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Front door boarding of most London buses will end from Monday to protect drivers from coronavirus

TfL has announced new boarding arrangements following concerns about risks to bus drivers
Dave Hill

Londoners will be unable to board buses by way of their front doors from Monday unless they are single-door vehicles, under new rules to be introduced by Transport for London designed to better protect bus drivers from infection by the Covid-19 coronavirus.

TfL announced this morning that passengers will temporarily only be able to board buses via their centre doors, though it has clarified for On London that access to the approximately 1,000 three-door New Routemaster buses will continue to be possible via their rear doors too.

TfL has also told On London that the 55 routes served by buses that only have a single door, which is at the front of the vehicle next to their drivers’ cabs, will continue to operate as normal while “we look at additional measures to keep drivers safe”.

The ending of front door boarding on all but a minority of the capital’s nearly 9,000 buses, which cover over 700 routes, follows the confirmed coronavirus-related deaths of 26 public transport workers, around half of them bus drivers.

TfL says that while these new arrangements are in place “where passengers enter through the middle doors, they will not be required to touch in”, effectively making journeys on multi-door buses free for the time being. This change will also apply to the 55 single-door bus routes.

A trial of middle-door boarding has been held on nine bus routes out of Walworth bus garage, including two that serve hospitals. It involved 140 buses, run by the operating company Abellio. TfL says the trial has given it confidence that “the low number of people currently using the network can keep a safe distance when entering and exiting through the same door”.

Pete Kavanagh, regional secretary of Unite, the union that represents thousands of London bus service workers, has thanked TfL for “this very welcome move” which it has been arguing for. Sadiq Khan, who chairs TfL’s board, has applauded it too and said again that “public transport is only open for critical workers”. He appealed once more to Londoners as a whole to travel by any mode “only if it is absolutely necessary”.

The Mayor has also told the government he believes that wearing face masks while travelling in London should be  compulsory, and is urging a change in the official advice about non-medical face coverings more generally. The World Health Organisation says that medical masks should be reserved for healthcare workers.

OnLondon.co.uk is doing all it can to keep providing the best possible coverage of  London during the coronavirus crisis. It now depends more than ever on donations from readers. Individual sums or regular monthly contributions are very welcome indeed. Click here to donate via Donorbox or contact davehillonlondon@gmail.com. Thank you.

 

 

Categories: News
Tags: buses, coronavirus, COVID-19 London, Sadiq Khan, Transport for London, Unite The Union

Unmesh Desai: Government protections for private renters aren’t strong enough

Some are left unprotected and some problems have simply been postponed
Unmesh Desai

Sadly, we have seen a number of London landlords attempting to act outside the law and evict tenants during the coronavirus pandemic. A recent and egregious example concerned a household of junior doctors in Tooting, who had to find somewhere else to live after one of the four moved out to stay with family, leaving them short on paying their rent and unable to come to an agreement with their landlord. An incredibly generous family stepped in and offered them accommodation. It shouldn’t have taken the kindness of strangers to fill the vacuum left by their landlord’s lost sense of compassion and perspective.

It goes without saying that not all landlords are so unscrupulous, and many are showing the level of consideration to their tenants this situation demands. However, key questions remain. How many households are currently being evicted illegally by stealth and is the government’s guidance for protecting renters robust enough?

The initial legislation to prevent evictions has failed to live up to promises that nobody would be kicked out of their home during this crisis. In fact, all it did was extend the notice period for new evictions to three months, rather than the typical two. This was widely criticised, as it would do nothing to help tenants who may have already been served eviction notices being forced out of their homes during the peak of the crisis.

It also fell short of protecting people living in some in insecure accommodation: those housed in hostel or other temporary accommodation under interim licences issued by local authorities under the Housing Act 2016; lodgers and others who share accommodation with their landlord or a landlord’s family member; and some whose accommodation is tied to their jobs, such as carers, pub or hotel staff or members of the clergy.

Despite its initial suggestion that these criticisms were “misleading” the government has now strengthened its guidance and agreed with the court service to suspend all housing possession proceeding for an initial 90 days. This is welcome. Nonetheless, these measures may store up problems until after the crisis has passed. The Mayor has likened the steps taken so far to “simply kicking a can down the road.”

