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How can we help London’s life sciences sector to keep growing?

The capital is already a global leader in medical research, enterprise and innovation and hopes get even better at it
Dave Hill

The map is a good place to start. Provided by MedCity, an organisation dedicated to boosting the capital’s trailblazing exploits in working out how to make living things healthier, it shows us the locations of London’s clusters of “life science” endeavour – what MedCity chief executive Angela Kukula described at a recent London Society event as the city’s seven “innovation districts” in this field.

Most of them are fairly central and have a top-flight academic institution at their heart. In the west, the White City and Paddington districts include Imperial College facilities. The Knowledge Quarter in and around Bloomsbury is the long-standing first home of University College London (UCL).

Just south of the river, the SC1 district brings King’s College together with Guy’s and St Thomas’s hospitals and with “innovation hubs” variously focused on medical and biomedical technology, neuroscience and mental health. Further east, find Canary Wharf’s growing “super cluster” and a while new UCL campus on the Olympic Park.

And, pleasingly for fans of polycentrism, the life sciences reach now extends to Sutton, where the London Cancer Hub is to grow on a site next to the Royal Marsden hospital and the Institute for Cancer Research.

The sector is already flourishing. Kukula told her audience at the Southwark office of architects Allies and Morrison that 22 London universities in all have “some sort of course in life science or healthcare” collectively being taken up by about 75,000 students each year.

Around 2,500 life science companies are based in Greater London, and some 90 spin-offs or start-ups appearing annually. The sector as a whole employs 31,000 people and rising by 14 per cent per annum. Kukula said that London has “the highest concentration of pharmaceutical research and development locations in Europe” .

And why wouldn’t it? After all, London contains all the ingredients required for such success: top university research and specialist hospitals, such as the Marsden, Great Ormond Street and Moorfields, a unique national health service, an advanced financial ecosystem and proximity to policymakers, all of which strengthen its attraction for talent from around the country and the world. It is a product of agglomeration in action. How can this strength be made stronger still?

Part of the answer is more buildings, but they need to serve precise requirements. “A lot of the equipment is quite heavy,” said Kukula, mentioned vast, vibrating centrifuges and other things so big they have to assembled within buildings rather than delivered and fitted – MRI scanners, electron microscopes. water and power consumption levels are high.

Rooms need to be taller, the better to provide ventilation in environments where gases, and, at times, unpleasant smells have to be dealt with. Seriously dark and ultra-clean rooms may be needed. The chemical being used and diseases being tackled can be deadly. Regular office spaces just won’t do.

In recent years, developers have made strides towards meeting demand. A few years back, by MedCity’s calculations, there was unmet demand for 500,000 square feet of lab space. That has now been halved and more is in the pipeline, but “right now it’s almost a case of it you build it they will come”. Significant newcomers include the Tribeca building at the Francis Crick Institute in Camden and Paper Yard at Canada Water. An extension to the British Library is proposed too.

Currently, London trails only Boston and San Francisco is terms of life sciences capability, as measured by MedCity. “What we would like is for London to be the global city of choice,” Kukula said, emphasising too the desirability of international collaboration on research. A “London offer” for life sciences has just been launched in the hope of attracting more talent, more investment and, of course, more breakthroughs.

It is hoped that 80,000 new life sciences jobs will appear in London over the next ten years, something for everyone from archetypal boffins in white coats to clinical trial-runners, business developers and communications officers. MedCity, which last year joined forces with promotional agency London and Partners, is presently working on input into the London Growth Plan, which is expected to be published later this year.

Dave Hill is a trustee of The London Society and also works for it on its podcasts. 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.

Categories: Analysis
Tags: Guys Hospital, Moorfields eye hospital, St Thomas's Hospital, The London Society

Sadiq Khan to strike upbeat note about HS2 and Euston

The Mayor will hint in a speech tonight that the link between Old Oak Common and the central London station will be built
Noah Vickers, Local Democracy Reporter

Sadiq Khan will tonight strike an optimistic tone in a speech about the prospect of the High Speed 2 rail line reaching Euston.

Speaking at the London Transport Museum’s annual dinner and auction, the Mayor is expected to say it is “looking increasingly positive” that the multi-billion pound railway will terminate in the city centre, rather than at Old Oak Common.

It comes after the Sunday Times reported last week that the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, is preparing to approve plans for the required 4.5 mile tunnel link and for an overhaul of Euston station itself.

