East Storehouse, unlike the collection’s old home, will be viewable by the public.

Last week, New London Architecture hosted an event at the British Council building close to East Bank at the edge of the Park, where Allies and Morrison’s Alex Wraight talked about the particular challenges of the Stratford Waterfront task, and V&A East’s Maia Ardalla described how the museum will work in new ways to involve local people and reflect the cultural character of the part of London it has chosen to expand to.

The London Legacy Development Corporation calculates that East Bank will bring an additional 1.5 million visitors to the Park and its surrounding area each year and create more than 2,500 jobs. The LLDC published an Impact Report in June. If East Bank keeps the big promises made in its name, its effects on east London will be long-lasting and profound.

Dave Hill is the author of Olympic Park: When Britain Built Something Big available HERE.

Categories: Analysis
Tags: Allies & Morrison, Boris Johnson, East Bank, O'Donnell & Tuomey, Sadler's Wells, University College London, Victoria and Albert Museum

Vic Keegan: Tower 42’s extraordinary City history footprint

The spot just off Bishopsgate where the Square Mile's oldest skyscraper stands has been the site of exceptional building and endeavours for many centuries
Victor Keegan

Number 25 Old Broad Street, better known as Tower 42 – and even better known by its former name of the NatWest Tower – is a vertical history book just off Bishopsgate. If you know nothing about London’s history except what has happened on this site over the centuries you will be acquainted with some of its key moments.

Designed by Richard Seifert, who was also the architect of Centre Point, the tower was the City of London’s first skyscraper. Formally opened in 1981, it was the tallest building in London until the topping out of One Canada Square in Canary Wharf in 1990 and the tallest in the City for 30 years.

Though long since departed, the NatWest bank has left an indelible mark – the top of the building was designed in the form of the company’s logo and can still be seen if you look at one of the 3D maps online, such as Apple’s, or maybe from an aeroplane if you are flying by.

As with so many places in the City, Roman remains were found during archaeological digs at the time of the tower’s construction. Mosaics and tessellated floors have been preserved in the Museum of London. But the real fascination of this building, with its offices, restaurants and other amenities, is what came after the Romans.

In 1466 Sir John Crosby built a mansion on the site called Crosby Place, having purchased the land from the nuns of St Helen’s Priory who had been there since the early 13th century. Crosby was a City dignitary, knighted for his role in resisting an attack on London by the so-called “Bastard of Fauconberg”, a cousin and accomplice of the Earl of Warwick – known as Warwick the Kingmaker – who was trying to reinstall Henry VI as King. This was an extraordinary moment when the Wars of the Roses, fought mostly in the north of England, reached the gates of London Bridge.

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Crosby’s mansion, often known as Crosby Hall, was completed in 1472 but Sir John wasn’t able to enjoy it fully because he died four years later. In 1483 it was bought from his widow Lady Crosby by the Duke of Gloucester, the future Richard III. Robert Fabyan’s Chronicle of 1483 notes that “the Duke lodged hymself in Crosbye’s Place, in Bishoppesgate Street” where the Mayor and citizens waited upon him with the offer of the Crown.

Much later on, in 1598, William Shakespeare, who we know lived nearby for a while, used the location for parts of his controversial play Richard III, such as in Act 1, Scene 3: “When you have done, repaire to Crosby place”. One wonders how many people think of Richard when they enter Tower 42.

In 1519 another great figure of history, Thomas More, Henry VIII’s ill-fated Lord Chancellor, purchased the lease to the property. He subsequently also bought an estate in Chelsea, which would become part of the Crosby Place story.

Later that century Crosby Place belonged to Sir Thomas Gresham, founder of Britain’s first stock market, the Royal Exchange. In 1596, in keeping with Gresham’s will, the Institute for Physic, Civil Law, Music, Astronomy, Geometry and Rhetoric was established in the mansion’s Great Hall. Known as Gresham College, it provided free lectures – including, over time, by the likes of Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke. Amazingly, 500 years on, today’s Gresham College is still fulfilling this role, though its lectures are delivered not at Tower 42 but at Barnard’s Inn or online.

