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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

Dave Hill: There’s lots of London news about, and it’s getting better

The Evening Standard's best days could be ahead and there's a range of newcomers too
Dave Hill

Will I miss the daily Evening Standard newspaper? Not much. I don’t commute, was never interested by its showbiz pages and didn’t need its national news. And I can still get the stuff I want from it online, where I was mostly getting it from anyway.

The Standard has been slashing jobs, and that’s not good. Yet in some ways it has improved: its website is better-looking than it was, I’m hopeful for its forthcoming reincarnation as a weekly – the magazine background of editor Dylan Jones will surely help – and this year’s mayoral election saw it, by and large, take the even-handed approach it should always have taken in the past, but rarely did. Its past abuse of its monopoly position reached a pathetic peak when it was placed at the service of Boris Johnson’s political ambitions by a handful of his media cronies. Some legacy.

That said, even at its worst the Standard has had some excellent reporters. I hope my current favourites don’t disappear. One of them has told me that no longer needing to produce copy for both a printed product and a website could make it easier to strengthen the latter – another possible reason to be cheerful.

There are more. BBC London News endures, not without its own struggles against cuts, but its output is still top drawer. ITV’s equally polished London wing is still with us too. From the web, MyLondon sends out a daily stream of stories, local and regional, many of them supplied by journalists funded by the BBC-backed Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS), created to make up for the shrinkage or demise of local newspapers in general as business models have collapsed.

The LDRS also helps to sustain the Standard and a range of sub-regional or borough-focused titles, some of them part of my regular diet, such as the Enfield Dispatch and the Hackney Citizen. Residents of Camden have been supporting the Camden New Journal since 1982. Newspapers, paid-for or free, still exist across the capital, as do online versions of them and website-only publications. They are diverse, diffuse, variable and sometimes emaciated shadows of former selves, but the simple point is that reports of the death of London journalism sometimes have misleading headlines.

There are newcomers concerned with the city as a whole. The Greater London Project, a Substack operation run by Joe Hill, policy director of think tank Reform, in collaboration with Adam Smith Institute research director Sam Bowman, has been going since July, publishing pieces by various authors in the cause of “celebrating the things that make London great, and working to make it even greater”. As you might expect, they are concern with large policy ideas – cleaning the Thames, building new neighbourhoods, how to make Crossrail 2 happen.

Just back from its holidays, The London Spy  has been going for over a year, with a mixture of long-form inquiries, round-ups and “weird stuff” (its words). There are probably others I’ve yet to find. And coming soon are new online ventures, expected later in the autumn.

Joshi Hermann, whose The Mill has thrived in Manchester and spread its approach to Liverpool, Sheffield and Birmingham, will launch a London operation with a staff of three and a feature-led output of “narrative journalism”, much of it already commissioned. Speaking to me from Manchester, he marvels about the huge number of journalists London contains, many of them rendered dormant by lay-offs and the evaporation of freelance budgets. There were, he says, some 270 applicants for those three London jobs.

More recently, Jim Waterson has left the Guardian, where he was media editor, and announced London Centric, describing it as “a modern news outlet for the capital doing journalism in the old-fashioned way”. Spurred to act by the end of the dead-tree Standard, he will start out on Substack and perhaps later expand to other platforms. He tells me he hopes to generate talking points and debate, drawing wider media interest. London Centric – clue in title – promises to provide “all-London journalism” about “who really runs” the place.

All of this is to the good. In a city of nine million people there must be a demand for an array of journalism about the city and its infinite variety of activities, issues and lives, with different outlets complementing each other more than they compete for the same narrow space – and, most important of all, for London news, analysis and comment that strives to be fair, accurate and devoted to enhancing readers’ understand of what goes on here, rather than feeding prejudices or confecting product for the outrage market.

The website you are reading was set up by me in a much simpler form the day after my final freelance contract as the Guardian’s self-publishing London commentator – the best job in my trade I’d ever had – expired at the end of January 2017. I was neither alone in being jettisoned, nor surprised: self-employed contributors are the usual soft-target victims of the savings axe and, on top of that, it was becoming clear to me that my approach to writing about London had fallen foul of a reductive, left-populist groupthink within the paper’s big departments, from opinion to news to (even) sport.

I started On London in order to provide an antidote to that sort of thing, to continue writing about the much-maligned, misrepresented and misunderstood city, its politics, development and culture, in the way I wanted to – and to create a space where kindred spirits, rich in expertise and good at writing too, could do the same. Seven-and-a-half years on, my media empire remains one of the planet’s smallest, run solely by me from one very untidy room in my house in Hackney. But it’s still going and the number of people who support it keeps inching up. London needs more dedicated London journalism. And it’s getting it.