A government source told the newspaper: “HS2 just wouldn’t work if the terminus was not at Euston. The station is also well overdue for investment and has become a dystopian mess and a stain on London.”

The question of whether HS2 would reach Euston became less certain in October last year, when the then PM Rishi Sunak announced that the link from Old Oak Common and the construction of a new station at Euston – together estimated to cost £4.8 billion, having ballooned from an original budget of £2.6 billion – would instead be built using private finance.

But Sir John Armitt, chair of the National Infrastructure Commission, poured cold water on the proposal, saying that the Government will still “need to be ready to fund the core civil engineering” works.

In his speech, Khan will say: “In my first two terms as mayor, it would’ve been unthinkable to call a minister, pitch an idea and for them to then approve it.
“But this government – not yet three months old – has already consented to our plans to build 350 new homes at Cockfosters station and to breathe new life into Oxford Street.

“And while I don’t want to tempt fate, it’s looking increasingly positive that HS2 will come to Euston. This – for me – is but a glimpse of the London we can build.”

If Reeves does back the Euston link in her upcoming Budget, it remains unclear whether the Government will retain Sunak’s slimmed-down plans for a six-platform HS2 terminus or reinstate the original blueprint for an 11-platform layout, with a new Tube station.

The Mayor will on Wednesday however reiterate his promise to use his position “to lobby for more transport investment in our city”, including the extension of the DLR to Thamesmead, the opening of the West London Orbital rail line and the Bakerloo line extension to Lewisham and beyond.

Realising those projects will be partly dependent on Transport for London (TfL) securing a long-term funding deal, which Khan says is necessary “to give us the capacity to reach for the future once again”.

The Mayor’s speech will come on the eve of his Thursday trip – with transport secretary Louise Haigh – to Goole, Yorkshire, where Siemens Mobility will start building modernised Piccadilly line trains at a new facility there.

“It’s a project that’ll create up to 700 direct jobs and a further 1,700 in the supply chain,” Khan will say.

“Let us not forget that our new Piccadilly line fleet is just one example of the enormous and enduring contribution TfL makes to our wider economy and society.

“Our investment means businesses of all sizes in every corner of our nation can grow. In turn, more workers are provided dignity and security through meaningful jobs.
“When London builds, Britain benefits. It’s a basic formula, but it works.

“And it’s the one I’ll be putting to ministers tomorrow – and every day after – on behalf of TfL, our friends in industry and all Londoners as we seek to kickstart a new era of strong and sustainable growth across our country.”

The Mayor will also pledge to “protect the Crossrail 2 route, so the grand project to link north and south London can be realised one day” and will hail his plans to create a second Superloop network of express bus routes.

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.

Categories: News
Tags: Euston station, HS2, Sadiq Khan

Charles Wright: Ground is already prepared for Sadiq Khan’s new London Plan

The Mayor's relationship with the new government is more collaborative than with the previous one, but will also require a new approach to housing delivery and development
Charles Wright

Planning policy is rarely out of the news in London, whether it’s a story about the City skyline or “out of character” housing in the suburbs. But the process of drawing up Sadiq Khan’s next  London Plan – the long-term strategy governing what actually gets built, and where – has been happening somewhat under the radar.

That’s all about to change, with City Hall confirming the timetable for the new plan. A “high level” key issues document will be published early next year, consultation on a first draft to the end of 2025, further consultation and the statutory “examination in public” by planning inspectors through 2026, and final ministerial approval in 2027.

When it comes to development, the plan is the main weapon in the Mayor’s arsenal. Borough local plans must conform with it and its policies must be taken into account when councils decide individual planning applications. So what can we expect after Christmas when Khan, working for the first time with a government of his own persuasion, sets out his blueprint’s key themes?

One thing is clear – the new plan will be very different from the current one. Before the mayoral election that plan came under sustained fire from the government and from the property business. Its 113 detailed policies were accused of preventing “thousands of homes” being brought forward, particularly on brownfield sites.

Now, Labour has set out its own proposals for reform, focused on getting more homes built. A mandatory target of 81,000 new homes a year has been set for the city – more than double current annual delivery – along with, most controversially, a more permissive approach to development on the Green Belt.