Sir Walter Raleigh, another formidable intellectual, had lodgings there in 1601, two years before he was imprisoned in the Tower of London by James l. And between 1621 and 1638 Crosby Place again became a global centre, though not of science but international trade when the East India Company, then the biggest company in the world, made it its headquarters, prior to moving to Leadenhall Street. It would take a book to chart the company’s amazing rise and shameful fall as it became mired in slavery and corruption.

During the 1660s another intellectual powerhouse moved in – the Royal Society. Its origins can be traced to a meeting at Gresham College on November 28 1660, following a lecture by Wren. Endorsed by Charles II in 1663, its full name was The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge.

Crosby’s mansion survived the Great Fire of 1666, but in 1672 was severely damaged by another one. Only the Great Hall and one wing survived, but these carried on through most of the 19th century partly by being turned into a luxurious restaurant. Augustus J. Hare, the Victorian author, said it was “altogether the most beautiful specimen of fifteenth century domestic architecture remaining in London”.

However, in 1907 oblivion beckoned as new owners the Bank of Australia and China made plans to demolish it to make way for a new bank building. Fortunately, an outburst of public opposition saved it.

The building was pulled down and yet preserved. After considering various suggestions, the London County Council (LCC) found a new site for it and, stunningly, in 1909-10, transported the 500 year-old remains, stone by stone, five miles along the Thames to be rebuilt in Chelsea, in part of the garden of the estate former Crosby Place owner Thomas More had purchased there.

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Having become in effect a council property, the hall was for years the home of the British Federation of Women Graduates. The Greater London Council (GLC), successor body to the LCC, maintained it until it was abolition in 1986. The London Residuary Body, formed to dispose of GLC assets, put the new Crosby Hall up for sale, ushering in an astonishing end to this tale.

It was purchased in 1988 by Christopher Moran, a philanthropist and sometime controversial businessman. He spent lavishly to return it to its former splendour as his private mansion and last year renamed it the Crosby Moran Hall. The picture above shows the outside of the restored Great Hall in Portland stone on the right and a recent modern addition in red brick on the left.

Sir Simon Thurley, who was involved in its restoration, calls it “the most important surviving domestic medieval building in London”. It may well last longer than Tower 42. What goes around comes around.

PS: In 1993 tragedy struck when the then NatWest Tower was badly damaged in the IRA Bishopsgate bombing, which killed one person and caused extensive damage to other buildings.

This is the second 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: Bishopsgate, Leadenhall Street, Old Broad Street, Tower 42

Chris Kaba: IOPC says it aims to complete criminal investigation ‘within six to nine months’

Sadiq Khan has underlined his wish for a "thorough and comprehensive" establishment of the facts and for "key findings" to be made public
Dave Hill

The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) has said it aims to complete its criminal investigation of the shooting dead of Chris Kaba by a Metropolitan Police officer on 5 September 2022 “within six to nine months” and has informed Kaba’s family of this.

In a statement released this evening the IOPC said its investigators are collating and reviewing “a large amount of evidence” about the homicide and are exploring circumstances including how the officers involved “came to be aware of the vehicle Mr Kaba was driving”, if they had “any prior knowledge of Mr Kaba” and their “decision-making and actions” on the night of Kaba’s death, as well as examining “whether or not Mr Kaba’s race influenced any actions taken by the police”.

The statement adds that the IOPC will “continue to be limited in what details we can release as we can’t risk prejudicing any proceedings that may follow” but also that “the law requires us to to produce a detailed final report that accurately summarises all relevant evidence before we can decide whether to refer a file of evidence to the Crown Prosecution Service”.