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: BBC London News, Evening Standard, journalism

Lewis Baston: Lessons for Labour from Westminster Council by-elections

Two contests held in different parts of the central London borough illustrated the downside of the party's huge general election triumph
Lewis Baston

The City of Westminster is in one sense just one of the 32 London boroughs, providing local services and functioning as a democratic representative institution for the 200,000 or so people – or at least those entitled to vote – in its patch. But at another level it is a uniquely prestigious local authority whose concerns cover places of national and international importance – no other council has as much to do, day to day, with central government and even the royal household.

Westminster is also the location of a lot of strategic London assets that attract the attention of the Mayor of London, such as the entertainment and tourist economy of the West End and the most formal parts of a global city. The council’s perspective, like that of its residents, does not always chime with those of other levels of government. For example, in its early days the last Labour government and the then Conservative-controlled Westminster fell into conflict over the pedestrianisation of the north side of Trafalgar Square. The national government, its strategic role in the capital inherited by London’s first Mayor, Ken Livingstone from 2000, prevailed and the square is better for it.

Some of Westminster’s residential neighbourhoods are very wealthy, with long-term inhabitants a minority and many properties rented or owned by the international rich. Others are wildly diverse and transient. But Westminster also contains some more ordinary inner London neighbourhoods, particularly in its north west. Two by-elections held last Thursday (19 September) illustrated the complexity and diversity of London’s innermost borough, as Labour defended one seat in West End ward and another in Harrow Road ward.

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Even for central London, West End ward is exotic. The epicentre of its politics is Soho, and its territory extends out to Mayfair and Westminster’s part of Fitzrovia. It covers the length of Oxford Street, from Marble Arch to Tottenham Court Road, and the north side of Piccadilly – basically most of the more expensive half of the Monopoly board. Local politics is complicated by issues that arise only in the heart of the city, such as rogue “American Candy” stores and pedicab regulation, along with acute cases of broader conflicts between, for instance, a global city’s night time economy and the interests of local residents. Community politics in these parts is conducted by well-organised and articulate groups.

West End’s political complexion has usually been Conservative – the qualified electors in residential properties of Mayfair give the party of the right something of a foundation. But Labour has been improving in recent local elections. They picked up one of the three seats (on different boundaries) in 2018 and in Labour’s Westminster council annus mirabilis in 2022 they swept them all up. One of those 2022 winners was Jessica Toale, who was subsequently selected as Labour candidate for Bournemouth West parliamentary constituency. The Dorset seat was one of Labour’s first-time gains in July’s general election, and last month Toale stepped down from the council to concentrate on her new responsibilities.

West End was always going to be a tricky ward for Labour to defend. The party’s 2022 majority was narrow, and winning the council for the first time ever had inevitably introduced some friction and disappointment into relationships with electors. Then, in the week of the by-election, Sadiq Khan announced that it intended to proceed with the pedestrianisation of Oxford Street.

While the state of street is not the pride of London and there is surely a majority across the capital for doing something about it, the people who are most worried about the impact of road closures and the massive rerouting of buses are concentrated in West End. The local campaign was also concerned with normal issues such as crime, but West End experiences street disorder in different and perhaps more intense forms than other wards. It was fought with high intensity the Tories and Labour, with activists, including new MPs, pounding the sticky pavements of the heart of the city.

The Conservatives candidate, Tim Barnes (pictured), emerged as the West End winner, returning as a West End council member having lost his seat there in 2022 and going on to be defeated in the general election contest for Cities of London & Westminster, one of Labour’s many gains. But he was the Tories’ strongest vote-winner in West End in 2022 and is regarded as an effective and hard-working local advocate who knows his way around the complex world of local resident and business groups.

He received 627 votes compared to 489 for Labour’s Fiona Parker. Green Rajiv Sinha (94 votes) and Liberal Democrat Phillip Kerle (74 votes) were squeezed out in this two-party contest. However, a turnout of only 16.8 per cent was extremely poor for such an energetically-contested seat. Even with local issues and a strong candidate helping them, the Conservative won because of a slump in Labour support rather than an increase in their own.