For many observers, this is a welcome if belated recognition of the reality that there simply isn’t enough brownfield land in the city to meet need. The reforms will allow the construction of new homes on previously-developed “grey belt” within the Green Belt, and even on undeveloped land where boroughs’ delivery is falling significantly short.

Preventing development on Green Belt land, which covers more than a fifth of Greater London’s land area, remains a cause uniting politicians cross-party, as the London Assembly demonstrated last month. But they may already be fighting yesterday’s battle. Khan cannily left of his 2024 manifesto any mention of the Green Belt, paving the way to accepting the anticipated new government’s stance.

To hit that 81,000 target, though, speeding up development on brownfield sites will be vital too. Khan dismissed the previous government’s criticisms of his performance as an election stunt, saying that Covid and wider global economic factors had hit construction and the property markets across the board and his plan could not be held responsible.

But a pre-election government review which found “persuasive evidence” that Khan’s policies, including his 35 per cent affordable homes quotas, were, in difficult times, effectively costing would-be housebuilders too much, struck a chord not only with developers but with some at City Hall too.

Boroughs had been “excessively mechanistic” in applying the plan, critics said, treating “shoulds” as “musts”. With a growing professional consensus that the next plan should focus on “strategic outcomes rather than detailed means of implementation”, Khan’s manifesto conceded that reform was required. And housing secretary Angela Rayner is already, albeit in a comradely way, laying down the law.

The new government’s prescriptions, including a proposed “brownfield passport” strengthening the presumption in favour of building on previously developed sites and a watering down of rules blocking “out of character” schemes, offer opportunities to promote higher density development on larger and smaller sites too. Might we now see the return of Khan’s 2017 target of some 24,500 new homes a year on small sites, which didn’t survive the inspectors’ scrutiny?

With City Hall under government orders to boost its output, tensions also need to be resolved between the Mayor’s focus on genuinely affordable housing and the fact that many remaining brownfield sites are complex and costly to redevelop. The new plan will need to be flexible enough to address viability, which could put pressure on those affordable quotas unless more government cash is forthcoming.

London cannot afford to lose active industrial land either, according to recent studies, while the government also wants appropriate provision to be made for the “modern economy”, from laboratories and logistics facilities to gigafactories.

With hybrid working now the “new normal” and three in four central London offices requiring significant upgrades to meet new energy efficiency standards, according to the London Property Alliance, more clarity on the choice between retrofitting and redeveloping is required. Should the current plan policy prioritising offices in the central commercial area also be relaxed? Or is it time to take a fresh look at the policy requiring the capital to meet all its housing need within its limits, something it has consistently failed to do?

Plenty of questions, then, for the new London Plan. Khan’s direction of travel will be apparent after Christmas. But the holy grail for this new relationship between a Labour Mayor and a Labour government, certainly in the short term, is still likely to be money – money for affordable homes, for transport schemes left dormant by the previous government and more. When it comes to the speedy unlocking of the thousands more homes the city needs, it may well be Rachel Reeves rather than Angela Rayner who holds the key. All eyes on 30 October.

Details of City Hall’s work to date on the next London Plan, including sign-up arrangements to be kept informed or get involved as the work progresses, can be found here.

Categories: Analysis
Tags: housing, planning, Sadiq Khan, The London Plan

Dave Hill: Love or hate Wimbledon’s expansion plan, be glad that Gove has gone

Not everyone is happy with City Hall's approval of the ambitious scheme but at least the new secretary of state hasn't poked her nose in for no good reason
Dave Hill

Not everyone is overjoyed about City Hall allowing the All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTA) to go ahead with enlarging its Wimbledon operation. But let us all rejoice that – to draw a metaphor from a different sport – the scheme is not to be misused as a political football by a higher government power.

In theory, Angela Rayner, Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, could intervene. She could go over the head of Jules Pipe, Sadiq Khan’s deputy for planning, who on Friday gave the AELTA a green light, and determine the matter herself. She could issue a “holding direction”, meaning nothing at all would happen while she had a nice long think about it.

However, Rayner has rejected taking such paths. Instead, she has allowed London’s strategic layer of government to make strategic planning decisions for London, which – clue in job description – is what it is there for.

Here is an answer for Londoners (and others) impatiently questioning what the point of electing a Labour government has been, for the difference in such matters between Rayner’s hands-off stance and that of her Conservative predecessor is stark.