Kaba was killed by a single gunshot wound to the head after he was pursued while driving and brought to a halt in Streatham Hill by two police cars. The IOPC stated on 7 September that the chase took place following “the activation of an automatic number plate recognition camera which indicated the car was linked to a firearms incident in previous days” and that “no non-police issue firearm has been recovered from the vehicle or the scene. Two days later, on 9 September, the IOPC disclosed that “the vehicle Mr Kaba was driving was not registered to him”.

The new statement confirms reports that Kaba’s family have been offered the opportunity to “privately and confidentially” view video footage “as soon as is practicable”.

Responding, Sadiq Khan said: “I’ve said from the outset that the IOPC must go wherever the evidence takes them and they have a duty to examine all the factors involved without fear or favour. I hope they can do so as swiftly as possible. I fully understand the grave concerns and impact of Chris Kaba’s death on Black Londoners across our city and the anger, pain and fear it has caused across our communities – as well as the desire for justice and change.”

The Mayor, whose job includes being London’s police and crime commissioner, continued: “The IOPC have confirmed to me that they are fully committed to carrying out a thorough and comprehensive investigation to establish all of the facts – with all key findings made public. I’m clear that the independent investigation must be fearless and leave no stone unturned.”

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Categories: News
Tags: Chris Kaba, Independent Office for Police Conduct, Metropolitan Police, Sadiq Khan

Charles Wright: Charles III’s influence on London architecture will not end now he is King

The monarch's strong views about beauty and buildings expressed from the 1980s will continue to have an impact in the capital
Charles Wright

When playwright David Hare dramatised the life of Robert Moses, the man who shaped modern New York, he pitched the powerful, autocratic official against Jane Jacobs, the campaigning advocate of “human-scale” neighbourhood planning.

The equivalent London drama would surely match the late Richard Rogers, epitome of the modernist “starchitect”, with the erstwhile Prince Charles, who were protagonists for some 30 years in a battle over the shape of the capital.

Rogers, best-known for the remarkable Lloyd’s building, left an indelible mark on the city, but the new King Charles III has had a major – and continuing – impact too, both on London and on wider planning policy.

The then Prince famously opened hostilities in 1984 with a vigorous assault on Ahrends Burton Koralek’s “high-tech” plans for an extension to the National Gallery (pictured), describing them as reminding him of “a kind of municipal fire station…a monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend”.

Those plans were rapidly killed off, along with a proposal by eminent modernist Mies van der Rohe for a 19-storey tower in the heart of the Square Mile, described by Rogers as “the culmination of a master architect’s life work”, and by the prince as a “giant glass stump, better suited to downtown Chicago than the City of London”.

The royal interventions continued. In 1987 Charles saw off plans by Rogers and others for the redevelopment of Paternoster Square just north of St Paul’s cathedral. “You have to give this much to the Luftwaffe: when it knocked down our buildings, it didn’t replace them with anything more offensive than rubble,” he told Guildhall planners.

Schemes to redevelop Bishopsgate Goodsyard and Smithfield Market also came under fire, while in 2009 Rogers’ glass and steel designs for some 500 homes at Chelsea Barracks were dumped after a royal plea to the site’s owners, fellow royals from Qatar.

“For the entire duration of my life we have had to witness the destruction of so many parts of London with one “Brutalist” development after another, the prince wrote, adding that his “heart sank” at the sight of a “gigantic experiment in the very heart of our capital history”.

At that time Rogers accused the prince of “abuse of power”. Other leading architects, sometimes seeing their practices suffering after a royal intervention, took the same view.

In 2009, Charles told the Royal Institute of British Architects he had never intended to start a “style war” between Classicists and Modernists. But he had certainly not shied away from polemic, describing the Paternoster Square debate, for example, as “central to the argument between modernist and traditional architecture, or, as I’d rather put it, the argument between the inhuman and the human.”

Architects seemed to have given up on producing “visually beautiful” buildings people actually wanted to live or work in, he said. And while conceding that London was a place where the “demands of the new” would inevitably clash with the “apparent constraints of the old”, his prescriptions leaned towards the traditional. Could we not “rebuild a City without Towers?” he pleaded.