That is because any rent that is not paid for now – if, for example, a tenant has lost their job as a result of the coronavirus crisis – will still be owed to the landlord. The courts will not allow the landlord to evict the tenant at the moment, but when the crisis passes and the courts re-open, the tenant will still be in rent arrears and can still lose their home.

The government has quite rightly worked with lenders to ensure homeowners and buy-to-let landlords can get a payment holiday on their mortgage during the crisis if needed. However, there is no similar provision of rent relief for private tenants.

Tenants could find themselves in large debt and might effectively have to pay double rent for months after the worst of the crisis is over. Private renters are particularly vulnerable: according to the Department of Work and Pensions, 57 per cent of private rented households nationally have no savings, compared with only 28 per cent of homeowners. This will have a greater impact in the capital than elsewhere, as more Londoners rent privately and at a significantly higher cost than the rest of the country.

Ministers and the Mayor have correctly focused on the most vulnerable in our society, and have already spent huge sums of money to help rough sleepers get off the streets. But, given that we know that the end of private tenancies is the leading cause of homelessness, the government can and must do more to help private renters. Otherwise,  we will face a flood of evictions in the autumn.

While many private renters may benefit from the new schemes for employees and the self-employed to have their earnings covered, many may still fall between the gaps in these programmes. The government should ensure that these renters get relief from rent, whether that is by stopping landlords from charging it, or by providing direct grants to renters to prevent them from falling behind.

In addition, the chancellor must go further on his recent pledges and increase Local Housing Allowance to the fiftieth percentile – the median – for all areas so that benefits cover average rents, and end the five-week delay for Universal Credit payments so that tenants don’t immediately build up arrears. The government must should also make sure that statutory sick pay covers average rents in London, regardless of what causes you to fall ill. Londoners in the precarious private rented sector need better.

Unmesh Desai is the London Assembly Member for City & East constituency and the Assembly Labour Group’s spokesperson on housing.

OnLondon.co.uk is doing all it can to keep providing the best possible coverage of  London during the coronavirus crisis. It now depends more than ever on donations from readers. Individual sums or regular monthly contributions are very welcome indeed. Click here to donate via Donorbox or contact davehillonlondon@gmail.com. Thank you.

 

 

 

 

Categories: Comment
Tags: coronavirus, COVID-19 London, housing, housing benefit, private rented housing, Sadiq Khan

Coronavirus London: Charities seek more help against child poverty

Minister for London Paul Scully is being asked to champion six emergency measures in addition to those already introduced
Dave Hill

A group of more than 25 charities has asked the government for six additional measures to help children through the pandemic in the capital, where the child poverty rate of 37 per cent is the highest in the country.

In a letter to minister for London Paul Scully, who is the MP for Sutton & Cheam, the London Child Poverty Alliance (LCPA) seeks “emergency support” for low income families through adjustments to benefit entitlements, by covering more housing costs, making temporary changes to Universal Credit arrangements and enhancing the ability of local authorities to give help.

The letter’s signatories, who include representatives of localised and London-wide organisations, welcome what they call the government’s “fast response” to the need to protect jobs, provide Council Tax relief and widen housing benefit entitlements, but ask Scully to make the case for six further changes which would be particularly helpful to London’s poorer children. They are:

Increase child benefit by £10 per child per week for the duration of the pandemic, which the charities say would help around one million London children in all and make it easier for their families on lower incomes to manage their regular finances and pay for essentials. They also calculate that it would reduce the national child poverty by about five percentage points, and household poverty by two.

Convert repayable advances on Universal Credit payments into grants. Advance payments were introduced to cover claimants’ costs during the five-week period it takes for their claims to be assessed and payments made. The LCPA would like them made non-repayable, both to make it easier for claimants to meet the cost of living and to prevent new claimants being in position where they have to take on debt at the beginning of new UC claims amid uncertainty about the job market and the broader economic situation.

Raise Local Housing Allowance rates for the duration of the pandemic, so that fewer low income households are at risk of eviction for rent arrears at a time when many jobs are being lost and working hours are being reduced. With this issue in mind, the government has already increased LHA rates so that they cover up to 30 per cent of the average private rent in a locality. However, the LCPA wants them lifted further, to cover 50 per cent.