Michael Gove, soon to bring his famous civility and infamous chicanery to the helm of The Spectator magazine, expended considerable energy on poking his nose into the planning policy business of London’s Mayor and in a manner suggesting that seeking electoral advantage was a larger motivation than were discernment and consistency.

Gove, you will recall, pulled rank on both Khan and Westminster Council to block Marks & Spencer’s desire to knock down its store at the Marble Arch end of Oxford Street and build a new one. That was nearly two years after Westminster, then Conservative-run, approved the scheme, but with the ensuing blessing of Khan.

Many more months passed before M&S won a High Court appeal against Gove. The judge very strikingly remarked that he had “relied on a meaning of the national planning policy framework which is simply not open to him”.

The case of the Marble Arch store is seen as a finely-balanced study of the respective climate change merits of, on the one hand, demolition followed by sustainable replacement and, on the other, retrofit. But some suspect that Gove placed questionably heavy weight on heritage considerations, recruiting these to the service of the never-ending, ever-failing Tory culture war on the always-winning Labour Mayor.

Compare and contrast with Gove’s parallel interest in the MSG Sphere, an illuminated bulbous music venue of a thoroughly un-traditional kind proposed for a site next to the Olympic Park. Khan turned down the flashing globe. But Gove called it in even after the US company had got the hump and bailed. After all, they’d criticised the Mayor.

In February, having appropriated it in April 2022, Gove gave a thumbs up to the 72 Upper Ground scheme, replacing the old London Weekend Television studios on the South Bank, after Southwark and Khan had already done so. He had previously done much the same with a Berkeley Homes development in Hounslow, though on that occasion he ended up over-ruling his own planning inspector.

In short, most of Gove’s planning incursions produced precious little but avoidable delay and confected opportunities to take vote-seeking pops at Khan, these serving the same purpose as his grandstanding pronouncements about housing.

What, though, should we make of Rayner’s letter to Khan rescinding Gove’s dying administration orders while also informing him that his upcoming review of the London Plan, master blueprint for the city’s development, should encompass the issues about Opportunity Areas, industrial land and designations deemed “too inflexible” Gove had raised, rather than dealing with them in isolation?

The missive is couched in the language of partnership, but also informs Khan that “the government does expect London to take steps to boost its output”. Is this ultimately just a friendlier kind of top-down browbeating?

Perhaps pause before before rushing to that conclusion. At a London Property Alliance event held in Victoria just five days after the general election, Lisa Fairmaner, City Hall’s Head of London Plan and Growth Strategies, anticipated that a “more streamlined” London Plan would result from the new government’s already forthcoming revised national planning framework. Khan, Rayner and their respective officials have been having conversations. Whatever Rayner’s letter implies about relations between the minister and the Mayor, it hasn’t come to the latter out of the blue.

There are always going to be processes of negotiation between the Mayor of London – whoever that Mayor is – and the UK government, with outcomes shaped by alignments of purpose, distributions of power, the state of the public purse, the personalities involved and perspectives on how best to help London help the rest of the country.

The importance of the West End’s economy does not evaporate north of Enfield, a national reality that has thankfully not escaped the notice of Keir Starmer’s administration. Regarded in that light, Khan securing Rayner’s blessing to bring Oxford Street under his control seems justified and sensible, not least because even a modest portion of national investment somewhere along the line would probably help. Perhaps a similar dynamic will go for housing.

Of course, the matter of who in London should be in charge of what does not end there. Only anchorites won’t have noticed that Westminster Council has been greatly displeased by the Mayor’s Oxford Street initiative, which has highlighted questions about balances of power between the boroughs and City Hall – the local and regional planning tiers. Just as Rayner’s department is allowed to muscle Mayors out of the way, Mayors can do the same to boroughs.

With Wimbledon, City Hall assumed command in the context of a site that straddles two boroughs, both of them Labour-run. One of these, Merton, approved the (larger) section of the scheme that fell into its domain. The other, Wandsworth, did the reverse. In a sense, then, City Hall took on a tie-breaker role in the tennis deadlock. Local campaigners are unhappy with the result, but it was a proper use of mayoral prerogative – one which should also help secure the long-term future of Wimbledon as a grand slam tennis tournament that does the nation’s finances no harm. Rayner is right to have kept out of it

In the end, it’s as much about attitude as anything. With Gove gone, that has already improved.