A cursory glance at the Square Mile’s “eastern cluster” of skyscrapers might suggest the prince was the loser in the battle for the city’s skyline. But the tide may be turning, particularly in the suburbs, with the government’s “Building Better, Building Beautiful” commission arguing against “building upwards”.

And Charles’ concern more than a decade ago that planning policy would only allow rejections of buildings on aesthetic grounds if they were “absolutely hideous” while anything “merely ugly” must be allowed to get through, has also been heard. The commission’s call to put “beauty” at the heart of planning decisions is now recognised in policy.

Last month’s rejection of plans for 539 new homes, 35% of them affordable, on a disused gasworks site in New Barnet shows the prince’s influence clearly. Its seven-storey blocks would “insert an alien typology of larger mass and scale” into the suburban character of the borough, the inspector said, adding that it was not “well-designed” either.

More generally, the prince’s concerns for sustainability – low carbon development using traditional materials, “creative recycling” rather than demolition and less dependence on cars – are not so far away from Rogers, who was arguing for a compact, polycentric, walkable city well before “15-minute” neighbourhoods became fashionable.

Yet Rogers’ point that architecture is an “evolving language” of technology and materials, not fixed in any one time or desirable style, involving a “dialogue” between buildings with different identities, continues to have purchase. “We always have the shock of the new and that’s fine,” he said.

As King, Charles will not be intervening in the way he used to, but his influence remains. And as London faces the continuing challenges of affordability, housing need, climate change and more, the arguments will no doubt continue to be made.

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Categories: Analysis
Tags: King Charles III, National Gallery, Paternoster Square, Richard Rogers

Newham: A profile of poverty as cost of living pressures grow

The government's intervention over energy bills will restrict the coming impacts, but many people in the east London borough were already feeling a financial squeeze
Dave Hill

Across the capital local authorities are trying to get to grips with what rocketing energy prices and other cost of living hikes could mean for them and for their residents in the months to come.

Newham last week convened a summit hosted by the borough’s Mayor, Rokhsana Fiaz. The council’s stated view was that even if “urgent action” from national government was forthcoming, more would have to be done locally “driven by our collective efforts”.

Since then the new Prime Minister Liz Truss has taken a major step to limit the coming rise in energy bills. But critics say the measure is insufficiently tailored to help the least well off and will plunge millions across the country into fuel poverty.

If so, plenty of those will be in Newham. An analysis for the council by Partnering Regeneration Development (PRD) presented at the summit modelled the coming impacts of inflation. It described an array of pressures in London combining to create a “perfect storm” to “test the resilience of most households” in the borough.

The government’s decision to borrow money to keep energy bills at a typical £2,500 a year for the next two years from October, preventing a rise to £3,549 this year, will help some, but the borrowing is expected to be paid back by consumers over future years and Liz Truss’s action is not enormously reassuring  in the context of the profile of Newham assembled by PRD.

There have been some encouraging trends in the borough in recent times: PRD show that until last year economic activity and employment rates in Newham had been on an upward curve since 2011. However, 28% of Newham residents work in low paid jobs – a larger proportion than in London as a whole. And although just over half are employed in the top three of nine categories of occupation, with median London pay of £43,530 a year, even those in the better paid occupations are going to become less well off, with undesirable consequences for the local economy.

Having several hundred pounds less disposable income than before means several hundred pounds less being spent in shops and restaurants and so on. And case studios presented illuminated how, for example, less well-paid workers such teachers, nurses and hospitality sector workers could see their disposable income shrink to very little or nil.

The PRD team also drew out some of the detail within poverty data to show that Newham has the second highest child poverty rate in the country, affecting a shocking 50% of the borough’s children. Most Newham children in “absolute low income households” are members of “working families”, meaning one where at least one adult has a job.

