The first London borough by-elections triggered by councillors becoming MPs on 4 July took place in Camden on Thursday to fill vacancies created following the general election wins for Labour of Georgia Gould, Danny Beales and Lloyd Hatton.
Gould, a member of Camden Council since 2010 and its leader since 2017, had represented Kentish Town South ward and resigned after winning the safe Queen’s Park & Maida Vale parliamentary seat, the successor to Karen Buck’s Westminster North.
Beales too won a London House of Commons seat, capturing Uxbridge & South Ruislip from the Conservatives, having narrowly failed to do so at the by-election there in July 2023, making his triumph particularly sweet. That resulted in his Camden Square council seat being up for grabs. Hatton went further afield, gaining the difficult Labour target of South Dorset and subsequently leaving a space to fill in Kilburn ward.
The path from London council chamber to the Commons is well-trodden. Past examples from Camden, also all for Labour, include Frank Dobson, Tessa Jowell and Ken Livingstone, and in a general election that made Camden MP Keir Starmer Prime Minister, it was not surprising to see a few more switch from Judd Street to the Palace of Westminster.
They weren’t the only ones. London councillors have long been recruited for their local constituencies, of course, but these days are also frequently selected to contest seats outside the capital, particularly – though not necessarily – if they have roots in the relevant area and left because their lives and careers took them to London. Eighteen incumbent London councillors, listed below, are among the new House of Commons membership.
In addition, two further newly-elected MPs stood down from their council seats in advance of the general election. Adam Jogee, formerly of Hornsey ward in Haringey, now represents Newcastle-under-Lyme for Labour. Siân Berry, formerly of Highgate ward in Camden, was well ahead of the game in standing down at the end of last year, as she prepared to take over the Green mantle in Brighton Pavilion
There is no hard and fast rule that a politician has to give up a council seat on being elected an MP, and some have combined the roles for more than a transitional period. Ben Bradley, Conservative MP for Mansfield from 2017 until 2024, was re-elected to Nottinghamshire County Council and became leader of that authority after entering the Commons.
His zeal for public service was such that in May he also ran (unsuccessfully) for Mayor of East Midlands. However, voters and local media tend to look askance at politicians who attempt to ride two horses at the same time, particularly if there is a large geographical distance between the council ward and the parliamentary constituency.
Beales had represented Camden Square since 2022 and, before that, its predecessor, Cantelowes. The ward forms a wedge of the east side of Camden Town, south of the straight Camden Road. It contains the neighbourhood around Camden Square itself, which is mostly sub-divided Victorian villadom, and the Maiden Lane estate beside the Overground (Mildmay) line.
Kentish Town South is the other side of Camden Road from Camden Square and stretches up as far as Leighton Road to the north. It covers most of Kentish Town’s high street area, some mixed residential territory, the expensive Rochesters location and also some large council estates around Torriano Avenue. While Camden Square has an Irish Centre and Kilburn an Irish reputation, Kentish Town South was the most Irish (3.6 per cent) of the three wards in term of population, according to the 2021 Census.
Keir Starmer lived in Kentish Town before his relocation to Downing Street. He was resident in the Kentish Town North ward, but nevertheless his elevation to PM drew attention to Kentish Town as a whole. Like many in the City and the professions at the time, he bought a family house in what was then an up-and-coming residential area in the 2000s and has seen the value of the property shoot up.
Camden neighbourhoods associated with past Labour leaders tell the story of how the intersection of desirable and affordable has moved: Hugh Gaitskell lived in Frognal, Michael Foot the other side of Hampstead, Ed Miliband in Dartmouth Park (and his brother David in Primrose Hill). Like some of these previous leaders, Starmer had a “set” who lived around his home, which included Gould who represented a ward called Kentish Town from 2010 to 2022, before boundary changes created Kentish Town South.
Kilburn ward is over on the other side of the borough, tucked into the corner where Camden meets Westminster and Brent. It contains most of Camden’s share of Kilburn neighbourhood, including the iconic Alexandra Road Estate – which is arguably South Hampstead – and the streets around Kilburn Priory and Kilburn Grange Park. It is the least gentrified of the three wards, having the lowest proportion of the higher professional and managerial classes, the highest proportion social renting and the lowest proportion of owner-occupied housing. Weymouth-raised Hatton was on only his first term as councillor before being elected as MP for his original home area.
All three wards have a political history that is typical for Camden – mostly Labour-dominated but with the Liberal Democrats competitive towards the end of Labour’s last period in national government. In 2006, the Lib Dems won Kilburn, Cantelowes and two out of three seats in Kentish Town. But Labour reclaimed them all except one of the Cantelowes seats in 2010, and have dominated in local elections since then.
In 2022, the first election under the current boundaries, Labour won 76 per cent of the vote in Camden Square, 61 per cent in Kentish Town South and 68 per cent in Kilburn. All the wards have Muslim communities – ranging from 15 per cent in Kentish Town South to 27 per cent in Kilburn – but none of them can be described as predominantly Muslim, which is an important criterion given the poor results for Labour in Muslim areas in May and July 2024.
Campaigning for these three Camden by-elections took place in July and August, during the political lull after the general election. Consequently, they did not attract much attention. The big four London parties – Labour, Conservative, Lib Dem and Green – stood in all three, joined by two Independents in Camden Square and one in Kentish Town South.
Labour’s candidates for the seats were rapidly selected: Trish Leman, a former teacher, stood in Camden Square; Joseph Ball, a youth sports coach and charity trustee, stood in Kentish Town South; Robert Thompson, vicar of St Mary’s in Kilburn and, before that, a Kensington & Chelsea councillor, stood in Kilburn. And all three were successful, despite low turnouts and sharp falls in their party’s shares of the vote.
Only 13 per cent of Kilburn electors cast ballots. In Kentish Town South and Camden Square the figures were 18 per cent and 16 per cent respectively. The Labour share was down most in Camden Square (by 28 per cent) and by least in Kentish Town South (12 per cent). The decline was accentuated in Camden Square and Kentish Town South because the Greens had not contested the wards in 2022, despite their being potentially promising territory. In the two eastern wards, the Independent candidates also polled respectably, with Ali Farah coming second in Camden Square on a left wing platform.