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

Categories: Comment
Tags: Angela Rayner, Michael Gove, planning, Sadiq Khan, Wimbledon

Honouring pioneer gardener Fanny Wilkinson in Red Lion Square

She blazed a trail for women and created a remarkable array of green public spaces for London
Dave Hill

Fanny Wilkinson was born near Manchester in 1855, but by the end of 1883 she was a graduate of the Crystal Palace School of Landscape Gardening and Practical Horticulture and all set to make her many indelible marks on London’s built environment. She was also one of the city’s less sensational but perhaps most significant women’s rights pioneers of that time.

Among Wilkinson’s numerous achievements was designing the gardens of Red Lion Square. That London location, close to Holborn station, where Holborn itself and Bloomsbury meet, has been notable for an array of reasons ever since its creation in 1684 by the buccaneering property developer (among other things) Nicholas Barbon, eldest son of hellfire parliamentarian Praise-God Barbon – yes, that’s Praise-God Barbon). Before proceeding, Barbon and his workforce had to see off a reported 100-plus, brick-throwing local lawyers who feared their “wholesome air” would be polluted by his latest venture.

Other Red Lion Square claims to fame include providing the main entrance to Conway Hall, HQ since it opened in 1929 of the Conway Hall Ethical Society – an ironic association given some of Barbon’s business methods. Before that, it allegedly accommodated the disinterred remains of Oliver Cromwell and, much later, in 1974, the square was the scene of a fight between National Front supporters and anti-fascist groups at which a student protester died. Wilkinson’s contribution to Red Lion Square’s history has been one of its more tranquil and, along with her wider influence on the capital, more lasting and transformative than most.

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Landscape gardening was so dominated by men in her era that she was the only woman on her Crystal Palace course. Yet after completing it she was very quickly elected an honorary gardener to the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association, a charity (which still exists) devoted to the provision of new public spaces, and soon after employed on a professional basis, making her the first woman in England to attain that status.

In all, Wilkinson was the force behind at least 75 public gardens of various sizes in various parts of London, including Goldsmith Square in Hackney, Myatt’s Fields Park in Camberwell, Paddington Street Gardens in Marylebone, Meath Gardens in Bethnal Green, the churchyard of St John’s church (now Smith Square Hall) in Smith Square, Westminster and the garden of St Luke’s church in Chelsea.

She was also commissioned to design Vauxhall Park, which open in 1890, the culmination of a campaign by suffragist Millicent Fawcett, social reformer Octavia Hill and others. Fawcett and her sisters became good friends of Wilkinson, whose former home in Bloomsbury is marked by a blue plaque beside the recently-created Princes Circus, a new piece of public realm in the space between New Oxford Street and Shaftesbury Avenue.

Img 3915

I was pleased to be invited to a gathering that took place yesterday morning in Red Lion Square, organised by the Friends of Red Lion Square Gardens. The occasion was the unveiling by local resident and distinguished actor Tim McInnerny of a memorial stone in honour of Wilkinson.

I had known little about her until I embarked on my interviews for the latest London Society podcast. Sarah Wood, chair of the Friends of St John’s Garden in Clerkenwell, enthused about her and her influence on spaces such as the garden. Another of my interviewees was Patricia Wager, interim chair of the Friends of Red Lion Square Gardens, and this provided an opportunity for me to mention Wilkinson in my script.

McInnerny, Wager (both pictured above) and local author and campaigner Elizabeth Crawford all said a few words as bubbly was sipped in the autumn sunshine. It was a pleasing occasion in honour of a remarkable woman and Londoner.

Listen to the London Society podcast, mentioning Fanny Wilkinson, featuring Patricia Wager and Sarah Wood, and funded by the Central District Alliance BID, HERE.

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.

Categories: Culture
Tags: Bloomsbury, Clerkenwell, Fanny Wilkinson, Holborn, Red Lion Square

John Vane: London Fiction – A Bear Called Paddington

Reading the very first Michael Bond's stories about one of the treasures of children's fiction all the way through brings home the context in which he was created
John Vane

I’ve set myself the task for 2024 of reading and then writing about 25 pieces of London fiction I haven’t read before. This is number 18 in the series.

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The very first story of Paddington, the famous small bear, was published in 1958, the year I was born and just 13 years after the end of World War II. Michael Bond’s beautiful gift to children’s fiction is endlessly curious and unfailingly well-meaning, qualities which, when combined with an earnest naivety, lead him into a series of comedy scrapes from which he somehow always emerges sometimes triumphantly unscathed.