Drawing on government figures, PRD show that the absolute number of Newham children in low income “in work” households had risen from 14,900 in the financial year 2014/15 to 17,943 in 2019/2020 while the number not in working families fell during the same period from 6,512 to 4,700. Those numbers, say PRD, underline that “work is not always a reliable route out of poverty”.

The analysis also suggests, as work at City Hall has done, that London could, on the whole, be more exposed to inflation than other parts of the country. A more optimistic element in the unfolding cost-of-living crisis story is that Newham is widely seen as having risen well to the health challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic and, as PRD director Chris Paddock put it, “community sand faith groups within Newham mobilising around mutual aid through the pandemic as well was incredibly impressive”.

These things bode well for the borough’s emerging cost of living crisis response. But the pressures are going to be intense.

Image from PRD report.

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Categories: News
Tags: Newham Council, poverty, Rokhsana Fiaz

How many bicycles travel along Park Lane and how many used to?

Transport for London says it is inclined to make a pop-up cycle lane on the famous London highway permanent, but has yet to clearly explain why that would be justified
Dave Hill

On 22 August an email was sent out from Transport for London about the segregated lane for bicycles that was installed along Park Lane in May 2020 as part of its Streetspace programme responding to the onset of the pandemic. Like other Streetspace projects it was described as “temporary”, with the proviso that it might be made permanent in future.

A two-way track on the northbound carriageway of Park Lane running parallel with the eastern edge of Hyde Park, it is still there two-and-half years later and TfL’s email, sent out by its Strategic Consultations team, said its purpose was to “explain in more detail why we believe the changes we made to Park Lane during the pandemic should be improved and retained permanently”.

The email anticipates a question: “How do you know that more people will cycle in London and in Park Lane.” It then offers an answer, part of which is: “There are nearly 20 per cent more trips on bikes this year than there were in 2021.”

What exactly does that mean? Does it mean nearly 20 per cent more “trips on bikes” in the whole of Greater London, the whole of that part of central London or just the whole of Park Lane? Does it mean that there had already in 2022, just two-thirds of the way through it, been “nearly 20 per cent more trips on bikes” than there were in the whole of 2021, or only during January to August of that year? And if “nearly 20 per cent more” is specifically about bicycles travelling along Park Lane, what is the change in the actual number compared with 2021? “Nearly 20 per cent” is a large percentage increase, but what if it’s only “nearly 20 per cent more” of not very many?

Further on, the email says “there have been 2,400 cycle trips on Park Lane”, but it does not say over what period or how that number compares with the same or other comparable periods in the past. Without providing that information the figure of 2,400 cycle trips is meaningless in terms of trying to assess how busy the cycle lane is and to what extent, if any, it has encouraged more cycling along Park Lane than there was before.

I promise this is not me, a bit of a sceptic about the efficacy of cycle lanes for fostering more cycling, being peevish or pedantic. Imprecise and selective use of statistics has been characteristic of TfL’s (and City Hall’s) attempts to promote cycling since the advent of Streetspace if not before, sometimes giving the impression of huge increases which might be questionable.

The email about Park Lane ends saying “there will a public consultation starting in the autumn” about the Park Lane scheme (which also includes a bus lane), and promises to provide “further details once the consultation has launched”.

I will be looking for far more robust statistics about cycling than the email of 22 August contains. Ideally, I would like to be given actual numbers – not just percentage changes – of bicycles travelling along the segregated cycle lane over specified recent periods – daily, monthly and so on – and actual numbers of bicycles that travelled along Park Lane, both northbound and southbound, during the equivalent specified periods previously, including, crucially, before the cycle lane was introduced.

A reasonable like-with-like comparison might then be possible, as part of considering a range of issues, such as the scheme’s effects on motor traffic congestion and air pollution – which opponents believe it has worsened – and how many cyclists, if any, have stopped using the Broad Walk path close by within Hyde Park and started using the Park Lane track instead. On that last point, TfL’s email said: “We have already seen a switch of people cycling on Park Lane rather than Broad Walk and if the cycle lanes are kept on Park Lane we can encourage more cyclists out of Hyde Park.”