The shape of the results should have come as no surprise, given the general election outcome. Camden Square and Kentish Town South are both in Starmer’s Holborn & St Pancras constituency, where Independent left candidate Andrew Feinstein did well in July and Labour’s vote share fell.
That said, there was no evidence of further slippage. And although caution should be applied when drawing conclusions from low-turnout summer by-elections, the contests also demonstrated Labour’s strength. In spite of everything, none of the results were at all close: Labour’s winning margins were 347 for Ball in Kentish Town South, 330 for Thompson in Kilburn and 301 for Leman in Camden Square.
A different candidate placed second in each ward – the Independent in Camden Square, the Green in Kentish Town South and the Conservative in Kilburn – illustrating a lack of coherence in the anti-Labour forces locally in Camden, as was recently the case nationally.
For more background on the three wards, including Camden Square’s associations with Amy Winehouse, see Andrew Teale’s excellent previews.
Support OnLondon.co.uk and its freelancers for just £5 a month or £50 a year and get things for your money too. Details HERE. Follow Lewis Baston on Bluesky. Photo of the three winning Labour candidates alongside Camden’s new leader, Richard Olszewski, from Camden Labour X/Twitter.
Sadiq Khan has used his first appearance before the London Assembly after the summer break to signal a new drive to boost bus services in the outer reaches of the city particularly.
Appearing yesterday alongside Transport for London Commissioner Andy Lord at a City Hall plenary session, the third-term mayor looked determined to rebut criticism by opposition Assembly Members (AMs) often aimed at Labour incumbents that they are “Zone 1” focused.
The meeting came as the Assembly marked the first birthday of TfL’s outer London Superloop express bus network – with praise all round. The service, adding an extra six million kilometres of bus route to the capital, was introduced from July last year, a month before Khan’s Ultra-Low Emission Zone was expanded citywide.
Khan began by warding off a Green Party call to get tough with the 12 mainly outer London councils that have not introduced borough-wide 20mph speed limits. “We have to reflect that central London boroughs may be different to outer London,” he said. “TfL has conversations with borough leaders about what is sensible, what is realistic. It’s not one size fits all.”
But the outer London bus network was the Mayor’s focus, as he told AMs TfL was already planning to extend the Superloop. Public consultation on possible new routes would be taking place over the next six to 12 months to gauge demand for additional express buses, the meeting heard, with new services launched over the coming three years.
Improving public transport to provide alternatives to driving was a priority, said Khan. “London continues to grow,” he said. “We can’t have 9.7 million Londoners driving around in cars, for obvious reasons, so we do need to encourage more people to make the transition where possible to public transport, walking or cycling.
“But we’ve got to recognise that some boroughs, in outer London particularly, are very different to central London, which is one of the best-served areas in the world in terms of public transport, safe cycling and walking. So we’ve got to work with those boroughs and their communities to make sure there are alternatives.”
The orbital service recognised wider requirements too, Khan said. Public transport had historically been planned to carry passengers from outer into central London, but “that’s not how people live their lives”. Post-Covid, habits were changing too, he said: “For example, there can be more things to do in outer London and inner London compared to just central London.”
Assembly transport committee chair Elly Baker echoed the point: “The important thing about the Superloop is that it explicitly acknowledges we need transport to do more than take us in and out of the city centre,” she said. “So many of our journeys, for work and education, to see family and friends, are from one bit of outer London to another.”
Express buses could also play a part in supporting areas targeted for major rail schemes, including the Bakerloo line extension to Lewisham, the Docklands Light Railway extension to Thamesmead and the new West London Orbital London Overground line, the Mayor said, while dampening speculation that those schemes could get going rapidly.
Between them they could support some 50,000 new homes, the meeting heard. But they would take “years and years and years, even with a green light tomorrow, which isn’t happening,” Khan told AMs: “My challenge to TfL is can we get express bus routes in those areas in the interim, because that may accelerate new housing and economic regeneration in advance of major new infrastructure.”
The move was welcomed in a motion proposed by AM Bassam Mahfouz, elected in May in the Assembly’s Ealing & Hillingdon constituency, who called the Superloop network an “absolute game changer for outer London”.
The motion, agreed unanimously, called on the Mayor to work closely with the assembly to agree new Superloop routes, and added a shopping list of possible priority areas including north Waltham Forest, Havering and the “more rural” parts of Bromley.
OnLondon.co.uk provides unique coverage of the capital’s politics, development and culture. Support it for just £5 a month or £50 a year and get things for your money too. Details HERE. Follow Charles Wright on X/Twitter.
In a world exclusive revelation, intergalactic space warrior and former London Mayor candidate Count Binface has told OnLondon that he will run to be Mayor of Croydon in 2026.
Fresh from challenging Rishi Sunak in his Richmond (Yorkshire) seat at the general election, the bin-headed renegade is now eyeing up the suburban south London borough for his next political adventure.
Speaking to OnLondon on Zoom, presumably working remotely from his Sigma IX home, Binface discusses the fall of the Conservative government, the positioning of hand dryers in pubs, and the ideal temperature at which a croissant should be served (he’s also clear they should be price-capped at £1.10).
His comments comes ahead of his forthcoming UK tour, where he promises to deliver “the greatest sci-fi satire this side of the Restaurant at the End of the Universe”. Two London dates are planned, with one already sold out.
***
Josiah Mortimer (Human, pictured left): Tell me about the past few months. You ran against Sadiq Khan and then Rishi Sunak in the general election. What were some highlights of the campaign trail?
Count Binface (Intergalactic Being, pictured right): 2024 has been the biggest year for democracy on Earth ever, and for me as well. In the London mayoral election, I beat Britain First by about 4,000 votes. Then I took on Rishi in Yorkshire and got my highest ever parliamentary score. I think Britain is hopeful now, having got rid of the Tories finally. But it doesn’t mean it’s all roses in the Rose Garden, because Labour aren’t enjoying great popularity either.