Named, of course, after the station of that name, is also a particular type of Londoner – one who is both of his own time and of all of times in London’s history. It wasn’t until quite recently that I began appreciating this. Reading A Bear Called Paddington properly, all the way through, for the first time has helped me to appreciate it more.

Look at it this way. The bear in question, real name unknown, was an overseas migrant who had stowed away in the lifeboat of a ship that sailed to Britain from his native Peru. How he came to fetch up in a London rail terminus for trains that link the capital with the west of England and south Wales is not revealed in his debut volume of adventures. Did he, perhaps, alight in Bristol or Cardiff and fare-dodge on a Great Western service from there?

Neither does Bond divulge how, naked but for his hat, the  young Peruvian national sustained himself on his long sea voyage with a single jar of marmalade. We are asked to believe, too, that a middle-class west London couple, waiting on the platform to meet their daughter on her return from boarding school for the summer holidays, would choose to take the bear into their home in the full knowledge, imparted by the bear himself – “I emigrated, you know” – that he was what some would now call “an illegal”.

But, hey, let’s take a liberal view. It is the spirit that counts, and the spirit of the book carries all before it: the spirit of the Brown family, which gives its new family member his new name and effectively adopts him; the spirit of London, which accommodates him, its cab-drivers and retailers seemingly unfazed by his ability, unusual in bears, to communicate in perfect English, and with immaculate good manners, too; and, of course, the spirit of Paddington himself.

Through the eyes, ears and emotions of his furry hero, Bond captures the excitement and intensity of London as experienced by eager newcomers:

“After weeks of sitting alone in a lifeboat there was so much to see. There were people and cars and big red buses everywhere – it wasn’t a bit like Darkest Peru.”

Paddington falls foul of the cabbie driving driving him and the Browns (“Bears is extra”) and, later, a ticket inspector on the Underground – the comic possibilities of first encounters between escalators and the uninitiated were not lost on Bond – and a lofty sales assistant in a department store called Barkridges (Oxford Street meets High Street Ken). However, when the young ingenue, winningly oblivious to the mayhem he causes, is taken to the theatre – his first, rather thrilling night on the town – he beguiles pompous stage villain Sir Sealy Bloom.

And there’s Portobello Road market, just round the corner from where the Brown family lives. Paddington is enthralled by the array of goods on sale there and the traders are enthralled by him. He becomes best friends with a Mr Gruber, who runs one of those Portobello shops that blurred the distinction between junk and antiques back in the day.

In A Bear Called Paddington, Mr Gruber is described only as someone who had “been in South America as a boy”, giving him and Paddington something in common. But in his postscript to the 2001 Kindle edition I’ve been reading, Bond adds that they also share the experience of “what it is like to be a refugee in a strange country”.

Bond, who died in 2017, aged 91, said in 2012 that Mr Gruber had come from Hungary. A couple of years later, he said he was based on his first literary agent, a Jewish German, Harvey Unna, of whom Bond recalled: “He was in line to be the youngest judge in Germany, when he was warned his name was on a list, so he got out and came to England with just a suitcase and £25 to his name.” Bond said during the same interview that Paddington himself was partially inspired by the Jewish refugee children he had seen arriving in Reading, where he lived at that time, by train. “Refugees are the saddest sight,” he remarked.

Paddington, famously, has adapted well to the passing decades, as shown by the Paddington movies and the publication in the year following that of Bond’s death of a new Paddington story, Paddington At St Paul’s. There have been judicious concessions to change along the way: the edition I’ve read for this piece has prices in pounds and pence; a the pre-decimalisation original would, I’m sure, would have contained a shilling or two.

Yet, for all the adaptations, one of Paddington’s wellington boots was planted by his creator in time before his birth. “Although Paddington’s adventures take place in the present,” Bond’s postscript says, “I always picture him going home at the end of the day to the rather safer pre-war world which I remember from my childhood.”

That’s Paddington: not just loveable bear, but a loveable Londoner bear and so much more.

John Vane is a pen name used for London fiction, for writing about London fiction and for sketches of London life by OnLondon editor and publisher Dave Hill. Buy John Vane’s London novel Frightgeist: A Tall Tale of Fearful Times here, here or here. Subscribe to his Substack here.