I asked TfL about the “nearly 20 per cent” increase mentioned in the consultation team’s email. Surely if such an increase has taken place in 2022 since however much of 2021 it is being compared with, TfL must have actual numbers for 2022 and the relevant period of 2021 readily to hand. Otherwise, how can they possibly have worked out a percentage difference between the two?

However, TfL said they couldn’t help me, at least not straight away. They did, though, add that a report about all the data relating to the scheme is being compiled and will be completed early next month. Hopefully, the figures Londoners need in order to make informed assessments about the effects of the Park Lane cycle scheme will soon be in the public domain.

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Categories: Analysis
Tags: cycling, Park Lane, Streetspace, Transport for London

Mark Rowley starts work as new Metropolitan Police comissioner

Cressida Dick's successor has a huge job before him to restore Londoners' trust in the efficiency and probity of Met
Dave Hill

Mark Rowley has officially started work as the new Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis, succeeding Cressida Dick who left the job in April in the wake of a series of scandals and following a long term fall in Londoners’ confidence in the Met.

Welcoming Rowley to his new position, Sadiq Khan said the new commissioner is taking over at “a critical juncture in the history of the Metropolitan Police Service, which is facing some extremely difficult challenges”.

Rowley, who was previously at the Met as UK head of counter terrorism and led investigations into the series of attacks that took place in 2017, said when he was named commissioner in July that “some quite dramatic solutions” will be needed for policing to keep up with the pace of modern public expectations.

The BBC reports that his plans for the Met include “new precision crime-fighting teams to get a grip on crime at a local level” as the service continues to be closely monitored and supported by His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary under measures introduced in June.

The choice of Rowley to succeed Dick was made by the now former Home Secretary Priti Patel after both she and Mayor Khan concluded early this year that significant change at the Met was needed.

Like previous commissioners, Rowley will be accountable to the Mayor through his Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) despite the Home Secretary having the biggest say about who becomes “Britain’s top cop”.

Patel herself has since been replaced by former attorney general Suella Braverman, who was appointed by new Prime Minister Liz Truss. She and the Mayor met and spoke at the service of prayer and mourning held in honour of Queen Elizabeth at St Paul’s cathedral on Friday evening.

Truss used the final hustings of the recent Conservative Party election campaign, which resulted in her becoming PM, to criticise Khan over crime in the capital, telling Tory members, “We need a Mayor of London who is actually prepared to be tough on crime and I’m afraid we don’t have that in Sadiq Khan”.

However, Truss stopped short of advocating Khan having the limited devolved powers London Mayors enjoy over policing in the capital removed and placed with Whitehall.

Rowley had been due to appear before the London Assembly’s police and crime committee, which scrutinies the Met and MOPAC on behalf of Londoners, this week, but normal Assembly public meetings have been cancelled out of respect for the death of Elizabeth.

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Categories: News
Tags: London Assembly, Mark Rowley, Metropolitan Police, Mopac, Priti Patel, Sadiq Khan, Suella Braverman

Dave Hill: The story of the police killing of Chris Kaba must be clearly and credibly told

For the sake of his family, all Londoners and good policing in the capital absolutely nothing less will do
Dave Hill

It was the more troubling for feeling so familiar. Last Monday, 5 September, a young black Londoner driving through the city’s streets became pursued by Metropolitan Police officers. They brought his vehicle to a halt and at around 10pm one of those officers shot him dead.

The questions raised by the incident are obvious, urgent and deadly serious, especially at a time when black Londoners’ confidence in the Met has fallen very low. Were the officers right to have chased Chris Kaba in the first place? Why was he shot? What will the consequences be?

The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), which investigates “the most serious and sensitive incidents and allegations” involving the police in all of England and Wales, was on the scene overnight.