Remove the benefit cap and the two-child limit, measures which place a ceiling on the total amount of benefit that can be paid. Many London households fall foul of the cap due to the high costs of renting homes in the capital, placing additional demands on councils to assist them with finding homes they can afford. The cap is designed to incentivise looking for jobs, but the LCPA argues that in the context of a sharply shrinking London job market, the justification for it does not hold up. The “two-child limit” denies Universal Credit support for third of subsequent children born since April 2017. It is intended to encourage claimant parents to make the same financial choices about family size as those relying solely on earnings. But the LCPA says that many households with larger numbers of children will now be claiming benefits for the first time, having had their families under circumstances when losing their jobs appeared unlikely. The charities calculate that if the limit is not lifted, almost 100,000 London families, including 340,000 children will be affected “by the end of this parliament”.

End the “no recourse to public funds” restriction on migrants of uncertain status. Rowenna Davis has written about this issue for On London.

Help local authorities with resources and mechanisms to provide greater local assistance. A national £500 million hardship fund has been set up by the government, but the LCPA asks that this should enlarged if found to be inadequate. London Councils chair Peter John has expressed concerns about whether boroughs will be compensated for the extra financial demands being made on them.

Deborah Hargreaves, chair of the LCPA, said: “We need to put children at the centre of our response. As a nation, we are being asked to make huge sacrifices to protect the vulnerable and help the NHS. We want to ensure that children do not suffer as well, as a result of more working families being pushed into poverty.”

The full text of the letter to Paul Scully, together with a full list of its signatories can be read here.

OnLondon.co.uk is doing all it can to keep providing the best possible coverage of  London during the coronavirus crisis. It now depends more than ever on donations from readers. Individual sums or regular monthly contributions are very welcome indeed. Click here to donate via Donorbox or contact davehillonlondon@gmail.com. Thank you.

 

 

Categories: News
Tags: child poverty, housing benefit, London Child Poverty Alliance, London Councils, Peter John, poverty, Universal Credit

Over 1,000 London rough sleepers off streets as facility for coronavirus cases opens in hotel

Charities, the government and City Hall have continued their joint effort to protect the street homeless
Dave Hill

More than 1,000 of London’s street homeless are now accommodated in hotels or other safe locations in the city and a hotel with special provisions for those showing coronavirus symptoms has been established in the east of the capital, City Hall has announced.

Emergency action to move rough sleepers indoors as part of attempts to slow the progress of the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 began three weeks ago, backed by funding from the government and Sadiq Khan, and put into effect in a combined effort by the Mayor’s rough sleeping team, borough councils, hotel chains and an array of charities.

Two weeks ago, leading homelessness charities believed 80 per cent of the capital’s rough sleepers had been moved into accommodation, following what was described as “unprecedented effort” despite staff numbers being depleted by the virus and its wider impacts. Rough sleepers are more likely than most people to have underlying health conditions, notably respiratory problems, that make them particularly susceptible to the virus.

St Mungo’s, one of London’s largest charities in the field of street homelessness, is overseeing the support of the rough sleepers themselves, who are staying in hotel rooms provided by the Travelodge, Best Western, Accor Group and InterContinental Group chains, with support from Thames Reach and others. The east London hotel where those showing symptoms are staying, which is not being identified, has a care facility which enables its residents to be monitored and given medical advice and support.

Substance misuse charities from across London have joined forces to provide specialist advice to homelessness professionals working in the hotels with rough sleepers who have drug or alcohol problems. The partnership has shared staff, expertise and IT support to provide a 24 hour advice line, with access to clinicians for complex or urgent inquires.

Sometimes, individuals are already known to local drug or alcohol treatment centres, but have been housed in hotels in distant parts of the city. Others might be newly-identified as needing help. The phone line service helps connect people to the treatment service best fitted to their circumstances and needs.

The catering firm Red-Radish, which normally provides food for festivals, touring performers and TV and film sets, is supplying three meals a day to erstwhile rough sleepers in the hotels. Black cab drivers have volunteered transport support for those working on the initiative with the help of the Free Now app.

The Mayor said it is “more important than ever to ensure the most vulnerable Londoners are supported in clean, secure accommodation” and stressed that “there is still much to do” with more money, volunteers, hotel rooms and financial backing from the government needed to if the “in for good” principle is to be applied to all rough sleepers and more lives saved as a result.