JM: There were some real highlights from your manifesto in May, which you carried over to the July manifesto. Thames Water bosses to be forced to swim in the Thames to see how they like it, London Bridge to be renamed after Phoebe Waller. Did you get any responses from officials while putting out these campaign pledges?
CB: I was most excited about upgrading and improving the position of the hand dryer in the Crown and Treaty pub in Uxbridge. I included that policy in my North Yorkshire manifesto too, knowing the good people of Richmond, North Yorkshire would support my work.
JM: What do you think it was about your pledges and campaigning in London that meant you appealed to Londoners more than the far-right party?
CB: Most Londoners found my manifesto and personality more appealing than that of a rather unpleasant bunch. I look up the table, not down. I want to aim for a champion’s league place.
JM: We’ve got council elections in London in May 2026. Is a campaign in Uxbridge or Croydon on the cards?
CB: I’m expanding my hand dryer policy nationwide. I’ve signed a treaty with the Crown and Treaty pub that if I’m elected, they’ll move the dryer. I wouldn’t be surprised if Croydon has some hand dryer issues of its own, and I’d be happy to rectify those. Croydon now has its own mayor. If I can get 24,000 votes in London, just think how high up the pecking order I could come in Croydon.
JM: Is this a world exclusive? We heard it here first, that you’re running for Croydon Mayor?
CB: Croydon is big enough to be funny and important, small enough to be a place that no one really cares about. It’s perfect, right in my wheelhouse. The crazy thing is that it costs £5,000 to stand for mayor of Croydon, compared to £10 for London Mayor. (Last part not actually true: Ed).
JM: You’ll have to do a lot of fundraising among your supporters to raise that kind of money.
CB: Exactly. I’ll have to do crowdfunding. I haven’t got that kind of money myself. If the people of Croydon are up for it, maybe I will be too.
JM: You were endorsed by the Daily Star in your July parliamentary run. Are you expecting any more endorsements ahead of your next political journey?
CB: I never expect endorsements, as that’s hubristic. But I’m always over the moon when celebrities or others support me. Carol Vorderman has been very positive towards me. I’ve had some lovely guests on my podcast, Trash Future, including Ian Hislop, Stewart Lee, Matthew Wright and Alice Roberts.
JM: There’s a Tory leadership election happening right now. Did you consider throwing your hat in the ring?
CB: No, they’re my mortal enemy. Why would I do that? I’m quite happy for those rats to fight amongst themselves and see who emerges as the last rat standing.
JM: Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner recently made news for raving on holiday. Where does Count Binface go for his downtime?
CB: I haven’t been to Ibiza, but I’m a big fan of crazy golf. You might find me at your local mini-golf course. It’s a bit easier on your planet, with gravity. I even had a celebrity pro-golf match with Ben Fogle, and it was a draw, although I think he might have fiddled the scores.
JM: How does it feel to be a celestial being with a bin on your head, yet still seem much more serious than many other politicians you stood against?
CB: We should never take democracy for granted. Not many countries on Earth have it, and you’re the only planet in the omniverse that has it. I like to think there’s humour in what I do, but I also think we can demonstrate the wonderful British sense of humour in elections, which other countries admire. If I can play a small part in that, then I feel very lucky indeed.
JM: Do you think a Count Binface character would survive in the United States?
CB: There is a strange individual in the United States called Vermin Supreme. He’s a bit of an American equivalent to me. He dresses like a wizard with a Wellington boot on his head and offers free ponies for everyone. But I feel there’s still a place for me in American politics, and I’ve got my visor on them for the future.
JM: Is it true that you’re going to play a renegade Time Lord leading a gang of cyborg warriors in the next series of Doctor Who?
CB: Alas, not yet. But by all means, Russell T Davies, I’m happy to consider an offer.
JM: Tell us about your tour. You’re doing a night in London at the Phoenix, right?
CB: Yes, the first one sold out. The 3rd of December is now on sale for the London grand finale of this leg.
JM: What might human viewers expect from your UK-wide tour?
CB: I’m calling it the greatest sci-fi satire this side of the Restaurant at the End of the Universe. You’re going to get a whole lot of stuff on what’s gone wrong with the UK and planet Earth, plus what’s going on in the rest of the omniverse. Then, of course, my diagnosis and prescription, all my policies, and lots more about how to make Britain intergalactic again. There will be a large section devoted to croissant economics.
JM: What is the ideal temperature at which croissants should be served?
CB: I’m quite liberal on this. I won’t prescribe how hot or cold your croissant can be. I’d say no croissant should be served lower than zero degrees Celsius, and certainly not higher than 500 degrees Celsius. Beyond that, it’s up to you.
JM: How would you describe the state of democracy in London and the UK?
CB: They changed the voting system from single transferable vote to first-past-the-post, to the detriment of independent candidates like me. That kind of thing undermines and erodes voters’ confidence in the system. It’s the kind of thing I want to stamp out, just like I’d stamp out the House of Lords.
JM: Any final message for Londoners now that we’re in a new reign of Sadiq Khan’s premiership here, and a new government UK-wide?
CB: Now that we’ve kicked the Tories out, the question is, what’s next? We’re not going to let Keir Starmer do whatever he likes with his 170-seat majority. We’ll hold his feet to the fire. If he messes up, we’ll tell him about it and stand against him in the next election. I am the real force of opposition, the real force of affordable pastry products, and the real force behind building at least one affordable house. I’m not going to let these politicians mess up your planet or your city anymore. I’m not going away. If you want to see me launch the next phase of my interstellar domination, come and join me either at the Phoenix in North London or in wonderful Croydon. Together, we will make comedy, satire, and British politics great again.Also, it’s the 50th anniversary of Ceefax on the 24th of September!
JM: Thank you so much for your time. May Ceefax return and reign supreme.
Tickets are still available for Count Binface’s December 3rd show at The Pleasance theatre, which promises to be a wild ride through space, time, and the world of the Recyclons…
OnLondon.co.uk provides unique coverage of the capital’s politics, development and culture. Support it for just £5 a month or £50 a year and get things for your money too. Details HERE. Follow Josiah Mortimer on Bluesky.
