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Josh Neicho: The Southbank Centre’s Covid troubles are raising larger questions about its future

From its programmes, to its relationships with those around it to its attitude to staff, the great cultural institution is facing searching criticism
Joshua Neicho

Covid-19 has emptied London’s South Bank of visitors, ravaged its economy, devastated the programmes of its landmark arts venues and, in the process, unleashed a storm about how the crisis has been dealt with in this key part of the capital’s cultural landscape and what form its recovery should take.

The first day of this month saw a stark illustration of how fraught things have become when a protest took place following the news that nearly 400 of the 577 staff of the Southbank Centre, comprising the Royal Festival Hall, the Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Purcell Room and the Hayward Gallery, could lose their jobs.

The Southbank announced back in May that it is “at risk of closure until at least April 2021” due to the virus, saying that opening at only 30 per cent capacity would be more financially damaging than remaining shuttered. It said this extended closure would mean it would lose £5 million this year at best, even taking into account its financial reserves, its Arts Council grant and the government’s furlough scheme. Only the Hayward has since re-opened, with Covid limitations. With none of its venues likely to fully recover for some time to come, the Southbank’s management has clearly concluded that large-scale redundancies are unavoidable.

But at the protest, Gareth Spencer, a Southbank employee and its organiser for Public and Commercial Services union, said he was “aghast” at the job cuts decision when industrial relations have been good for the past 30 years. Other staff members echoed this dismay over the management’s approach, which entails the Southbank paying less than its usual redundancy terms. “There’s lots of loyalty. There are people who have worked for the Southbank for years,” said one.

Some asked whether further pay cuts by senior management or bailouts by government or philanthropists might be sought to limit job losses. One of the protesters thought laying people off now only to re-employ them at later dates as the Centre reopens seemed needlessly expensive and wondered why the government couldn’t extend furlough for the hard-hit creative sector. Another feels the skills of front-of-house staff are under-valued: “We’re the PR of the organisation”. Staff from the neighbouring National Theatre and the nearby Tate, where hundreds of redundancies have already been announced, joined the protests.

The situation has opened up wider arguments about the running of the Southbank, especially in the two years since the departure of Jude Kelly as the centre’s overall artistic director and the lack of a successor in that exact role. Spencer says what he calls the management’s “mothball and hibernate” response to Covid’s impacts shows a lack of imagination in keeping with its commercial outlook. He’s concerned about what plans to close Royal Festival Hall for two days a week even after next April will mean for the classes, clubs and other cultural activities that take place in its foyer.

An open letter signed by over 7,000 Southbank Centre “current and former employees and allies”, headed “Southbank SOS”, described the possible redundancies as “brutal”, with especially grim implications for “people from BAME backgrounds and people with disabilities” (BAME employees are underrepresented by comparison with the population of Lambeth and of London as a whole). The letter went on to accuse the board of focusing on finance at the expense of the artistic programme. The response to the coronavirus is characterised as “the culmination of an approach that has left the organisation bereft of creative vision and leadership at the very top”.

A similar argument is made by others, reinforced by reports that the Southbank plans to devote only 10 per cent of its 2021/22 schedule to its own, in-house, productions and 90 per cent to those of others, known as “rentals”. Former Barbican MD Sir John Tusa condemns the shift as “a bad, bad day”. He believes that since 1986, when the Southbank began creating its own work, it has gone from being a hall for hire with “no identity” to adopting a taking a proper arts centre ethos, “innovating and driving, not just showing”.

In its defence, the Southbank says this means “opening up spaces to our resident orchestras, associates and other artists for 90 per cent of our programmed artist activity” and that it expects the proportion of its own productions to rise to 20 per cent in 2022/23. Vladimir Jurowski, conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra which is resident at the Centre is confident that the changes will be “almost unnoticeable to general audiences”.

The Southbank also points out that maintenance of its 11-acre site must come from its commercial and fundraising revenues, and that loans it took out to cover major building refurbishments have exacerbated the impact of the pandemic. It adds that it has planned outdoor and Behind Closed Doors streamed events in the autumn, the latter funded by donations and hall hire and therefore incurring no cost. “We want nothing more than to be able to open our doors again as soon as possible” it says.

From a different perspective, music critic and broadcaster Norman Lebrecht says the Southbank’s recent history as a “sub-quango” has been a “long-running saga of mismanagement at every level”, with “an awful lot of time-servers there”. He says he sees no reason why the Hayward Gallery should be under public management “and one could say the same for almost every part of the Southbank”.

Others look on it more kindly. Its 3,500 events a year in normal times – spanning every genre of music, cabaret, film and literature and multi-arts festivals – provide huge variety and also make it “like an untameable beast” which “has its ups and downs,” according to artist Adam Dant. Music journalist and novelist Jessica Duchen describes it as combining “the best location of pretty much any arts centre in the world with the exception of Sydney Opera House,” with its “masses and masses of education work”. Vauxhall MP Florence Eshalomi sees it in similar terms: while identifying its future vitality as a matter for “the whole of the UK and the world” she picks out the annual Lambeth music festival and the pride of parents seeing their kids on stage.

The Southbank’s worthiness and embrace of diversity make it a lightning rod for criticism, both from zealous guardians of classical music and campaigners who believe it is failing to live up to its own standards. Now, unions say there’s been no improvement in the redundancy offer and that they are taking soundings about a statutory strike ballot. Any strikes would be targeted at the Hayward and the streamed events.