Categories: Culture, John Vane's London Stories
Tags: Paddington, Paddington Bear, Paddington station

Oxford Street: Let Sadiq control Soho too, says leading local property boss

The managing director of Soho Estates has confirmed that he would welcome the Mayor's planned new powers reaching beyond Oxford Street itself
Dave Hill

A new intervention in the furore over who should decide the future of Oxford Street has intensified anxieties at Westminster Council about how large an area around the street itself Sadiq Khan might take control of with his proposed new Mayoral Development Corporation.

On Tuesday morning, an array of interested parties, including the Mayor, were sent a letter from John James, managing director of Soho Estates, a long-time major property-owner in the area famously active in the hospitality industries – restaurants, clubs, bars and so on.

Prefaced with a quote from Rachel Reeves about the new government’s commitment to economic growth, the letter makes a vigorous case against Labour-run Westminster’s attitude to West End businesses in general and emphasises the particular importance of Soho as a visitor attraction. It ends by applauding Mayor Khan “for introducing a Mayoral Development Corporation in Westminster”.

Note: not just for Oxford Street but “in Westminster”. Did that mean that James would like to see the boundary of the MDC embrace Soho along with Oxford Street itself? It certainly looked that way to leading councillors at Westminster. And now James has been good enough to confirm to On London that he would positively welcome such a move.

“I was as surprised as anybody that Sadiq Khan did what he did,” he says. “But if the West End is going to be more successful, and he says he wants to work with businesses, he’s got to be an improvement on what we’ve got.” He adds: “Soho is like every high street in the country – it’s struggling for it’s life.”

In part, James’s letter echoes disquiet being expressed elsewhere in the property sector about Westminster’s planning policies, which its critics regard as grudging and too restrictive towards development. However, the letter rebukes the council at greater length over its approach to licensing.

“The government wants to encourage growth and prosperity through engagement with the private sector,” it says, “and they and the GLA [Greater London Authority] want to promote London as a 24-hour International City. Sadly, the reality is much less attractive in Westminster”.

James’s letter expresses impatience with the progress of Westminster’s After Dark initiative, currently out for consultation, whose stated aim is to “create an inclusive evening and night-time plan” informed by residents, visitors, business owners and local community groups alike. And it accuses the council of “acting like a rural parish council” rather than “behaving like the most important local authority in the entire country”.

The letter is critical of particular councillors and claims some “are using planning and licensing powers to deliver entirely the opposite of encouraging anything after dark” and “appear overly influenced by a small group of local residents”. The latter, according to James’s letter, “seem resistant to preserving Soho’s diverse character and instead advocate for transforming this vibrant district into an insular village, disregarding its significant role within an international city”.

London’s existing MDCs, created for the Olympic Park and its environs and for the Old Oak and Park Royal regeneration zone, became the planning authorities for their respective areas at the expense of the boroughs affected. However, they did not assume powers over premises licensing.

When asked about it by On London, City Hall swiftly denied a rumour circulating among other interested parties that Khan has already asked the government if his MDC can take over licensing powers from the council and been turned down. Nonetheless, James believes that the shake-up an MDC would entail would be beneficial in that regard, describing how local authority planning and licensing powers can overlap to some degree.

James’s analysis of the impact of Westminster’s approach could hardly contrast more sharply with that of the council itself, which remains furious about Khan’s MDC initiative and sees its own Oxford Street strategy, born of a lengthy consensus-building exercise, as far more appropriate for a part of the capital where businesses and residents of many kinds have long co-existed.

Westminster Labour has always been against pedestrianisation, and senior councillors are concerned that introducing it along with a slackening of planning rules across a wider area under an MDC would turn the whole area into what one of them terms “party central”.

The fear is that this would lead to a further rise in property values, followed by large new buildings of a type some local voters objected to when Conservatives ran Westminster, and an exodus of wealthier residents, who would rent their properties for Air B&B use instead of living in them. The West End’s many social housing occupants, meanwhile, would just have to put up with it. The overall outcome, according to On London‘s Westminster source, is that the “villages” of Mayfair, Fitzrovia, Marylebone and, yes, Soho, “would all be killed”.

James’s letter also argues that “many operators are considering moving out because of Westminster’s obvious bias against them” and calls for more al fresco dining to be allowed, as happened as an emergency measure during the pandemic to help restaurateurs stay afloat.