Londoners have been slow to get back to their desks compared to workers in other large cities, according to Return to the Office, the latest report from think tank Centre for Cities. Why is that, does it matter and what can be done?
The report’s polling, carried out in June, finds that central London office workers are spending an average of 2.7 days per week in the office, less than their counterparts in Paris, New York and Singapore, though pretty similar to those in Sydney and Toronto. As in those other cities, their office days are concentrated in the middle of the week, with London showing the sharpest drop-off on Fridays, when just 40 per cent are traveling in to work.
London’s sluggish return is explained by two main factors, the report suggests. On the management side, London bosses seem more reluctant than those in other cities to specify when workers need to be in. And while workers and bosses alike value the chance to develop relationships and collaborate in person, London’s workers particularly also appreciate the cost savings and time flexibility offered by working from home – more than those in other cities.
The Centre for Cities findings reflect those of the King’s College Policy Institute’s London Returning survey of 2022. This found that most London workers felt positive about being in the office, but that 80 per cent said that avoiding the commute, its costs and its time demands was a good reason to continue working from home.
London government has sought to address this issue through the “Off Peak Friday” trial that ran from March until May on Underground, Overground, DLR, Elizabeth line and some National Rail services. It led to a modest increase in commuting on Fridays, but awareness and take-up was limited. Speaking at the Centre for Cities launch event on Tuesday evening, Deputy Mayor for Business Howard Dawber said City Hall was still mulling the outcomes of the trial.
However, while London commuting costs are high compared to most of the other cities in the study, I suspect the bigger problem lies outside the capital. On commuter lines beyond Sadiq Khan’s control, both expense – despite the paltry savings offered by flexi season tickets – and chaotic performance, worsened by rolling strikes in recent years, make a trip to London a pricey roll of the dice.
These costs and inconveniences may explain one area where London bucks the trend: in London, unlike the other cities, younger workers were spending most days in the office and saying they work most effectively there. They are also the workers most likely to live in London, while many older ones commute in from the Home Counties – a trend that was accentuated during the pandemic – or at least used to. Anyone who has joined an online call with younger workers balancing laptops on washbasins in shared flats with iffy WiFi while older workers dial in from their immaculately-restored half-timber country cottage may understand why the former are keener than the latter to get back.
At the launch event, panel members Dawber, Kat Hanna (Managing Director at Avison Young) and David Wreford (Partner at Mercer) agreed that the return to the office seemed to have plateaued in London, and that the pandemic had accelerated and intensified trends towards more flexibility. But there was less consensus among panellists and audience members on whether this was a good thing, and about what if anything could be done about it.
A fundamental question was, against the backdrop of government’s “Growth Mission”, how does hybrid working affect productivity? Intriguingly, Return to the Office finds that most workers could see individual productivity benefits from working at home, but were concerned about the long-term impacts on skills, pay and promotion prospects, all of which affect organisational productivity. The skills gap could particularly affect younger workers, unable to learn from working alongside more experienced staff, if the latter continued to stay home for most of the week.
The evidence on productivity is still emerging and tentative, though face-to-face interactions and proximity are the lifeblood of the agglomeration benefits that cities offer – even if these apply more for some teams and some sectors than for others. The report recommends that more research be done on the productivity impacts of hybrid working, but the risk is that we will only know the impacts when looking in the rear-view mirror; that we won’t know what we’ve got till it’s gone. So we need to make some informed judgement calls and watch for early signs of long-term effects.
In the meantime, more flexible working patterns were transforming working life for people with caring responsibilities – generally women, who the London Returning survey found were more positive about working from home and more reluctant to be told to work more days in the office. Reduce flexibility and these workers might once again be excluded from the workforce. The Mercer research confirmed this, Wreford added: women were most likely to switch or stay in jobs as a result of flexible working incentives, while men were more likely to be motivated by financial rewards.
Furthermore, while parts of central London’s economy were struggling with new work patterns, suburban areas might be thriving (though ONS analysis suggests local spending patterns have returned to their pre-Covid levels). And Hanna observed that a broader shift to mixed use might strengthen central London’s offer as a place of leisure, as well as work: “It’s called the Central Activities Zone; that doesn’t tell you what those activities need to be.” While peak hours Tube use remains below 2019 levels, evening and weekend riderships are already higher, suggesting that London’s offer to visitors – short and long distance – is stronger than ever.
Finally, what, if anything, should be done to change the situation? Mayor Khan wants central London to be busy, Dawber said, but can only offer incentives and encouragement. British bosses are reluctant to impose tougher “back to the office” mandates according to the polling, and government policy is pointing in the direction of more flexibility, not less.
So, is this the much discussed “new normal” – neither citypocalypse nor a snap back to the heady days of February 2020? It may be an equilibrium for the moment, but perhaps not a stable one. As panellists noted, climate change and artificial intelligence may dramatically change where, how and by whom office work is performed in the future. We may be only at the beginning of a period of rapid change.
OnLondon.co.uk provides unique coverage of the capital’s politics, development and culture. Support it for just £5 a month or £50 a year and get things for your money too. Details HERE. Follow Richard Brown on X/Twitter.
Transport secretary Louise Haigh has overturned the previous government’s ban on new housing on Cockfosters tube station car park, City Hall confirmed today. The controversial veto had seen a Transport for London scheme for 350 new homes stalled for almost three-and-a-half years.
The 40 per cent affordable scheme, including four tower blocks of up to 14 storeys in height, was approved on a casting vote by Enfield Council’s planning committee in February 2022, despite 2,852 objections and opposition both from local Labour MP Bambos Charalambous and his then Conservative neighbour in Chipping Barnet, Theresa Villiers.
Planners had recommended it for approval, arguing that the borough desperately needed new housing. The scheme complied with national and City Hall policy supporting development on “under-utilised brownfield sites in highly accessible locations”, while most drivers using the car park had alternative forms of public transport available, they said.