But setting aside how it has dealt with them, many of the Southbank Centre’s current problems have been beyond its control. “Until we have full audiences, we can’t have normal concerts,” says Duchen. “The reason concert halls in Germany, Austria and Switzerland have been able to reassemble, is that they get a lot more of their income from government support. Ours need the ticketing income”.

Another part of the challenge is bringing life back to the normally-teeming wider South Bank area. Michael Ball of the Waterloo Community Development Group thinks the Centre could be more ambitious with outdoor performances. He mentions channelling the medieval mystery plays which the National Theatre put on in 1977, or getting the Royal Festival Hall-headquartered National Poetry Library to hold a poetry declamation competition, or arranging top classical musicians to take pitches near the centre, pretending they are buskers and performing virtuoso slots. Why not allow local schools to use its spaces for teaching with appropriate social distancing, he suggests, as the Park Plaza Waterloo hotel has already done for the nearby Oasis Academy?

More broadly, Nic Durston, chief executive of the South Bank Business Improvement District says that through a partnership with landowners, residents and politicians, his organisation has helped form a “very meaningful response” to the pandemic, with programmes of work that include engaging with Waterloo station retailers and the area’s corporates about back-to-work plans, and supporting the Old Vic around the challenges of mounting a Covid-compliant play. Michael Ball thinks the neighbourhood’s strong tradition of business and community co-operation through a variety of forums had achieved a “unique” harmoniousness in recent years, but said relationships have been strained by the virus.

With so much latent creativity and innovative thinking in SE1, and with protest heavy in the air, who knows what might soon appear on the South Bank’s programme?

OnLondon.co.uk exists to provide fair, thorough and resolutely anti-populist news, comment and analysis about the UK’s capital city. It depends heavily on donations from readers. Give £5 a month or £50 a year and you will receive the On London Extra Thursday email, which rounds up news, views and information about London from a wide range of sources. Click here to donate via Donorbox or contact davehillonlondon@gmail.com. Thanks.

Categories: Analysis
Tags: Hayward Gallery, Jude Kelly, Michael Ball, National Theatre, Nic Durston, Purcell Room, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Royal Festival Hall, South Bank, Southbank Centre, theatre

West End business district calls for ‘London-specific messaging’ to boost recovery

A group representing Piccadilly and Leicester Square areas says backing key Central London areas can help restore footfall
Dave Hill

What difference has been made in Central London by the government’s encouraging people to return to places of work at the start of this month?

The Heart of London Business Alliance, which speaks for around 500 businesses and 100 property owners in the Leicester Square and Piccadilly Circus and Piccadilly and St James’s areas, has released figures indicating a significant increase in visitors to those parts of the West End. Year-on-year footfall remains dramatically down, by 65 per cent. But a 10 per cent increase since the new guidance came into effect may suggest that a further revival of economic activity can be maximised, given the right encouragement.

Chief executive Ros Morgan says the rise in numbers of people in the area “enabled almost 100 shops to open last week” with the greatest benefits being felt in Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Square and in between. Why? Morgan says parts of the Alliance’s territory predominantly used by shoppers, such as the men’s tailoring destination Jermyn Street, have seen less of an improvement than those with more varied uses and visitors.

Footfall figures for the week commencing 3 August show a week-on-week rise of 11 per cent in the Square and the Circus, but only a three per cent jump in Jermyn Street and none at all on Piccadilly, where footfall is 71 per cent down on what it was this time last year. To build on recovery progress so far, Morgan is asking the government for “more encouragement for theatres and other cultural institutions to be able to open in a safe and viable way”.

She adds: “It’s easy to overlook the inter-connectedness of the whole Central London ecosystem, with a number of businesses reliant on these institutions to draw people in. Spending time in London involves a rich variety of experiences with many people who work in central London then spending the evening unwinding in the West End.”

Morgan also urges “strong, aligned leadership” from both the government and the Mayor in communicating that public transport is safe to use and encouraging people to do so, bearing in mind the continuing strict limits on capacity and the resulting desirability of travelling outside peak hours where possible.

“We are keen to see the introduction of London-specific messaging, highlighting the excellent measures that Transport for London is taking to ensure the system’s safety, resilience and readiness for mass passenger numbers,” she said. “Yes, the promotion of other modes of transport such as walking and cycling routes are important but public transport is key to getting people into the city centre from outside Zones 1 and 2.”

Yesterday, Sadiq Khan wrote to Boris Johnson – supported by another Central London business group, the New West End Company, and others – with eight proposals for helping the West End, which generates a substantial share of overall UK economic output. Measures he proposed include an extension of the current business rates holiday, financial aid for hospitality, retail and cultural businesses and more support for employees and the self-employed.

OnLondon.co.uk exists to provide fair, thorough and resolutely anti-populist news, comment and analysis about the UK’s capital city. It depends heavily on donations from readers. Give £5 a month or £50 a year and you will receive the On London Extra Thursday email, which rounds up news, views and information about London from a wide range of sources. Click here to donate via Donorbox or contact davehillonlondon@gmail.com. Thanks.