Over £10.5 million has been committed to the initiative by the Greater London Authority and the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government. The endeavours of charities and volunteers helping the street homeless have been applauded on social media with the hashtag #LondonTogether.

OnLondon.co.uk is doing all it can to keep providing the best possible coverage of  London during the coronavirus crisis. It now depends more than ever on donations from readers. Individual sums or regular monthly contributions are very welcome indeed. Click here to donate via Donorbox or contact davehillonlondon@gmail.com. Thank you.

Categories: News
Tags: coronavirus, COVID-19 London, Greater London Authority, homelessness, rough sleeping, Sadiq Khan, St Mungo's, Thames Reach

London Councils chair: ‘Services will be cut’ if government fails to make good on spending promise

Peter John says secretary of state appeared to edge away from earlier pledge during conference call yesterday
Dave Hill

The capital’s cash-strapped borough councils will have to make further cuts in their services to vulnerable Londoners if national government fails to honour a commitment to “see you right later” made at the onset of the coronavirus crisis, according to the chair of the cross-party body representing London’s local authorities.

Peter John, who is leader of Southwark Council as well the chair of London Councils, said this morning that a “pretty dispiriting call” with communities secretary Robert Jenrick yesterday had left him concerned that previous assurances that councils could “spend now and the government will see you right later” are being rowed back from, and that this would mean “cutting back on the sorts of services that support some of our most vulnerable people”.

Speaking to BBC Radio London’s Vanessa Feltz, John said that money has become his biggest anxiety following a conference call with Jenrick and fellow council leaders from across England, during which the secretary of state “talked about ‘burden-sharing’ and no promises being made,” whereas, “We were told three or four weeks, spend now, we’ll sort you out later”.

John said his expectation now is that Southwark and other councils will “have to make some significant in-year savings, so services will be cut as a consequence if the government doesn’t really live up to the promise it made a month ago.”

While accepting that “the whole country’s going to have to bear tough financial times in the years ahead,” John emphasised that “councils have really, really been under the cosh for the last decade,” and pointed out that, unlike NHS hospitals, local authorities are required by law to set balanced budgets or face possible national government intervention in how they run their financial affairs.

Praising the government for moving quickly to alleviate NHS debt in order to help the service cope with the surge of extra pressure caused by Covid-19, John pointed out that councils too carry debt, much of it accruing from housebuilding going back decades, and that “it wouldn’t be a bad idea if government decided they’d write off council debt as well. It would certainly make our finances easier going forward.”

He added: “Councils have had a decade of austerity. We have borne more than any other bit of the public sector over the last decade, and it is really going to be tough to know where to go. We have made every efficiency saving that we possibly could have since 2010, so where do you go? I really don’t know where to start. There’s a chance for the government to put this right. They made a pledge to us four weeks ago, and they really have to live up to that, but after yesterday I’m a bit worried.”

Following publication of this article, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government contacted On London with the following statement from a spokesperson: “The Secretary of State has been clear that we will support councils to provide services to their communities during the pandemic. We’ve already provided £1.6 billion of additional funding and will continue to keep any future funding under review.”

Photograph: Southwark Town Hall, by Dave Hill. Article last updated on 16 April 2020.

OnLondon.co.uk is doing all it can to keep providing the best possible coverage of  London during the coronavirus crisis. It now depends more than ever on donations from readers. Individual sums or regular monthly contributions are very welcome indeed. Click here to donate via Donorbox or contact davehillonlondon@gmail.com. Thank you.

 

Categories: News
Tags: BBC Radio London, coronavirus, COVID-19 London, London Councils, NHS, Peter John, Southwark Council, Vanessa Feltz

Coronavirus London: Are there valid comparisons with World War Two?

Most parallels may be fanciful but some comparable issues arise
Dave Hill

Strong views have been expressed against the use of wartime parallels and martial metaphors in media and political discourse about the coronavirus and the “lockdown” measures imposed to slow its spread. In response, some have insisted that Britain is indeed a “nation at war” with a ruthless enemy taking many lives on a daily basis. The war evoked is, of course, World War Two, which saw London come under a rain of bombs dropped from the aircraft of Nazi Germany with barely a break from 7 September 1940 until 11 May 1941 – the phenomenon known as The Blitz.