It also drew support from transport campaigners in the borough and from the Enfield Society, founded in 1936, which told the council that the station car park was a “poor use of space” and residential development on brownfield sites was appropriate to “help meet borough housing targets”.
Villiers, described by some as the “patron saint of Nimbyism”, nevertheless kept up the fight, lobbying the then transport secretary Grant Shapps to take action to protect the car park around the Grade II-listed station at the end of the Piccadilly Line, which she said performed an “important park-and-ride function”.
In what is thought to be the only use of “backstop” powers in the GLA Act 1999 requiring Whitehall consent for the sale of “operational” TfL land, the minister controversially stepped in to block the scheme on the grounds that its proposed retention of 47 parking spaces, including 12 blue badge spaces and short stay pick up/drop off parking, would be “inadequate”.
TfL’s attempts to reverse the ban, even after Shapps’ departure and communities secretary Michael Gove confirming more than a year ago that his department would not be “calling in” the original planning application for public inquiry, were consistently rebuffed, until now. The new minister’s decision represents a significant shift in approach from the new Labour national government, which will send ripples through the suburbs.
“I’m delighted to finally unblock this important project to kickstart the development of hundreds of much needed new homes in Enfield,” said Haigh. “This government is committed to getting Britain building and working with local leaders to boost regional growth.”
The decision was welcomed by Sadiq Khan. “After the previous government refused to approve the plans, I’m delighted that the new government has given us the green light to progress exciting plans for new homes at Cockfosters station,” he said. “Building homes right next to public transport connections is a key part of our plans to deliver the high-quality homes Londoners need. I look forward to continuing working with the government to build a better, fairer and more prosperous London for everyone.”
OnLondon.co.uk provides unique coverage of the capital’s politics, development and culture. Support it for just £5 a month or £50 a year and get things for your money too. Details HERE. Follow Charles Wright on X/Twitter.
Last autumn, Nicky Gavron, less than a year before her peaceful death at her home last week, aged 82, received a little more of the recognition for her service to London she deserved. A Pink Plaque in her honour, celebrating her as a remarkable woman with close ties to Highgate, was unveiled at the Jackson’s Lane Arts Centre on Archway Road.
It was the perfect location for overdue credit to be given, the place where it all began. Gavron co-founded the arts centre in 1975. At the ceremony, she described having seen a group of teenage boys disrupting a playgroup for under-11s and being inspired to get together with a like-minded locals to provide facilities for older children.
This initiative, not her only community project as a young woman, took place at a time when radical plans for widening the A1 Archway Road were being developed. Gavron, born in 1941, was in her early-thirties at that time and had, since 1967, been married to Bob Gavron, barrister, widower and Labour-sympathising publishing tycoon. His second wife, born Felicia Nicolette Coates, was the daughter of a Jewish Berliner woman who had fled Nazi Germany in 1936, arriving in the safe haven of London aged 17.
The future Nicky Gavron grew up in Worcester, where her family took in lodgers from the local Metal Box factory. She had moved to London to study history of art and architecture at the Courtauld Institute and gone on to become a lecturer at Camberwell School of Art. Now, the erstwhile Ms Coates, already known as Nicky, became involved in political activity for the first time.
By then, she had four children in her care: two boys from Bob’s previous marriage, Simon and Jeremy, and the two daughters they had had together, Jessica and Sarah. The plans for Archway Road reached a point where a three-lane dual carriageway became a possibility, together with a flyover at Shepherd’s Hill, the demolition of more than 100 homes and the felling of part of Highgate Wood. “It was in the days when everyone thought road widening was the answer,” Gavron would remember. “But the penny dropped for me that it was part of the problem.”
After a long, gruelling and sometimes ugly war of attrition the “motorway” plan was dropped. The tide against it was strengthened from 1981, when Labour won control of the Greater London Council (GLC). Its leadership was assumed by Ken Livingstone following a controversial post-victory Labour group internal election. The then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, not an admirer of “Red Ken”, completed the abolition of the GLC in 1986, an act Gavron had campaigned against and regarded as stupid and vindictive. “I set out in my mind to do everything to see London government restored,” she would later say.
That May, Gavron, got elected to Haringey Council, topping the poll in Archway ward where Conservatives had previously held all the seats. She repeated the feat four years later, she and Bob having divorced in the meantime, with Tories finishing second and third – a clear sign of a personal vote giving her an edge. She did it again in 1994, and was re-elected once more in 1998, by which time Labour was back in power nationally under Tony Blair and the restoration of a Londonwide tier of government was on its way in the form of the Greater London Authority (GLA).
During her time at Haringey Gavron chaired the planning committee, and became friends with Tony Cumberbirch, a former GLC planning officer who had moved on to the north London borough. It was the start of a long-term close collaboration in pursuit of common goals, including, from the start, maintaining and evolving a strategic planning approach for the capital and the wider south east.
Gavron became a member and, from 1994, chaired the London Planning Advisory Committee (LPAC), a body created by Parliament that brought together borough representatives from different political parties and planning experts, with input from London business and links with authorities neighbouring Greater London.
Her friend Richard Derecki, a former Number 10 and GLA staff member with whom she had been sorting out her extensive archive in her later years, describes the LPAC as compiling “detailed action plans for how London could emerge from the deindustrialisation of the 1970s and 1980s to take its place on the global stage as the pre-eminent World City”. Gavron, he says, was particularly proud of its work on affordable housing, transport and the built environment. Already, she had a keen appreciation of how all these elements and more needed to complement each other and work together if a better city was to emerge on the ground. Some attribute the very term “joined-up thinking” to her.
In 2000, she became one of the first intake of members of the London Assembly (AMs), the elected body that scrutinises the London Mayor, winning the Enfield & Haringey constituency seat. Livingstone had been elected Mayor, once again securing the top job in London government by unorthodox means, running and winning as an Independent having been thwarted in his bid to become Labour’s candidate.
Required to appoint a statutory deputy from among the 25 AMs, he chose Gavron, who he had known since the Archway Road campaign. In his memoirs, Livingstone says she possessed “the enthusiasm and imagination” he was looking for and was “full of ideas” for London’s future.