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Harrow Road ward seems half a world away from West End. It is in the corner of Westminster  that has always been a Labour stronghold, although its Walterton and Elgin estates were central to the gerrymandering scandal of Westminster’s days as a Tory flagship in the 1980s. The ward covers an irregularly-shaped patch of the inner city around the road from which it takes its name, including Fernhead Road and Elgin Avenue. It is a neighbourhood labelled on maps with names like Maida Hill, West Kilburn and Westbourne Green, none of which really capture its identity – the ward name does a better job.

As with West End, the by-election was a consequence of the general election and a first-time Labour win far from the capital. Until January, Tim Roca was the council’s deputy leader. Originally from Cheshire, in July he became the first Labour MP for his home constituency of Macclesfield. There were more candidates for Harrow Road than for West End – as well as hopefuls from the “big four” London parties, there was an Independent and a candidate from George Galloway’s Workers Party (“For Britain, For Gaza”, according to the ballot paper slogan).

As with West End, the electorate was not particularly responsive to their collective efforts and turnout was even lower, at 14.6 per cent. Even for a safe ward amid the desultory calm of the post-election period and in September before political life has properly got going again after the summer lull, participation was low. The Labour share of the vote fell much more sharply than in West End – down 27.6 percentage points compared to 10.5.

The principal beneficiaries were Faaiz Hasan of the Greens, who came second with 244 votes despite the party not standing in 2022, and the third-placed Workers Party, who went from its own standing start to 166 votes. Labour’s Regan Hook took the seat with 512 votes. Despite the steep Labour drop, the result was not particularly close. in this respect it rather resembled the three Camden by-elections held a fortnight ago.

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What conclusions can be drawn from the two results? An obvious one is that Westminster will be closely-contested at the next borough elections, due in 2026. It will be hard for Labour to repeat its triumph of 2022, when the Conservative national government was unpopular, Boris Johnson was attracting the disgust of many of the wealthy and educated centre-right voters who form the local Tory bedrock, and the Tory-run council had made avoidable blunders such as the Marble Arch mound. Labour’s administration in Westminster has been accomplished and progressive in many ways, but that may not be enough.

Another conclusion is that Labour is now weak in areas of previous strength, following the general election. The party can get away with this in a national ballot – indeed, it was part of the formula that led to its vote being distributed efficiently. But there may be a price to pay in local government contests. The same goes for turnout. This always falls in Labour areas when there are Labour governments, and this could presage some uncomfortable local election outcomes.

The two Westminster by-elections were not even Labour’s worst last week – defeats in Bromsgrove and Worthing probably had more of a sting. Losses of some kind are inevitable in the years ahead, but councillors and council candidates must be hoping for fewer missteps and more solid achievements from the Starmer government if they are to weather the adverse climate.

Support OnLondon.co.uk and its freelancers for just £5 a month or £50 a year and get things for your money too. Details HERE. Follow Lewis Baston on Bluesky. 

Categories: Analysis
Tags: Harrow Road, Tim Barnes, West End, Westminster Council

Julie Hamill’s London: Hooping in Holborn

Living in London means you can keep fit through an assortment of irregular commitments
Julie Hamill

A few months ago I went to a drop-in yoga class at ZenW2 on Queens Parade, Willesden Green. It was great. But in general yoga and I have a love-hate relationship: it loves me and I hate it.

I force myself to go because I feel the benefit when a class is over, my back straight and my muscles warmed. It’s during the class that’s the problem, specifically the first half hour. I’m always bored 25 minutes in. I can’t disconnect from the long list of life. Like a Las Vegas casino, a good yoga studio won’t have a clock in the room but for opposite reasons – yoga is not the thrill that steals time, it’s slow and relaxing. There’s no flashing lights or Elvis and the only gamble is guessing how long you’ve been in there.

I always choose drop-in classes across London, never courses, so that I can avoid familiarity. I’ve told every instructor that I’m a beginner because it gives me the option of disappearing into a child’s pose whenever I feel like it. God forbid I get on first name terms with a teacher who may notice slight improvement in my down dog and encourage me to lift a leg. If they don’t know me, I don’t have to overstretch myself.

Recently, I noticed that City Lit on Keeley Street in Holborn has over 5,000 courses in loads of different stuff, the variety of which is astounding. There’s yoga, contemporary dance, art, design, British Sign Language, creative writing, tech, piano lessons, origami, prop-making, comedy…and one of the best aspects of the college is that you can try any course for a fiver before deciding to sign up and commit to classes. This is very me.

One of the courses is hula hooping. I have three hula hoops at home, one regular and two weighted, plus two arm hoops that lie behind the couch in dusty wait. Perhaps this class could rekindle my hoop love.