Are such comparisons valid or useful? Not very. The virus does not obliterate buildings, drive people to shelter underground, or subject Londoners to traumatising explosions. Neither does it threaten subjugation by a foreign power. The current use of the armed forces to move people and equipment around has been invoked to justify fight-for-survival rhetoric, but the Army also lent a hand at the Olympics. By the end of the war, close to 30,000 Londoners had been killed in bombing raids – far more than the Covid-19 outbreak will claim. And the virus, unlike the Luftwaffe, does not kill indiscriminately, because older people and those with particular pre-existing conditions are at greater risk than the young. Also, the war, unlike the pandemic, did not shut down most of London’s economy. Neither were people urged to stay at home and keep away from other people as much as possible.

If calling up the “Blitz spirit” helps fortify some in the face of adversity, fine, but even that was partly myth: plenty of looting went on in London and plenty of Londoners moaned about the government. The famous photo of a milkman doughtily carting a crate through the ruins was staged. All that said, there might be some value in looking back at how wartime Londoners and the authorities dealt with the problem of sagging morale as the Blitz went on and on. Philip Ziegler’s book London At War records that cinemas, initially closed in order to restrict large gatherings that created the potential for large numbers of deaths, were quite quickly reopened because people were bored and depressed. How long before such considerations come into play for those managing the pandemic?

To end, a famous propaganda film about London during the Blitz produced by the British government and narrated by US war correspondent Quentin Reynolds. We hear the menacing hum of approaching bombers and their explosions grimly described as “the symphony of war”. No, the coronavirus crisis is not a war. But it still raises a question the film presumes to know the answer to. Can London can take it?

OnLondon.co.uk is doing all it can to keep providing the best possible coverage of  London during the coronavirus crisis. It now depends more than ever on donations from readers. Individual sums or regular monthly contributions are very welcome indeed. Click here to donate via Donorbox or contact davehillonlondon@gmail.com. Thank you.

Categories: Analysis
Tags: 2012 Olympics, The Blitz, World War II

Many Londoners still unable to get home from India and Bangladesh due to coronavirus

There has been progress with repatriating people left stranded overseas, but it appears to have been uneven so far
Dave Hill

Thousands of Londoners are still stranded overseas due to coronavirus travel restrictions, despite the government saying a week ago it was increasing the number of special flights to bring Britons home.

Members of Parliament and the London Assembly contacted by On London are reporting uneven progress with the repatriation of constituents, with new cases coming to their attention even as older ones are resolved, and a particular shortage of help for people stuck in South Asian countries.

Brent & Harrow AM Navin Shah, who flew in to Heathrow from Mumbai yesterday morning, having been forced to stay there for two weeks longer than he’d intended, understands there could still be as many as 30,000 Britons trying to get back from India, of whom around half could be Londoners, while his Labour AM colleague Murad Qureshi thinks there could be “a few thousand” Britons, many of them Londoners, trying to get home from Bangladesh.

Harrow West MP Gareth Thomas says his office is dealing with over 40 cases of constituents trapped abroad, the largest number being in India and Pakistan. Westminster North MP Karen Buck says she and her staff are dealing with “up to 20” constituents in various locations around the world. Her Labour colleague Andy Slaughter, MP for Hammersmith, says his caseload continues to be in the dozens as it was a fortnight ago.

Those marooned in India could largely residents of Ealing, where many Londoners of Punjabi descent live, or Harrow, where substantial numbers are of Gujarati heritage. The last census found that around half of Bangladeshi Britons live in London, with a particularly strong representation in Tower Hamlets.

While in India, Shah, who represents the Brent & Harrow Assembly seat, had expressed impatience via Twitter with what he regarded as an inadequate response from the Foreign Office to the plight of himself and many others there. He returned to London on a Virgin Airways flight chartered by the UK government, which cost he and his wife £600 each.

Speaking to On London today, the AM said it is not clear if, how or when he and others catching such flights can be wholly or partially refunded, pointing out that for some returning Britons such a sum might be beyond their means. He added that he and others who had originally bought return tickets with different airlines do not know if they will be reimbursed. Shah, together with fellow Labour AM Unmesh Desai, is seeking greater clarity about how the £75 million the UK government announced would be available to help Britons stranded abroad is being spent.