The LPAC’s final report and its personnel formed the bedrock of planning policy at the nascent GLA, as the new institution found its feet. Derecki considering the LPAC to have “laid the groundwork” for much that happened under Livingstone, including his defining early innovation, the introduction of the Congestion Charge in 2003.
Soon, Gavron, was taking the lead with drawing up City Hall’s first ever spatial development strategy document, better known as The London Plan, a clear, self-descriptive title Cumberbirch says he and Gavron persuaded Livingstone to adopt. The finished document was both practical, conforming, as it had to, with national planning policy, yet also bold in its breadth and depth of vision. In Labour terms, Gavron was a moderate with radical ideas.
She was often a staunch ally of the Independent Mayor, praising his “good sense and steadiness of purpose” in an article for Labour journal Tribune in May 2002. There were, though, ups and downs. Like Livingstone, Gavron was clever, determined and extremely hard-working, and although, unlike him, never abrasive, she was not afraid to argue with him. “They worked well together, but she often infuriated Ken,” says Cumberbirch. The feeling could be mutual. For example, Gavron disagreed with the Mayor’s doomed attempt to use the courts to block the Blair government’s public-private partnership approach to funding London Underground upgrades.
There were other relationship complications. Later in 2002, with Livingstone still serving a five-year ban from Labour, Gavron was selected as her party’s candidate for the May 2004 City Hall race, becoming her boss’s rival for his job. According to Livingstone’s memoirs, she had been encouraged to seek the nomination by another senior member of his team in the hope that she would defeat another contender to be Labour’s candidate, the London MP Tony Banks, who was thought to pose a bigger threat.
Then, in June 2003, Livingstone replaced Gavron as his statutory deputy. He had originally intended to rotate the role between the different party groups on a yearly basis, but that hadn’t worked out. And when after three years he gave her job to the Green Party’s Jenny Jones, Gavron publicly accused him of doing so only to court the second preferences votes of Green supporters (note that the Evening Standard article reporting this has been archived with the wrong date).
Whatever the background machinations, it seems that Gavron concluded that the all-round best outcome would be Livingstone, not her, running for Labour in 2004, clearing the path for him to clinch a second term. Quoted in Andrew Hosken’s fine 2008 biography of Livingstone, she revealed that in November 2003 she had, unknown to the Mayor, been to see Blair to argue that Livingstone should be readmitted to Labour. Livingstone, by then working with the Blair government to bid for the 2012 Olympics – something Gavron, unlike the Greens, supported – was let back into the fold soon afterwards. With Gavron as his running mate, he went on to win the mayoralty again and gave Gavron, re-elected to the Assembly as a Londonwide AM, her old job back.
Livingstone’s second term brought further tricky situations for Gavron. His difficult relationship with Jewish London, ranging from avoidably fractious to recklessly offensive, placed her in unenviable positions. Among the flood of tributes paid to her since her death, that of Andrew Gilbert, a stalwart of the Jewish Labour Movement and the London Jewish Forum, stands out. “During the Ken years, she was often the one to whom we turned,” he wrote.
In 2008, Livingstone was deprived of a third mayoral term by Boris Johnson, but Gavron, although defeated in the Barnet & Camden constituency, retained a Londonwide seat on the Assembly, as she did in 2012, when Johnson won again, and in 2016, when Sadiq Khan claimed his first mayoral triumph. After learning of her death, the current Mayor described her as “not just a kind and generous friend, but also a teacher and a mentor,” praised her commitment to tackling climate change, and rightly credited her with having “pioneered many of the policies that have led London to be the world leader it is today”.
Nicky Gavron was exceptional in many ways – a mould-breaker, a bridge-builder, a forward-thinker and, in Cumberbirch’s words, “much more interested in influence than power”. She was a woman in a working environment where men predominated. Her wide range of interests included psychotherapy, which she had trained in and, for a while, considered pursuing as a career. This helped to make her a good listener and skilled at bringing different interest groups together – a valuable asset when the power to convene is among the greatest a Mayor of London. She introduced Livingstone to Richards Rogers, who became effectively his city architect.
Cumberbirch recalls her chairing a meeting at which public and private sector interests were represented, a gathering she introduced as one of “the great and good”. Cheekily invited to define which of those categories she belonging in, she replied: “I am the ‘and’.” She was a natural unifier, her voice kind and feathery, her style in argument, gently insistent. Her manner was light, but she was never to be taken lightly.
She had tremendous energy. Even before she became Livingstone’s deputy she seemed to be involved in everything, from the Commission for Integrated Transport to the London Arts Board, once attracting the snarky attention of the Guardian, which dubbed her the Quango Queen and had a dig about her personal wealth. Her second term accomplishments as deputy Mayor included helping to set up the C-40 Cities group, the global network of nearly 100 city Mayors that works to address the climate crisis and which Khan currently chairs.
Going back, a friend remembers her championing a transport concept she dubbed “orbirail” and persisting in promoting it, even to the point where some rolled their eyes. But when the London Overground took shape from 2007, providing high quality rail travel between suburban stations, thereby helping the city become more “polycentric” – another Gavron goal – the idea didn’t seem marginal any more.
While Johnson was Mayor, Gavron remained influential, bringing her interlocking knowledge and experience of housing, regeneration, planning and the environment to Assembly committee work. As recently as last year she was vice-chair of the London Rewilding Taskforce. Yet for all her huge contribution to London government, she was never included on a UK honours list – perhaps because, by all accounts, such things never much interested her.
Recognition has come instead from colleagues and peers. Prior to the Pink Plaque, in November 2022, she received an award from New London Architecture, which named her its New Londoner of the Year – not because she was new to London, but because of the part she had played in renewing it.