James favours restrictions on cars to facilitate this, citing Camden’s policy towards Charlotte Street in his letter as one example of how to do it well. He writes: “I fear Alfresco has been politicalised and misinterpreted as a vote loser in Soho. In reality, we know from the pandemic and since, that many residents support alfresco and enjoyed it when it was in use.” Some residents, though, would disagree.

This new storyline in the Oxford Street saga has unfolded while the Mayor has been visiting New York. Yesterday he was taken on a stroll in New York City’s Times Square, saying its regeneration could be a model for what he wants to do with the world-famous London thoroughfare sometimes known as “the nation’s high street”. This saga has a long way yet to go.
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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. Photo: A Soho junction.

Categories: News
Tags: John James, Mayoral Development Corporations, Oxford Street, planning, Sadiq Khan, Soho Estates, Westminster Council

John Vane: London Fiction – The Adventure of the Cheap Flat

Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot short story from the 1920s reveals, among other things, that flat-hunting in the capital has never been straightforward
John Vane

I’ve set myself the task for 2024 of reading and then writing about 25 pieces of London fiction I haven’t read before. This is number 17 in the endearingly ramshackle series.

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I continue to cheat a bit in this project by including very short stories, which are helping me get up to speed. September is nearly over and you know how the autumn months fly by. It’s my self-inflicted target and I’ll fiddle the way I hit it if I want to. And surely an Agatha Christie tale inspired by the maddening and expensive business of renting a London flat merits inclusion.

The Adventure of The Cheap Flat, first published in The Sketch magazine in 1923, begins in the dwelling of Gerald Parker, a friend of Captain Arthur Hastings, sidekick and confidant of Christie’s detective hero, Hercule Poirot, and also the story’s narrator.

“The talk fell, as it was bound to sooner or later wherever Parker found himself, on the subject of house-hunting in London,” Hastings informs us. His host was a connoisseur: “It was sheer love of the sport that actuated him, and not a desire to make money at it.”

Another guest, whom Hastings takes a shine to, is a Mrs Stella Robinson, accompanied by her husband. She reveals that they have “at last” had found a flat in a big handsome block called Montagu Mansions, “just off Knightsbridge” for the “dirt cheap” price of £80 a year. “It’s a blinking miracle,” Parker exclaims.

Not so fast. Hastings relates the conversation to Poirot, who in no time has visited letting agents in Brompton Road and rented a flat in the same building two floors above. Soon, he and Hastings are – as you do – lowering themselves in a coal lift to the Robinsons’ back door and fixing it so they can later let themselves in.

By this means they capture an Italian crook from New York who breaks into the place seeking revenge for a murder (“who was it dat croaked Luigi Valdarno?”). The three of them then take a taxi to an address in St John’s Wood, “a small house standing back off the road”, where the ultimate villain is revealed, along with the explanation for Ms Robinson and her spouse getting their bargain.

It’s an ingenious, skilfully-told and enjoyable silly bit of work by an extraordinary writer whose stage play, The Mousetrap, opened in the West End in 1952 and is still going strong, interrupted only by the pandemic. A small highlight is Hastings making a Sherlock Holmes wisecrack.

The London of The Adventure of the Cheap Flat is much the same interwar city this series has previously encountered through the words of Jean Rhys and George Orwell. It is, as you would expect, more plot and detection than social observation, but nonetheless opens a window on the capital of its era, not least by showing us that renting is an eternal London nightmare, one that even the well-to-do had to endure (the Robinsons have a maid) in the days when private renting was very much the norm.

Was there such a building as Montagu Mansions at the time Christie penned her tale? Not as far as I know. But there is a whole street going by that name in Marylebone, a name I assume has a connection with the first Duke of Montagu, whose grand Bloomsbury pile became the first home of the British Museum. Any link with Christie’s creation? That is a mystery, at least to me. If anyone can solve it, drop me a line.

John Vane is a pen name used by Dave Hill, editor and publisher of On London. Buy his London novel Frightgeist: A Tall Tale of Fearful Times here, here or here. Subscribe to his Substack too. The Adventure of the Cheap Flat is available in the collection Poirot Investigates or individually for Kindle. It was adapted for television in 1990 (see picture).

Categories: Culture, John Vane's London Stories
Tags: Agatha Christie, Knightsbridge, London Fiction, St John's Wood