Shah described having to queue outside at Mumbai airport for two hours with his wife, who has a medical condition that would put her at high risk should she contract the coronavirus. He said he had informed the UK and local Indian authorities about this, but that staff at the airport, where social distancing guidance went largely unobserved, had no knowledge of it, meaning he and his wife had to negotiate a seating position on the plane that kept her as far away from other passengers as possible.

Qureshi has been pressing for more help for Londoners trying to get home from Bangladesh, believing they have been overlooked by the UK government. His estimate of the number of Britons who might be stuck there is based on the number of regular flights between the two countries that have been cancelled.

Most of those stranded are likely to be in and around the city of Sylhet in the north-east of Bangladesh. In normal circumstances there are direct flights between Sylhet and Heathrow. Qureshi says he has written to foreign secretary Dominic Raab and the British High Commission in the Bangladesh capital Dhaka seeking more help, including UK government-sponsored flights into Sylhet, though he stresses that for Britons staying with relatives in rural villages the hardest part of the journey home will be getting from to the Bangladeshi city from outlying areas.

Slaughter said that while the problems of Londoners and other Britons in some countries, such as Peru, have been largely addressed, those in others have been neglected. He regards the government as taking “a firefighting approach rather than a methodical one”.

Last updated, 15 April 2020.

OnLondon.co.uk is doing all it can to keep providing the best possible coverage of  London during the coronavirus crisis. It now depends more than ever on donations from readers. Individual sums or regular monthly contributions are very welcome indeed. Click here to donate via Donorbox or contact davehillonlondon@gmail.com. Thank you.

 

 

 

 

 

Categories: News
Tags: Andy Slaughter, Brent & Harrow, Ealing, Gareth Thomas, Hammersmith, Harrow, Harrow West, Heathrow, Karen Buck, London Assembly, Murad Qureshi, Navin Shah, Tower Hamlets, Unmesh Desai

Sadiq Khan calls for further government help against domestic violence during coronavirus ‘stay at home’ measures

The government has promised more support, but the Mayor wants it to go further
Dave Hill

Sadiq Khan has called on the government to go further in helping victims of domestic violence during the coronavirus crisis, following the home secretary’s announcement yesterday that an addition £2 million will be provided to helplines and online support services nationally.

Though saying he is “pleased to see the government finally starting to take this vital issue seriously”, the Mayor has urged it to also “urgently convene a national working group comprising police, service providers, funders, the domestic abuse commissioner and national victims commissioner” with a view to introducing further support and money.

The charity Refuge says the national domestic abuse helpline, which it runs, has seen a 25 per cent increase in calls during the “lockdown” period and that visits to its website have been 150 per cent higher than they were a year ago.

Earlier this month, a the London Assembly’s police and crime committee highlighted the sharp rise in domestic abuse offences recorded by the Metropolitan Police in recent years, with just over 85,000 in 2018 compared with 46,000 in 2011. The 2018 figure represented approximately 10 per cent of all recorded offences during that year, averaging 230 a day. The committee also learned from the Met that over 13,600 repeat offences were recorded during the first nine months of 2019.

The committee asked the Mayor’s office for policing and crime to join it in lobbying for the creation of a domestic abusers’ register and looking at piloting it in London. Committee chair Unmesh Desai said that the “stay at home” measures brought in to slow the spread of the Covid-19 coronavirus made it vital to “ensure there are support services in place for victims of domestic abuse” and asked the Mayor to assist with this.

The Mayor’s appeal to the government on the issue added: “We also need to see a coordinated response to ensure all services supporting vulnerable people, not solely domestic abuse, receive the support they need to maintain sufficient levels of support throughout this crisis, giving particular attention to small specialist agencies”. City Hall says that under Khan’s mayoralty a “record” £59 million has been invested in tackling all violence against women and girls.

Photograph from GLA.

OnLondon.co.uk is doing all it can to keep providing the best possible coverage of  London during the coronavirus crisis. It now depends more than ever on donations from readers. Individual sums or regular monthly contributions are very welcome indeed. Click here to donate via Donorbox or contact davehillonlondon@gmail.com. Thank you.

Categories: News
Tags: domestic violence, London Assembly, Metropolitan Police, Sadiq Khan, Unmesh Desai