In her acceptance speech, Gavron said that her mother had been chosen to dance as part of a troupe of girls in front of Adolf Hitler at the 1936 Olympics. That was before it was discovered that she was Jewish, after which “her whole life changed”, causing her to seek refuge in the capital. Gavron added that her mother had instilled in her that London had been her place of escape, and she described how, after moving to the city herself, she never wanted to leave. Harking back to London 2012, she praised the capital as “the world in one city” but warned that, although “we are still open” we would have to fight to keep it so.
Tributes to her have been generous and have come from many quarters. Conservative AM Andrew Boff, who currently also chairs the Assembly, was full of admiration, describing her as “strong enough to fight for what she believed in and brave enough to change her mind when the evidence demanded it”.
Liberal Democrat Caroline Pidgeon, another long-time fellow Assembly member, recalled “a wonderful chat” with her only a month before her death, “reminiscing about City Hall and our work together”. Sian Berry, an MP since 4 July, but previously a prominent Green Party AM, said “she knew more than anyone about planning and was always so kind to everyone,” adding that she was also “a titan of Highgate community action”.
Labour colleague Anne Clarke, AM for Barnet & Camden, described her as “an excellent friend, storyteller and passionate campaigner”. Assembly Labour group leader Len Duvall said she had “devoted her life to public service in London”. Foreign Secretary David Lammy, MP for Tottenham and a former AM, praised her as “a stalwart of London and Haringey politics” and as “a life force at City Hall”. And another former London AM colleague, Tom Copley, now Mayor Khan’s Deputy Mayor for Housing, has provided these thoughts:
“Nicky is someone who has helped shape the London we know today, not least as one of the architects of the first London Plan. Why, for example, must new housing developments in London include children’s play space? That’s Nicky.
While many politicians yearn to make the leap into national politics, Nicky understood very clearly the value and power of devolved pan-London government, and because of this she always wanted to be at the heart of City Hall. But she also had global reach and influence, respected around the world for her work on urban planning, climate change and environmental policy.
Nicky had a formidable combination of qualities, starting with the values that drove her which were shaped by her own experiences. When she wanted to change something, she’d throw everything at it, and she always had a forensic command of the policy detail. She was charming, kind, thoughtful and took a keen interest in other people. Her legacy can be seen throughout our capital city, in our policies and in our built environment. But above all, Nicky was a friend and a mentor and I will miss her terribly.”
***
After she left the London Assembly, I asked Nicky if she would like to do an in-depth interview with me about her time at City Hall. I told her, partly inspired by Tom Copley’s admiration for her good works, that all her knowledge and experience ought to be more widely shared. She didn’t turn me down, but explained that she was very, very busy with all sorts of other things, including writing a book with Richard Derecki about the LPAC years, and could I ask her again in a few months’ time?
I never managed to make that date. But I continued to bump into her at conferences and events. Her eyesight had been failing for some years, and its deterioration had reached a stage where it was difficult for her to read emails or engage through virtual forums. Nothing, though, stopped her from taking part. Last December, by then quite unable to see, she attended the On London Christmas Party and End of Year Review, making her way to and from the venue on the Olympic Park all on her own.
I last saw her on 1 August at a social gathering in Soho, attended by an array of luminaries from the world of London politics, planning and development. When she arrived with her daughter Sarah she looked terribly frail, and when we sat side-by-side to talk her voice was faint. But having mentioned, almost in passing, one or two new recent ailments, she went on to convey, with characteristic confiding earnestness, her considered views about Angela Rayner’s planning reform proposals and a particular dimension she feared they lacked.
Later, as I left, I found her sitting in a chair next to the restaurant entrance, waiting while Sarah located a black cab. She couldn’t see London life passing by outside, but she could hear and no doubt feel it. It is easy and rather nice to imagine that she filled in the time thinking about how the pavements might be made more hospitable, or the streetscape greened, or the road management improved. What I now know for sure is that it was our last goodbye. A lot of people are going to miss her.
OnLondon.co.uk provides unique coverage of the capital’s politics, development and culture. Support it for just £5 a month or £50 a year and get things for your money too. Details HERE. Follow Dave Hill on Bluesky. This piece was updated with a few extra facts and links on 4 September 2024.
One of Labour’s new influx of London MPs has asked the government to give local authorities “new powers” to regulate the antisocial misuse of rented e-bikes and e-scooters, in ways appropriate for their areas.
In a letter to local Simon Lightwood, parliamentary under-secretary of state for transport, Rachel Blake, who gained the Cities of London & Westminster seat from the Conservatives in July, underlines the “extensive and well-known” problems with the hire vehicles, describing these as “frequently parked irresponsibly, blocking pavements and roads, which is hazardous for pedestrians and particularly for those with mobility challenges”.
Blake emphasises that such issues are “particularly acute” in busy areas like central London. She adds: “I believe that Local Authorities should have the powers to fine riders who park in a hazardous way and to fine the companies who fail to remove hazards.”
Although noting that the renting of e-scooters is undergoing a Transport for London trial period in more than half of London’s boroughs as part of a nationwide scheme, Blake points out that this is not expected to end until 2026. “Local authorities need powers to enforce in areas where there are problems now,” Blake writes. “We can’t wait.” The use of private e-scooters on public streets, though commonly seen in London, is illegal.
Highlighting her letter on X/Twitter, Blake says she is pleased to be working on addressing the problems with, among others, senior Westminster councillor Paul Dimoldenberg, who has been at the forefront of the Labour-run council’s attempts to get to grips with it in his capacity as cabinet member for city management and air quality.
Westminster announced in May 2023, one year after Labour won control of the prestigious local authority for the first time in its history, that it would be looking to instal parking bays where e-bike hirers could leave their bikes which, unlike TfL’s Santander-sponsored cycle hire scheme, do not have to be returned to a dock. It had previously instructed council officers to seize e-bikes left blocking pavements.
Over 300 parking bays have now been designated by council, which has said its voluntary agreement with e-bike suppliers Lime, Tier and Forest to encourage customers to use them is working well, but it said in January, when the Conservatives were still in national government, that new legislation was the “missing link” that needed to be supplied if e-bike use was to be properly controlled.