 

 

Categories: News
Tags: buses, Heart of London Business Alliance, Jermyn Street, Leicester Square, London Underground, Piccadilly, Piccadilly Circus, public transport, rail transport, St James's, West End

Vic Keegan’s Lost London 156: Montagu House – original home of the British Museum

The institution soon outgrew it, yet it was the foundation of a wonder of the world
Victor Keegan

The picture is of the British Museum. Not the one we know today, but its pioneering predecessor, Montagu House, which, for nearly 100 years, housed the amazing collections which three benefactors – Sir Hans Sloane, Sir Robert Cotton and the Earl of Oxford – gathered from around the world, creating a history of the planet in thousands of artefacts. 

From its inception in 1753 the British Museum was dedicated to providing free access “to all studious and curious”, though as late as 1836 the principal librarian defended closure of the museum at weekends “to keep out the more vulgar class, such as sailors from the dockyards and girls whom they might bring with them”. 

By a distance the grandest mansion in London of its time, Montagu House was sold by the second Duke of Montagu after he had moved to Whitehall. It was built on the site of an earlier Montagu House designed in 1675 by the polymath Robert Hooke who, when he wasn’t arguing with Isaac Newton about the inverse square law, was mainly responsible for the design of the Monument and the Bedlam mental hospital. 

Opened to the public in 1759, it was situated Great Russell Street in exactly the same place as today’s British Museum, only a few hundred yards from the house of Sloane, the most important of the three benefactors. His house was already a museum, albeit not open to the public, showcasing most of his collection of 70,000 books and manuscripts, not to mention an even bigger number of objects and plants from his herbarium. The other two founding benefactions came from Cotton’s priceless mediaeval manuscripts (including the only copy of  Beowulf), plus tens of thousands of books and manuscripts owned by the Earl.

The directors of the museum, meeting at the former Cockpit in Whitehall in the year the museum opened, turned down a number of alternative venues. These included what is now Buckingham Palace – too expensive at £30,000 and, would you believe it, considered to be in an inconvenient location – in favour of what was then a little-known mansion in Bloomsbury. 

Neither the government nor the king, George II, was keen on the idea of such a museum. It only happened because Parliament – and all credit to it – took the matter into its own hands and passed a law in order to create it, which the reluctant George assented to. The museum quickly outgrew its original home. It was augmented with new buildings, and by 1845 the Montagu House part had been completely demolished. But the museum went on to become one of the wonders of the modern world, attracting over six million visitors a year to make it one of the top five museums on the planet in terms of visitors.

One of its lesser known features is that it actually contains remains of the original seven wonders of the world, including impressive parts of the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, the Temple of Artemis and a tiny bit of the Pyramids. If you believe recent research that the Hanging Gardens of Babylon were actually at Nineveh, that makes a fourth. 

The origins of the British Museum also have a dark side, one that is slowly coming to light as Britain starts to come to terms with the consequences of the hideous slave trade. Sir Hans Sloane himself had first hand knowledge of slavery. In 1687 he sailed for Jamaica as physician to the colony’s new Governor, the Duke of Albemarle and acted as surgeon in the plantations. 

In 1695 he married Elizabeth Rose, widow of slave owner Fulke Rose, whose plantations brought substantial wealth, which greatly helped to finance Sloane’s acquisitions. That is a different avenue of Lost London that we will be hearing a lot more about in future.

All previous instalments of Vic Keegan’s Lost London can be found here.

OnLondon.co.uk exists to provide fair, thorough, and resolutely anti-populist news, comment and analysis about the UK’s capital city. It now depends more than ever on donations from readers. Give £5 a month or £50 a year and you will receive the On London Extra Thursday email, which rounds up London news, views and information from a wide range of sources. Click here to donate via Donorbox or contact davehillonlondon@gmail.com. Thanks.

Categories: Culture, Lost London
Tags: Bloomsbury, British Museum, Great Russell Street

Charles Wright: How Covid-safe is the London Underground?

A great deal rides on the answer
Charles Wright

Everyone’s now desperate to get the capital’s workforce back onto the Tube and into the office, it seems – except the workforce itself.

The Prime Minister, the Chancellor with his “get back to the office to help recovery” message, business leaders, the Lord Mayor and Sadiq Khan too, are increasingly speaking with one voice. “Getting businesses and venues thriving in Central London once again should now be an urgent priority,” Mayor Khan said this week.

It’s an important, if obvious, recognition of the need to boost recovery in London, which is responsible for a quarter of UK growth, generates 10 per cent of national economic output in the “central activities zone” of the metropolis alone, boosting the economy outside the capital and contributing significantly to the Chancellor’s coffers.

The reality though, as the capital’s finance and business daily City A.M. has pointed out, is that London’s professional districts remain “eerily and worryingly quiet”, in contrast to those of other European cities. Just 30 per cent of London workers are back at their desks full time, with nearly half the city’s office staff working from home five days a week compared to 20 to 30 per cent in Paris, Frankfurt, Milan and Madrid.

Public transport, supporting the city’s and the wider economy, mass tourism and the consumer, commercial, cultural, academic and technological concentrations which drive the capital, is at the heart of the issue. And commuters aren’t convinced the network, particularly the Underground, is safe.

Around a third of Londoners remain uneasy about using public transport, with the capital’s travellers less reassured than those elsewhere by safety measures, cleaning and passenger behaviour, including face-covering, according to London TravelWatch research, while more than nine out of 10 companies surveyed by the business organisation London First cited concern over using public transport as the major barrier to staff returning to the office.