The City Lit course costs £99 for four sessions, plus a £20 discount if you recommend a friend. As a motivator to get back into it, I recruit my pal Saskia and we sign up for the £5 taster course, just to check. You can’t be too hasty about these things, even with experience. (Experience has taught me that).

I’m quite excited as we exit Holborn station and head towards City Lit, an adult-education facility I’ve never been to, and I hope to learn new fitness tricks with the hoop in this excellent value 90-minute session. The class is also set to music, making it less likely I’ll look for a clock.

The instructor is very warm, but she explains she’s not an expert hooper and is covering for a shortage of instructors. I say to myself, look, what do you want for a fiver? Get on with it. She then informs us it’s a beginner’s class, and not to worry if we can’t hoop, because we will all be hooping by the end.  Well then. Boom. I can already hoop, so I’m gonna be the champ here.

After a warm up, the boss tells us we’re to hoop for three-and-a-half minutes. Great, I think, and off we go. The room is full of very supportive females cheering each other on and generally being hilarious. One, from Herne Hill, is determined to get it right and pulls the greatest, most sculpture-like body contortions to keep the hoop level at the waist. As hoops drop all around me and I keep hooping I start to feel like an over-achieving imposter.

Our tutor asks for music requests, and I’m instructed by Saskia to take over this task. My mix goes from Grace Jones to Candi Staton to McFadden and Whitehead, then to Saturday Night Fever and A-ha and now most of us are hooping and singing along.

Two women leave early, fed up with the floor pick-up. Four of us remain, and we’re now hooping for our lives like we’re in Squid Game, pushing for the sweat, egging on the flat stomachs. “If the hoop drops, you’re out,” is the unstated focus. Our teacher shouts over the music, but we can’t hear her. There’s a laser focus in Hulaville.

I am approached as the super hooper, and she decides there is something she can teach me. “Hoop the other way,” she says. “You’ll use the muscles on the other side.” I accept this easy challenge. How hard can it be?

My hoop smacks to the floor over and over, and I’m mad with the pick-up. I can’t do it. I cannot hoop to the right. The boss doesn’t smirk, bless her, but she should. Eventually, I master the hoop to the right and she’s all “Woop woop”. I feel ashamed and embarrassed that I have been overly-displaying my mastery of the left.

Saskia is brilliant on the hoop and we’ve had fun. After class we walk up to Soho and I introduce her to a delicious No Meat Monday from Itsu, which we take away. The rain comes pelting down, so we eat in the little tunnel by the Pillars of Hercules, watching it lash and drinking Miso soup. When it stops, the sun comes out and we head to Bond Street for home.

On the Tube, we decide we don’t need to sign up for the City Lit beginners’ hula hooping course because we can both hoop quite well. We commit to practicing in the park together on a more regular basis. Saskia tries to convince me that I could instruct a class (as long as we’re not hooping to the right), but I think I’d only be good at the music.

That was two weeks ago. We’ve done nothing since. I think I might go back to yoga at ZenW2. I’ll put my hair in a bun, wear different trousers, stand at the back and say I’m a beginner.

Julie Hamill writes novels, appears on Times Radio and does lots, lots more. Follow her on X/Twitter. Support OnLondon.co.uk and its writers for just £5 a month or £50 a year and get things for your money too. Details HERE.

Categories: Culture
Tags: City Lit, Holborn, Keeley Street, Willesden

Report calls for Mayor and government to boost central London job quality

The Central London Forward group of local authorities has found widely varying levels of job satisfaction and security and made recommendations for improvements
Dave Hill

Sadiq Khan should make improving the quality of jobs in the capital “a central theme” of his forthcoming London Growth Plan in line with a cross-departmental national government mission with the same goal, according to the new report for a partnership of central and inner London local authorities.

Findings by Central London Forward, which represents eleven boroughs and the City of London Corporation and is chaired by Southwark Council leader Kieron Williams, include more Londoners than the national average believing they have “good opportunities for progression” in their jobs and having their skills fully utilised, but also being significantly more likely to work underpaid overtime than counterparts elsewhere.

Job satisfaction varies largely in line with pay levels, the report says, with 66 per cent of those earning above the level of the voluntary London Living Wage  – currently £13.50 a hour – saying they are satisfied compared with 33 per cent saying they aren’t.

London has slightly higher levels of insecure work than the national average, affecting 331,000 people, and the number of workers on zero hours contracts has more than doubled in the past decade. Meanwhile, union representation in the capital has fallen sharply in recent years, from 26 per cent of London employees in 1995 to just 17 per cent now.