In a statement issued on Tuesday 6 September the IOPC said its investigators had been “securing key evidence, including footage from the police vehicles and a police helicopter which was in the area, as well as officers’ body worn video”. It added that a “detailed search of the scene and surrounding area is continuing this evening” along with the gathering of CCTV evidence and house to house inquiries” in the Streatham Hill area.

The statement also said: “We attended the police post-incident procedures where they officers involved provided their initial accounts of the incident. We can confirm that one shot was fired from a police issue firearm, which will be subject to further analysis”.

The following day, Wednesday 7 September, Kaba’s name was released by the IOPC, along with his age (24) and where he lived (Wembley). And that was also the day a reason for the pursuit of Kaba was provided by the IOPC. Its update statement said:

“We understand at this stage that police officers in an armed response vehicle attempted to stop the vehicle Mr Kaba was in, following the activation of an automatic number plate recognition camera which indicated the vehicle was linked to a firearms incident in the previous days.”

The IOPC said it would not be appropriate to say any more about that previous firearms incident, as it was the subject of an ongoing Met investigation. But it was able to confirm that around 10pm “a single shot was discharged by a police officer” at Kaba, who was flown to hospital but died later that night. The IOPC also said:

“A detailed search of the scene and surrounding area was completed last night. No non-police issue firearm has been recovered from the vehicle or the scene.”

The disclosure that no non-police firearm was found at the scene of Kaba’s death, either in the car he was driving or near it, was, of course, significant. And as there was no mention by the IOPC of any other object in or around the car that might have been a potential weapon, the conclusion was drawn that Kaba was not only without a gun on the night of his death but wholly “unarmed”.

On the same day, 7 September, members of Kaba’s family released a statement through the charity Inquest, which, in its own words, provides “expertise on state related deaths and their investigation to bereaved people, lawyers, advice and support agencies”. The statement asked for a homicide investigation into Kaba’s death and said the family had demanded one from the IOPC. And it explicitly raised the burning issue:

“We are worried that if Chris had not been Black, he would have been arrested on Monday evening and not had his life cut short.”

IOPC director general Michael Lockwood issued a statement the next day, Thursday 8 September, in which he recognised “significant concerns” among local people about what had happened and stressed that the IOPC is “independent of the police and the government”.

The day after that, 9 September, the IOPC revealed that “the vehicle Mr Kaba was driving was not registered to him”. It also announced that Kaba’s family members had got one of the things they wanted. Following its review of the evidence, a “new phase” of the IOPC investigation of the police shooting was announced – a homicide investigation had been launched.

I understand that this was always going to happen, purely because somebody was killed. And it is important to take note of what might and might not result from the investigation. The category homicide includes murder and manslaughter and, as the IOPC has pointed out, a homicide investigation “does not mean that criminal charges will necessarily follow”. The key detail is that the IOPC has also described the investigation as a “criminal” one.

The pressure is now on for a swift outcome to that investigation, and patience is likely to be tested. Speaking at a rally outside Scotland Yard on Saturday, rapper Stormzy urged protesters to have stamina – the slowness of past investigations has been the object of suspicion in the past. After initially being withdrawn from operational duties, the officer who fired the fatal shot has now been suspended by the Met.*

The IOPC is now constrained from releasing much further information precisely because its investigation is now a criminal one. For everybody’s sake it must move as quickly as it can to conclude its inquiries, reach its conclusions and tell as much as it can of the story about what happened to Chris Kaba and why with clarity, transparency and credibility. For the sake of Kaba’s family, all Londoners and good policing in the capital, nothing less will do.

*This article was updated on 13 September to include the Met’s suspension of the officer who fired the fatal shot, which was announced the previous evening. The photograph of Chris Kaba has been released to the media by his family.

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Categories: Comment
Tags: Chris Kaba, crime, Independent Office for Police Conduct, Metropolitan Police, policing, Streatham Hill