“Londoners are going to need a lot of reassurance before they get back on the Tube and start using buses again in much greater numbers,” said TravelWatch director Emma Gibson. Anecdotal evidence reinforces this. A recent Bloomberg piece on commuting elicited an immediate comment thread response: “Using the Tube in London to get to work seems pretty dangerous without the vaccine…”

Early government messaging – stay home, avoid public transport wherever possible – may have been almost too good, fuelling concern that the Tube was somehow intrinsically unsafe. That’s been noted in the US too, particularly by former New York transport commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan who has highlighted claims that “subways themselves were seeding disease” – playing to “long-standing fears of urban spaces” not backed up by evidence.

Recent findings indeed suggest that public transport may not be as risky as many think, with studies in France and Japan, summarised here, effectively finding no clusters of Covid cases associated with public transit use, even as lockdowns eased and passenger numbers started to rise, generally to levels higher than in London.

Findings in Austria have been similar, while contact tracing in Paris specifically between early May and mid-July also failed to find links between 386 clusters of infection identified and the metro or buses. Sadik-Khan also cites the example of Hong Kong, with a relatively low number of cases but public transit use maintained at a relatively high level, to suggest that transit is not “inherently harmful”.

Detailed work by the University of Southampton, looking at infection spread on China’s high-speed trains, found an infection rate of around 0.32 per cent among people sitting within three rows of an infected person, with the rate increasing for every hour travelled, and with proximity. But the risk remained low compared to infection in the home or in other indoor settings, such as the church events and choir practices in the US, which saw infection rates between 38 and 53 per cent.

UK research is relatively thin on the ground, with a 2018 modelling study headed by Dr Lara Gosce at University College increasingly cited in recent months. It shows a correlation between use of the Tube and the spread of influenza-like illnesses, specifically highlighting higher numbers of cases in boroughs where residents are on the Tube more and change lines more frequently, therefore coming into contact with more people, compared to boroughs with more limited Underground use and more direct trips.

The study nevertheless cautions that “correlation…does not prove causation”. With a large-scale epidemic “many contributing factors need to be taken into account”, it concludes, advising that further research is needed to “explicitly quantify the role of public transport in infectious disease transmission”.

The government’s scientific advisory body SAGE took a similarly cautious view in May, reporting that while the “overall weight” of evidence is towards increased risk of infection among public transport users, contract tracing suggested transmission “only in cases of long exposure”, with risk factors consistent with risk in other indoor settings – including “proximity to the source and duration of exposure”.

Overall, SAGE concluded: “There is high confidence that some users of public transport have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 while travelling. However, there is not yet evidence to understand how this transmission occurred or to be able to determine the proportion of cases that are associated with transmission on public transport.”

There is the caveat, of course, that we are still getting to understand a new virus, and that it’s difficult through contact tracing to link infections directly to public transport use rather than some other source. And evidence from round the world remains based on usage that has not returned yet to pre-Covid heights.

There is a sense though, that, with measures ranging from cleansing, hand sanitising and properly-enforced mask-wearing to social distancing and management of travel times, the Underground and the buses may not be as dangerous as initially perceived.

From this point of view, the off-the-cliff reductions in tube journeys can be seen as part of a general adoption of social distancing measures coming together to bear down on infection. So a level of risk, yes, in getting back on the Tube, but perhaps no greater than in other settings, if appropriately mitigated. That’s the message business organisations are now urging the government and City Hall to get behind, as the expected back to work uptick in September draws closer.

“Once the summer holidays come to an end, the signs point to a step up in the return to London’s workplaces,” said London First chair Paul Drechsler. “Now it’s up to the government to end the messaging muddle and work flat out with public transport operators to boost confidence in the transport system.” The CBI too is calling on government to “proactively encourage increased use of public transport”, while maintaining a “health first” approach.

Mayor Khan agrees: “Giving people the confidence to travel is…vital, which is why as a result of TfL implementing an unprecedented range of safety and hygiene measures, more passengers are now able to travel safely on London public’s transport network,” he said this week.

Cleansing features heavily in TfL’s current messaging, with a focus on increased cleaning, “hospital-grade” disinfectant and more than a thousand hand sanitiser points in stations, with Imperial College scientists finding no traces of the virus on “high frequency touch points”, plus face-covering requirements, hand-washing, one-way systems through stations and work with businesses to even out demand across the day.

“We are doing everything to keep things clean and safe for everyone,” says new Transport for London commissioner Andy Byford. Businesses are nevertheless looking for deeper collaboration, including sharing “real-time and predictive data…to ensure that people can plan their journeys so that they can travel in a safe way…creating an active travel management ecosystem”, according to London First’s Adam Tyndall.

It’s crunch time for TfL. If usage stays low, income stays low in a system almost entirely dependent on fare income. Without money coming in, service cuts will be inevitable, reducing transport options for the most disadvantaged Londoners and encouraging a return to private cars.

A full-capacity service accommodating a measure of social distancing must mean continuing government subsidy or an expanded devolution deal. Alternatively, as the CBI warns: “Congestion will increase, driving down productivity and increasing emissions as a result.” That would mean more health risks, including in communities already hit hard by Covid, and ultimately the decline of the city.

Will we be persuaded back onto the Tube, or will we continue to vote with our feet as we did in March? For individuals, for business, for London as a whole, there’s a lot at stake.