The report finds that despite a fall in the number of low-paid jobs in London in the past five years, there are still some 574,000 that pay less than the London Living Wage, with wide variations across the different local authorities – only four per cent of jobs in the City are below that level compared with 33 per cent in Haringey.

The London Growth Plan, being produced by City Hall and London Councils, is expected to be published later this year, in line with the new national government’s commitments to boosting regional growth and create a national industrial strategy. The Mayor already has Good Work Standard accreditation programme which recognises best employment practices.

Read the Central London Forward report 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: News
Tags: Central London Forward, employment, Kieron Williams

Oxford Street: Westminster Council states ‘key concerns’ about pedestrianisation

As well as asking questions about the scheme itself, the Labour-run borough has warned Sadiq Khan that it will oppose any attempt to impose mayoral control beyond the street itself
Dave Hill

The leader of Westminster Council has written to Sadiq Khan and Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner with a list of “ten key areas of concern” about the Mayor’s plan to pedestrianise Oxford Street, including a strong demand that mayoral powers are applied only to the street itself if the council is co-operate with the scheme.

In the first public response from one of the council’s senior politicians, Adam Hug, who heads the prestigious central London borough’s first ever Labour administration and has opposed pedestrianisation, warned of “substantial practical challenges” with delivering the scheme that will “need to be thoroughly addressed to ensure any future transformation of the street works properly and does so in the interests of everyone who has a long-term stake in the West End, including local residents”.

Hug also states that, at this stage, the council is “far from convinced” that Khan needs to create a government-approved Mayoral Development Corporation (MDC) to deliver his transportation aims for Oxford Street and insists that “any eventual redline” defining the boundaries of its jurisdiction – within which, crucially, the Mayor instead of the council would act as the planning authority – “must include only the areas of highway and public realm necessary to deliver any transportation and public realm schemes (not including the buildings themselves).”

He adds: “The expansion of planning powers (either geographically or in the scope of responsibilities) beyond those necessary to deliver any street transformation scheme would be a clear barrier to pragmatic engagement between us and would be firmly resisted by the Council. ”

City Hall has yet to say how large an area it wants the MDC to cover, though its announcement about Khan’s intervention suggested that parts of the neighbouring borough of Camden would be affected by it too.

There has been speculation that the MDC boundary will encompass other parts of the West End in addition to Oxford Street itself including, within Westminster, extending beyond the western end of Oxford Street to take in Marble Arch, perhaps facilitating long-standing plans for  rejuvenating the space around the historic monument, which stands at the junction of Oxford Street and Park Lane.

Westminster Labour owed its historic capture of the council in May 2022 in part to promising to take the side of residents who were unhappy about the scale and pace of development activity under the Tories, along with late night noise and antisocial behaviour. There has long been strong, well-organised local opposition to the pedestrianisation of Oxford Street. The influential Marylebone Association has already claimed, in the wake of Khan’s announcement, that the street is “set to become less accessible, damaging economic growth”.

Initial “enabling work” has just got underway on a programme of improvements to Oxford Street (pictured) and its adjacent areas devised by Westminster after consultation with West End businesses, people living in streets close by and others. The scheme would have retained bus, taxi and bicycle access to Oxford Street, and was in line with Labour’s 2022 borough elections pledge to axe the limited pedestrianisation proposed by its Conservative predecessors.

An initial response to Mayor Khan’s intervention from Westminster’s chief executive officer defended the council’s approach and hinted clearly at councillors’ displeasure. One Westminster cabinet member told On London earlier this week that he and colleagues were “too angry” to speak to the media at that point.

Stressing that the council will “ensure the voices of our residents are heard by the Mayor and Government” and busting the “common myth that only the well-heeled live in the West End”, Hug asks Khan and Rayner how a fully-pedestrianised scheme” can be “delivered in a way that does not lead to significantly increased traffic congestion” and worse air quality locally, how residents would be represented on the MDC body, how access to a pedestrianised Oxford Street would be possible for older and disabled people – many of whom currently depend on buses and taxis – and how adverse local impacts would be minimised during the works period.

Hug also asks what can be be done to “make cycling work better in and around Oxford Street. On Tuesday, Khan confirmed that cycling will not be permitted on a pedestrianised Oxford Street, despite London Cycling Campaign chief executive Tom Fyans earlier saying “the whole area will become much better for walking and cycling”.

Khan’s original plans, published in 2017, had also ruled out people riding bicycles on the street. Wheelchair-user and activist Mik Scarlett has welcomed Khan’s stance on this, saying “sharing space between pedestrians and cyclists is a safety issue”, though cycling website Road CC has reported City Hall saying there is “potential” for the street to be accessed by cyclists at night in the future.