OnLondon.co.uk provides unique coverage of the capital’s politics, development and culture. Support it for just £5 a month or £50 a year and get things for your money too. Details HERE. Follow Dave Hill on Bluesky. Photograph from Westminster Labour.
The street connecting the West End and the City has for centuries been a home of theatre, grand architecture, Danes, Anglo-Saxons and many revered institutions
Leave Embankment station, step on to the pavement by the Golden Jubilee Bridge and cast your mind back 2,000 years. The Thames was wider then. You would have been at its edge, maybe with wet feet.
Turn left into Victoria Embankment Gardens, created in 1874 soon after Sir Joseph Bazalegette built the Embankment itself. They bloom with tulips in spring. Walk through, then head east on Watergate Walk, bisecting the al fresco tables of Gordon’s Wine Bar, which claims to be London’s oldest. At the end, head north through the slabbed walkway George Court and, after passing the LGBTQ+ Retro Bar, climb steps and emerge on one of London’s most world famous streets.
Strand, if we’re being official, the Strand if we’re calling it what everyone calls it, once formed part of the Roman route between Londinium and Silchester. Today’s name derives from “strond”, the Old English word for beach or shore.
A “strondway” appears in records from the year 1002, by which time Vikings and Anglo-Saxons vied for the territory. It was later called “Stronde” and “la Stranda”. During the 13th century, part of it was named “Densemanestret” because of all the local Danes.
Standing on its central pedestrian refuge strip, look east, admire the ornate lampposts and contemplate the Strand’s role in linking the capital’s financial and political cores, the City and Westminster, for hundreds of years. Forming the southern boundary of Covent Garden, it’s also long been an avenue of entertainment and more. Ahead, landmarks await.
At 409-412 Strand stands the art deco Adelphi theatre, bought by Andrew Lloyd Webber’s company in 1993. Three different playhouses previously stood on the site. The first opened in 1806 as Sans Pareil (“without compare”) but was soon renamed after the Adelphi Buildings, a block of grand terraced houses across the road that stretched down to the river.
They were developed by the Adam siblings from Scotland – Robert, John and James (“Adelphi” is the Greek word for brothers). The houses were replaced in the 1930s by the imposing Adelphi office building, these days home to the Economist magazine. The brothers are also honoured by the streets that bound the site – John Adam Street, Adam Street and Robert Street.
There’s another theatre at 404 Strand on the same side as the Adelphi – the Vaudeville, dating from 1870. Almost next door to it at 399, Stanley Gibbons, the home of postage stamp collecting, has had its headquarters for more than a century.
Nearly opposite stands Eighty Strand, also known as Shell Mex House after the oil business based there until the 1990s. Opened in 1932, its most famous feature faces the other way – a giant clock, apparently once known as “Ben Benzene”, that looks out across the Thames.
Next door is the Savoy Hotel, the last word in luxury but historically an add-on to the Savoy theatre, opened in 1881, where impresario Richard D’Oyly Carte put on the comic operas of W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan. A plaque on Carting Lane records that the theatre was “the first public building in the world to be lit throughout by electricity”. Nearby, find a further example of Victorian enlightenment – London’s last surviving sewer-powered gas lamp.
Funded by the theatre’s proceeds, the hotel, designed by Thomas Edward Collcutt, admitted its first guests in 1889. Others have included luminaries of the arts and entertainment, ranging from Claude Monet to Judy Garland, to Australian opera singer Nellie Melba, who inspired a dessert, to Bob Dylan, whose famous film for Subterranean Homesick Blues was shot on the Savoy Steps alley to the rear.
Head down Savoy Hill, swing left into Savoy Place and meet a statue of Michael Faraday outside the Institute of Electrical Engineers. You are now close to Waterloo Bridge. A decision by music hall performer Harry Castling and composer Charles William Murphy not to cross it but to instead “go down the Strand” inspired their famous song about the street, first performed in the 1890s and popular long after.
Apparently, the pair had just left the Lyceum, a theatre with origins in the 1760s and by that time grandly rebuilt following a fire. Soon after, in 1904, it was rendered still more lavish. Yet it narrowly escaped post-war demolition before becoming a rock music venue, closing again in 1986 and being revived ten years later to ravishingly endure at the Wellington Street-Strand junction.
Continuing east, enter Aldwych, meaning “old port”, the core of 7th century Anglo-Saxon Lundenwic. Here, the Strand has been transformed by pedestrianisation, a project finished late in 2022.
To the left, the Grade II listed Bush House dominates. Once the base of the BBC World Service and the Inland Revenue, it now forms part of the King’s College Strand campus. To the right, there’s more of King’s and and there’s Somerset House, a cultural complex that has just survived a fire whose contents include the Courtauld art gallery, with its impressionist treasures, and the last substantial remnants of an earlier Strand era.
Once, the Strand’s entire south side length was lined with the mansions of bishops and aristocrats, living a short commute by boat from the courts of the Tudors and the wealth of the Square Mile. Somerset House was the home of Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset and brother-in-law of Henry VIII.
Pedestrianisation has rescued two English baroque churches from roundabouts. St Clement Danes, of 9th century descent, possibly founded by Danes, took its current form in 1682 thanks to Christopher Wren. Its bells may or may not be those mentioned in the nursery rhyme Oranges and Lemons. The statues outside of wartime chiefs Dowding and Harris indicate its latter day link with the Royal Air Force.
Further on, at the Strand’s eastern end, St Mary le Strand was controversial with some when completed by James Gibbs in 1717 but its lavish interior is now revered. Just beyond St Mary’s stand the Royal Courts of Justice. And soon the Strand meets Westminster’s border with the City and becomes Fleet Street instead.
Much more could written, not least of the Strand’s cast of distinguished ghosts, such as John Chapman who published the radical Westminster Review from there, such as the Aldwych ghost station and such as the India Club, which closed its doors and restaurant only last year having barely changed since it was founded in 1951.
The tides of London history continue flowing through the Strand. After all, it did used to be a beach.
OnLondon.co.uk provides unique coverage of the capital’s politics, development and culture. Support it for just £5 a month or £50 a year and get things for your money too. Details HERE.