OnLondon.co.uk exists to provide fair, thorough and resolutely anti-populist news, comment and analysis about the UK’s capital city. It depends heavily on donations from readers. Give £5 a month or £50 a year and you will receive the On London Extra Thursday email, which rounds up news, views and information about London from a wide range of sources. Click here to donate via Donorbox or contact davehillonlondon@gmail.com. Thanks.

 

Categories: Analysis
Tags: Adam Tyndall, Andy Byford, City AM, coronavirus, COVID-19 London, Devolution, Emma Gibson, health, London TravelWatch, London Underground, public transport, Transport for London

Sadiq Khan and business groups ask Prime Minister for more support for London’s West End

The Mayor has written to the Prime Minister, setting out measures that would help an area crucial to UK economic fortunes
Dave Hill

Sadiq Khan has called on national government to provide targeted support for the capital’s West End to help it through a “perfect storm” of continuing home working, restrictions on tourism, and social distancing requirements, including on public transport, which is devastating a district whose success is crucial to the national economy.

In a letter to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the Labour Mayor asks his Conservative predecessor at City Hall to assist businesses in the capital’s Central Activities Zone (CAZ) with additional rates and rent relief, a “direct financial aid scheme” for the hospitality, retail and cultural industry sectors, and an extension of financial support for the self-employed workers on which the latter heavily depends.

Khan tells Johnson that “the economic case for protecting these businesses is overwhelming”, saying that the combined economic output of the CAZ and the Isle of Dogs financial district accounted for 13 per cent of the UK’s entire economic output in 2017.

“As you know, the centre of London is the UK’s economic and cultural powerhouse, and a gateway for global tourism and investment into the rest of the UK,” the Mayor writes. “It has contributed to the UK far more than it has taken out, and while I support efforts to grow the prosperity of all parts of the country, this will not happen if as a country we abandon our most dynamic and productive commercial hub to decline.”

Khan is supported in his overture to Downing Street by the New West End Company, which represents many of the area’s major retails and hospitality providers. It’s chief executive Jace Tyrrell asks the government to “keep retail and hospitality in front of mind and not forget the beating heart of the British economy as lockdown is eased”.

Tyrell underlines the Mayor’s call for additional help, saying that increased footfall in the are has been small and that “with few international visitors, the next couple of months will be a defining moment for hundreds of West End businesses”.

Also supporting the Mayor’s move are Kate Nicholls, chief executive of UK Hospitality, who thanked him for echoing her concerns, and Bernard Donoghue, director of the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions, who said London tourism businesses “need all the things the Mayor is asking government for”.

Khan grouped his requests into “eight proposals that would would help secure the West End’s future survival”. As well as financial and fiscal help for employers and workers, he asks the PM to “prioritise investment in NHS test-and-trace and more support for hospitality businesses to implement systems”, which he says would do much to increase public confidence, and for the government to “explore” widening the compulsory wearing of face-coverings to “the busiest public spaces”.

The economy of London as whole has been generating almost a quarter of total UK economic output, and in recent years has produced a “tax surplus” spent across the rest of the country of well over £30 billion per annum. Khan’s initiative follows initial expressions of concern by the influential Westminster Property Association that the government’s plans for reforming the planning system make no provision for “good growth” in the capital, enabling development tailored to meet local economic and social priorities.

The Mayor has used to his own limited influence and resources to assist the West End. In his letter, he describes what he calls “key steps” he has taken, including creating a £2.3 million “culture at risk” fund for creative and night-time industries. His eight proposals to Johnson are listed below, as they appear in the letter:

  • Confirm an extension to the business rates holiday which is due to end in March or a discount for businesses in the CAZ for the next year, guaranteed now. Many large retail, leisure and hospitality businesses will take important decisions for 2021/22 in the coming weeks, so certainty over the business rates holiday is urgently needed.
  • Create a direct financial aid scheme for hospitality, retail, leisure and cultural businesses in the CAZ.
  • Provide targeted support for jobs and the workforce extension to the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme for retail, hospitality, leisure, and creative businesses that will not be able to operate on a financially sustainable level under continued social distancing requirements.
  • Extend support for freelancers and the self-employed. The cultural and creative industries that characterise central London are hugely dependent on these workers.
  • Progress an overhaul of business rates, in particular one that creates a fair playing field between physical and online retail. A subsequent letter with more detail will be forthcoming.
  • Introduce a support scheme for small and medium-sized businesses that are struggling to meet their rent bills due to coronavirus, which could help to facilitate negotiations between landlords and tenants in cases where rent is in arrears.
  • Prioritise investment in NHS Test and Trace and more support for hospitality businesses to implement systems. It is now clear that we need to learn to live with the virus, and Test and Trace plays a large role in giving the public confidence.
  • I would also encourage the Government to explore other measures which could increase public confidence and bring public health benefits, such as making face coverings compulsory in the busiest public spaces (as has been done in Paris), and commission further scientific research into the efficacy of such measures.

The Mayor is meeting West End businesses today to highlight the government action he is seeking.

OnLondon.co.uk exists to provide fair, thorough and resolutely anti-populist news, comment and analysis about the UK’s capital city. It depends heavily on donations from readers. Give £5 a month or £50 a year and you will receive the On London Extra Thursday email, which rounds up news, views and information about London from a wide range of sources. Click here to donate via Donorbox or contact davehillonlondon@gmail.com. Thanks.