Pointing out that the council has invested £90 million in its Oxford Street programme so far, Hug requests that these costs be recouped and says the New West End Company, a business improvement district, should also be recompensed for the £1.5 million it has contributed.

Read Westminster Council’s full list of concerns 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: News
Tags: Labour, Oxford Street, Sadiq Khan, Westminster Council

Alexander Jan: Oxford Street pedestrianisation can benefit all, but has to be done well

Sadiq Khan's bold initiative has already exposed governance conflicts and local tensions which will need to be creatively addressed
Alexander Jan

Sadiq Khan’s surprise decision to breathe new life into his plan to largely pedestrianise Oxford Street is aimed at delivering improvements for its 200 million or so visitors a year. Despite generating annual sales of £3 billion, the street has suffered from London’s economic shift to the east and struggled more than nearby Regent Street and Bond Street to keep up with the ice-cool, managed malls of Shepherd’s Bush and Stratford or the chic, high-end offer of Knightsbridge.

Mayor Khan’s view must be that with the Elizabeth line now fully open, millions of additional visitors should have the opportunity to benefit from his ambitious scheme, and that shutting out traffic will help boost the recovery of Oxford Street as a premier retail and entertainment destination.

However, there are reports that Westminster Council – since May 2022 a Labour administration for the first time ever – is unhappy with how things have unfolded. After decades of dithering and uncertainty, the new council, in partnership with the New West End Company (a business improvement district), was, to its credit, beginning to deliver its own programme of improvements to lift Oxford Street and its surroundings. Now, the Mayor, backed by the national government, intends to create a Mayoral Development Corporation (MDC) accountable to him, largely diluting powers held by Westminster.

Any revised plan is going to have its challenges It will be important to ensure that the momentum and the best parts of the existing project are not foregone. Residents who live next to the street have already started to voice their concerns. These will include displaced traffic and the prospect of more noise and antisocial behaviour. Care will be needed to prevent traffic shifting onto unsuitable residential streets. And “out of hours” disturbance is a constant and legitimate issue for central London residents in general.

That means there will have to be a proper management system to look after “the nation’s high street” and its surroundings, preventing it from being relentlessly dug up by utilities companies or turned into a place of rowdiness at night. As it has with Trafalgar Square, City Hall will need to work with, among others, the affected boroughs, Transport for London and the Metropolitan Police to ensure proper day-to-day control of activities that might otherwise undermine the benefits of a reconfigured Oxford Street. Yet if thought through creatively, these obstacles can and should be overcome. Radical, sustained improvement to this internationally renowned part of the West End could be a huge win for everyone.

More widely, Khan’s announcement brings into sharp relief a long-standing challenge for London government – how best to nurture and sustain parts of the city that perform important citywide, national and sometimes global economic and social functions while protecting the legitimate interests of residents.

The fact that the Mayor intends to use an MDC as his vehicle for change, rather than limiting himself to applying for Oxford Street to be transferred to TfL, suggests that there is a larger agenda in play, aimed at unlocking the full potential of the whole area. That is understandable, given the huge investment in the Elizabeth line that has been undertaken and the consequential potential that exists to grow the central London economy in the West End.

It will not be straightforward to reconcile conflicting views among different governance bodies and groups of people that the Mayor’s Oxford Street initiative has already exposed. But if a mechanism can be put in place to ensure that some substantial part of the benefits of the economic growth can be retained and spent on bettering the lives of local people, that would be a major step forward.

Many of London’s boroughs have suffered extensively from Whitehall austerity. For too long they have been left with virtually no incentive to grow their own tax bases because of the Treasury’s nationalisation of Business Rates. In 2022/23, Westminster got to keep a paltry four percent of the £2 billion or so it collected.

It remains to be seen how the implications of the MDC for wider questions about the development of central London play out. But in any event, if public services were more directly and visibly funded from increased local business taxes, that might make it easier to implement ambitious improvements in a way that helps everyone. For now, the five decades-old battle over just how to resolve the Oxford Street conundrum continues apace.

Alexander Jan is the London Property Alliance’s chief economic adviser and chair of the Central District Alliance and Hatton Garden BIDs. Follow him on X/Twitter. Support OnLondon.co.uk and its writers for £5 a month or £50 a year and get things for your money too. Details HERE.

Categories: Comment
Tags: Oxford Street, Sadiq Khan, Westminster Council