 

 

Categories: News
Tags: coronavirus, COVID-19 London, Jace Tyrrell, New West End Company, Sadiq Khan, West End

Richard Derecki: The slow death of Bengali Brick Lane

London's legendary Banglatown is facing a major challenge from the virus and other forces of change
Richard Derecki

There have been dark days before. “The whole area was dismal…you’ve got to remember there were no tourists, no restaurants, you have to completely put out of your mind what it looks like today. There were still a lot of sweat shops and tailoring workshops around (in the 1960s), it was a working place,” records Rachel Lichtenstein in her seminal work on the history of Brick Lane, “It was dark and gloomy…depressed and seedy.” 

Today, dark days have returned. Brick Lane is normally busy with tourists looking for a slice of the “real” London and Londoners shopping, out for a bite to eat or just strolling amid the hustle and bustle of Bangladeshi commercial activity. But now the street, like so many across the capital, feels abandoned because of the pandemic. Shop owners, and particularly those of its curry houses for which it has become so renowned, struggle to finance their current existence and despair at the gloomy outlook of collapsed footfall.   

The disintegration of tourism, the absence of office workers and the vanished night-time economy is accelerating the death of Bengali Brick Lane. Change is coming once again to this part of the East End – change that marks, perhaps, the end of the inner city melting pot; that place where new migrant workers got a toe hold in the city, established communities, absorbed and were absorbed into its life blood of the city. That is why Brick Lane, more than anywhere else in London, holds such sway over our imaginations.

A recently published study of Brick Lane – titled Beyond Banglatown – by a team of researchers supported by the Runnymede Trust maps out how the street is defined by migration. First came the arrival of the French Huguenots, most notably after 1685 when Louis IX revoked their freedom to worship. Then the Irish came, fleeing the famine, and later the Jews fleeing the pogroms of eastern Europe.

There are disappointingly few reminders of these migrant communities: the large Georgian houses on Fournier Street with their unusual, highly glazed, lofts where Huguenot silk-weavers sought the best light for their looms, are the most prominent. Most of the signs of a Jewish past have vanished, bar a Star of David on the drainpipe of Christ Church primary school and the Beigel Bake at the top end of the Lane.

The most visible reminder of the multiple histories of Brick Lane is perhaps the Jamme Masjid mosque that was once a synagogue that was once a church of, over time, many different Christian hues. The Latin inscription Umbra Sumus (We are but Shadows) over the Fournier Street entrance is a poignant reminder to all worshipers of the fleeting nature of life.   

The research project maps in detail the development of the Bangladeshi community in Brick Lane, first through links with the East India Company, and later through imperial trading routes, particularly of tea grown on Sylheti plantations and jute processed in the mills of Calcutta. Along with goods came people. Indian sailors, known as lascars, were among the earliest settlers. By 1938 over 50,700 lascars crewed British merchant shipping worldwide.

When their ships docked in London, some were abandoned by their employers while others jumped ship to find better livelihoods on shore. Making their way as pedlars, kitchen porters, cooks and tailors in the Jewish-owned clothing trade, these British subjects established the first small Sylheti community in East London. Coffee houses serving the sailors sprang up in the area, alongside lodging houses and restaurants. The aftermath of Indian independence and partition in 1947 saw the migration of greater numbers of Bengalis to Britain in search of work. By the late 1940s, there were several Sylheti-owned coffee shops selling hot drinks and snacks in Brick Lane, catering to these early migrants. 

While there was still work to be found in the largely Jewish-owned rag trade as machinists, pressers and tailors, those who migrated after the devastation of the 1971 Bangladeshi Liberation war found the East End of the 1970s and 1980s to be an extremely hostile environment for non-white settlers. The community had to struggle against violent racism and discrimination in housing, education and employment. The racist murder of tailor Altab Ali in 1978 saw the emergence of Bangladeshi youth organisations, which mobilised to chase out the National Front from areas around Brick Lane and bind the community more closely together to give it voice.

By 1980, Brick Lane was home to four restaurants and four cafés serving curry. A decade later, the number of cafés, serving local South Asians remained the same, but there were now six restaurants, mainly targeting white, middle-class customers. As the clothing and leather factories in the area declined and unemployment among the Bangladeshi community increased, calls for regeneration investment grew. Brick Lane’s tourist economy and identity as London’s “Curry Capital” emerged in the late 1990s. By 2003, there were 46 such establishments, and at its peak, the number of “Indian” restaurants on and around the southern end of Brick Lane reached more than 60.

Brick Lane had become the heartland of the community, the place Bangladeshis felt they have emotional attachment to. The area was re-named Banglatown. But its success was fragile and sowed the seeds of its own decline. Jamal Khalique of Taj Stores puts it like this in the study’s film for the Runnymede Trust below: “That name Banglatown. Unfortunately, we are losing it – not losing it, we’ve kind of lost it.”

The “Beyond Banglatown” project maps the pronounced change, shaped by a number of private and public redevelopment initiatives, that have altered the urban fabric of the area over the past 20 years – changes that Covid-19 may accelerate, depending on the strength and speed of the economic recovery and how government, business and customers react. 

In 2007, Tower Hamlets Council designated Brick Lane a tourist area, with the converted Truman Brewery and more recent retail activities marked out as part of its “creative and cultural focus”. The introduction of a new range of activities and actors to the wider area has led to the displacement of established businesses, such as those in Banglatown. The report vividly maps the turnover of shops within the same category (that is, changes from one kind of food offering to another). So along Brick Lane, a niche economy has come to the fore, with many of the restaurants now selling fusion foods or offering vegan options oriented to either the tourist market or a changing demographic that includes an expanding student population as well as middle-class consumers. Few of the traditional curry houses revamped their look or re-worked their menus to appeal to the latest trends. 

Historically the upper floors of restaurants were places of work, but due to the demand for more housing and the lucrative residential market, Brick Lane has seen a huge increase in planning applications to change the class use of upper floors so thhey can become dwellings. The dramatic shifts in residential property prices accompanied by steep increases in housing rentals suggest that such alterations will further add to the influx of higher-income residents or Air B&B guests, accompanied by the dispersal of existing residents to suburbs in London’s more affordable peripheries. 

The challenge to the traditional Bangladeshi curry houses is how to survive and adapt in this fast-changing marketplace. And the question remains: what is the future of Bengali Brick Lane and its place in London’s great migrant story if the curry houses are disappearing in the midst of this new wave of regeneration? 

Richard Derecki is an economist and governance expert who has worked for the 10 Downing Street strategy unit and the Greater London Authority. He was a member of the advisory board of the Beyond Banglatown study. Follow Richard on Twitter.

OnLondon.co.uk exists to provide fair, thorough and resolutely anti-populist news, comment and analysis about the UK’s capital city. It depends heavily on donations from readers. Give £5 a month or £50 a year and you will receive the On London Extra Thursday email, which rounds up news, views and information about London from a wide range of sources. Click here to donate via Donorbox or contact davehillonlondon@gmail.com. Thanks.

 

Categories: Culture
Tags: Brick Lane, East End, Fournier Street, Runnymede Trust, Tower Hamlets, Tower Hamlets Council

Nick Bowes: London’s Recovery Taskforce really can build the city back better

Leaders from across the capital are collaborating on missions to some of the capital's long-standing problems as never before
Nick Bowes

London is facing one of the most challenging periods in its recent history and is undoubtedly living through its biggest crisis since World War II. Over 6,000 people have tragically succumbed to the virus, and the effects have been felt across all aspects of Londoners’ lives.

Public policy has had to respond to this crisis in ways no one could have foreseen six months ago, and at speed. While there’s likely to be a detailed appraisal of our preparedness and response to Covid-19 in the months and years to come, the fallout from the way this illness struck our city is focusing minds now.

For all that London is an amazing, vibrant global city, we know it was not without its major challenges even before the coronavirus arrived. The capital’s inequality, poverty and overcrowding are among the worst in the UK. There is growing evidence that many of these problems have exacerbated the spread of the virus.

We’ve all had to change the way we live our lives in these past months and that has made many people reassess what’s important to them. The consequences of the sudden lockdown for the city’s economy and tourism industry, people’s mental health, the public transport system and much, much more are enormous and ongoing. What this means for the long-term future of the traditional office, the daily commute and Central London is still unknown. Getting the city back on its feet, even if a vaccine is found and social distancing comes to an end, is going to take a huge London-wide effort.

Against this backdrop, two crucial pieces of work have started. First, the London Transition Board, jointly chaired by Sadiq Khan and secretary of state for housing, communities and local government, Robert Jenrick, is overseeing crucial work on the immediate challenges over the coming months, particularly the continued need for social distancing and the importance of containing any future outbreaks.

The second is the London Recovery Board, co chaired by the Mayor and London Councils chair Peter John, which has assembled a powerful group of city leaders from across local government, the NHS, further and higher education, business, trade unions and civil society. The board will oversee work focused on the longer-term aspects of the city’s recovery, including how we grapple with some of the really big issues that have been laid bare as a result of Covid-19.

As part of this, the Mayor asked me to chair the London Recovery Taskforce, which sits underneath the Recovery Board and will coordinate the work. Following two meetings of the Taskforce, I’m heartened by the energy and passion driving this work forward and how so many powerful organisations are coalescing around shared endeavours.

I’m determined that the Taskforce will foster a whole new way of working. First, if the work is to have impact then it must be a true partnership. It can’t be a City Hall imposed solution or a top down response but rather a bottom up alliance of communities, groups and organisations that unleashes the collective power and drive of the whole city.

Second, I’ve encouraged everyone involved to be ambitious and have a clear vision of where we need to get to. Now is the time to think big about solutions to the city’s challenges.

Third, we have adopted a missions-based approach, leaning heavily on the work of Professor Mariana Mazzucato at University College London. This is a departure from the traditional way City Hall and others have worked, and is going to necessitate a culture change, but we are learning all the time.

Fourth, the missions-based approach involves identifying some “grand challenges” – big, overarching ambitions which everyone can support and back. So far, we have identified equality, diversity and inclusion; environment; the health of Londoners; and (understandably) recovering from one of the biggest and most rapid economic downturns in history.

Under this, we have a draft set of missions to help address those grand challenges. I’m pleased that at recent meetings of the Recovery Board (on 4 June and 28 July), members backed the first eight draft missions – on good work for all Londoners; a green new deal; digital access for all; “15 minute cities“; a strong civil society; tackling poverty; promoting health equity; and a new deal for young people. These missions are not intended to be exhaustive, but they must relate to the Covid-19 pandemic – to things which contributed to, or were exacerbated by, the spread of the virus.

They are still very much in draft form and, over the coming weeks, the aim is to knock them into shape, tighten them up and give them real focus. We will be using City Hall’s fantastic Talk London to engage Londoners and then involve community and business groups to get their views.

I’m determined that this doesn’t become an esoteric piece of work. I really want the missions to outline a series of practical interventions that will help achieve the grand challenges. These interventions could be a range of things. They might be things City Hall can do, or they might be actions others across the city can take. They might involve new ways of working or better coordination and collaboration. Or they might be asks of central government – changes to legislation or perhaps requests for additional investment.

It’s really pleasing that this work has galvanised organisations and institutions which haven’t always worked well together. I’m heartened that one council leader commented that they’d never seen City Hall and the boroughs work so well together.

We must build on this good start and keep the momentum going. This crisis presents a once in a lifetime chance for public policy to address some of the longest-standing and most deep-seated problems our city faces. Over the coming months, I hope we can support the city’s political leaders, anchor institutions, communities, civil society and businesses to unify around a citywide plan to build London back better.

Dr Nick Bowes is the Mayoral Director of Policy for Sadiq Khan at City Hall. Follow Nick on Twitter.

OnLondon.co.uk exists to provide fair and thorough news, information and comment about the UK’s capital city. It now depends more than ever on donations from readers. Give £5 a month or £50 a year and you will receive the On London Extra Thursday email, which rounds up London news, views and insights from a wide range of sources. Click here to donate via Donorbox or contact davehillonlondon@gmail.com. Thanks.

Categories: Comment
Tags: Central London, coronavirus, COVID-19 London, housing, inequality, poverty, Robert Jenrick, tourism, transport, World War II

Sadiq Khan maintains big lead in latest London Mayor opinion poll

Survey indicates that Labour incumbent is close to triumphing on first preference votes alone
Dave Hill

A new opinion poll has found Sadiq Khan to be in a dominant position in the rescheduled contest to be London Mayor, with almost half of those responding saying he is currently their first choice candidate.

The extensive survey of 2,500 Londoners by pollsters Redfield and Wilton discovered that 49 per cent intend to make Khan their first preference in the election now to be held next May, leaving his closest challenger, the Conservative Shaun Bailey, a distant second with 26 per cent.

The Labour incumbent’s massive lead suggests he has come through the Covid-19 crisis so far with his popularity unscathed, despite Bailey and fellow London Assembly Tories claiming that he is to blame for the recent increase in the level the operating hours of the congestion charge demanded by the government as a condition of its financial bailout of Transport for London, and saying he could do more to reduce violent  crime.

However, 35 per cent of those polled said they were satisfied or strongly satisfied with Khan’s policies for reducing crime, compared with 29 per cent who were dissatisfied or strongly so. The policy area most often chosen as the one where Khan has made most improvement is transport (28 per cent). Khan’s overall approval rating stands at +20 per cent, with 46 per cent saying they approve of his performance as Mayor compared with 26 per cent who disapprove.

Twelve per cent of respondents said they will opt for an as yet unknown Liberal Democrat candidate at the election – the party’s original contender Siobhan Benita recently dropped out – while nine per cent named the Green Party’s Siân Berry as their first preference.

Khan’s share of current voting intentions indicates he has a chance of being the first London Mayor to be elected without second preference votes having to be counted. Securing more than 50 per cent of first preferences would mean a second round run-off against his nearest challenger would not be needed.

Khan’s lead over Bailey is even more pronounced among women, by 52 per cent to 23 per cent, while his lead among men is by 46 per cent to 29 per cent. Near equal proportions of Inner (48 per cent) and Outer London voters (49 per cent) say Khan is their first choice.

He is overwhelmingly preferred by younger voters, with 65 per cent of 18-to-24-year-olds and 60 per cent of 25-to-34-year-olds favouring him over other candidates. Among the 35-to-44 age group, he enjoys a score of 52 per cent. Only among those aged over 65 did Bailey outpoll Khan.

Remarkably, 13 per cent of respondents who said they voted Conservative at last year’s general election said they intend to vote for Khan next May while 23 per cent of those who voted Lib Dem said the same. Redfield and Wilton also found that the Labour Party leads the Conservatives by 19 per cent in London, showing that Bailey is less popular in the capital than his party, while Khan’s rating runs ahead of his. Exactly half of those polled said they are certain to vote in the mayoral election.

The Redfield and Wilton poll is the first since Rory Stewart, the former Tory minister who entered the contest as an Independent, withdrew from the race in early May. Bailey is likely to have hoped that some of Stewart’s support, put at 13 per cent by YouGov in March, would have come his way. That poll too put Khan on 49 per cent, with Bailey on 24.

OnLondon.co.uk exists to provide fair and thorough news, information and comment about the UK’s capital city. It now depends more than ever on donations from readers. Give £5 a month or £50 a year and you will receive the On London Extra Thursday email, which rounds up London news, views and insights from a wide range of sources. Click here to donate via Donorbox or contact davehillonlondon@gmail.com. Thanks.

 

 

Categories: News
Tags: Conservatives, Green Party, Labour, Liberal Democrats, Redfield & Wilton, Sadiq Khan, Shaun Bailey, Sian Berry, YouGov