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Westminster: Businesswoman takes helm as council’s new leader

She will lead a wealthy borough facing challenges over development, the environment, rough sleeping and poverty
Dave Hill

Lady Rachael Robathan formally commenced her duties as the new leader of Conservative-run Westminster City Council last week, becoming the third woman in a row to have the job of leading a borough with an economy of national importance and some acute social problems locally.

Robathan, 57, whose title derives from her marriage to former Conservative minister Lord Andrew Robathan, succeeds Nickie Aiken as leader following Aiken’s election as the new MP for Cities of London & Westminster at the general election last month. Aiken’s predecessor was Philippa Roe, now Baroness Couttie, who was leader from 2012 until 2017.

She has a background in business, working for 20 years in emerging market investment management, and was recently appointed a non-executive director of Aurora Investment Trust plc, a company chaired by former Tory MP and shadow chief secretary to the treasury, Lord Howard Flight. Robathan is also a board member of the National Lottery community fund and a director of the Westminster Almshouses Foundation, a sheltered housing charity based in Rochester Row.

Robathan, who has represented the Knightsbridge & Belgravia ward since 2010, was previously the council’s cabinet member for finance, property and regeneration, a brief that encompasses some of Westminster’s most important and sometimes fraught areas of responsibility.

In a statement following her election as leader, Robathan endorsed her predecessor’s City For All strategy, whose main themes are opportunity, celebrating its different communities, providing high quality local services, and creating both a “caring and fairer” and a “healthier and greener” Westminster.

She takes charge of an administration that has fallen out with Labour London Mayor Sadiq Khan following Aiken’s administration withdrawing its support for plans to pedestrianise Oxford Street, for which it, rather than Transport for London, is the highway authority. Westminster also has high numbers of rough sleepers, an issue Aiken described during the general election campaign as “not just a national but an international crisis”, with more than half of local rough sleepers coming from overseas.

Robathan will now oversee delivery of the borough’s alternative plan for improving Oxford Street and its surrounding West End district and has pledged to address “complex challenges including climate change, air quality, rough sleeping and affordable housing”.

A member of the opposition Labour Group, Pancho Lewis, who, in 2018, became the first Labour councillor elected to the West End ward, swiftly challenged her to set out “any immediate first steps” she intends to take to address the climate issue, suggesting that fewer building demolitions might help.

Conservatives have run Westminster ever since its creation, usually with healthy majorities. They won with ease two years ago in terms of seats, despite Labour making three gains at their expense, and hold 41 seats compared with Labour’s 19. Yet the the popular vote totals were much closer, with the Tories taking a 42.3 per cent vote share to Labour’s 40.3. The north of the borough, represented in parliament by Labour’s redoubtable Karen Buck, accounts for much of a 30 per cent poverty rate. Robathan is right to recognise that making Westminster a “city for all” will not be simple task.

OnLondon.co.uk is dedicated to providing fair, thorough, anti-populist coverage of London’s politics, development and culture. It depends on donations from readers and would like to pay its freelance contributors better. Can you spare £5 (or more) a month? Follow this link if you would like to help. Thank you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories: Analysis
Tags: Conservatives, Labour, Nickie Aiken, Oxford Street, Paul Dimoldenberg, Philippa Roe, Rachael Robathan, rough sleeping, Westminster Council

Vic Keegan’s Lost London 127: Holland’s Leaguer, the luxury Thameside house of ill repute

It provided fine food, clean linen and a moat
Victor Keegan

As brothels go, Holland’s Leaguer must have been in a class of its own, even for Shakespeare’s time. It was located in the notorious Paris Garden, in a “liberty” free from the rule of the county of Surrey and the City of London opposite, situated on the southern side of the Thames, at the point where Blackfriars Bridge lands today.

You couldn’t miss the brothel, which was named after its proprietor Elizabeth “Bess” Holland. It was located in a former manor house once owned by Henry VIII’s third wife, Jane Seymour. It had its own moat and drawbridge (see engraving above) which could be pulled up to keep out undesirables, such as apprentices on their annual Shrove Tuesday rampages, and sometimes the police as well. 

It was sited close to the Swan Theatre, which was the biggest of its day, seating – or standing – 3,000 punters, not all of them there just for the show. 

The brothel was said to be based on “The Lovely Little Maiden” in Brussels, offering luxurious ambience, fine food and clean linen. All of this would have come in handy when Charles I tried to close it in December 1631. When his soldiers arrived, Holland apparently raised the drawbridge over the moat, causing soldiers to fall into the water. The brothel was besieged for a month, until it was finally closed in January 1632 causing Ms Holland to pursue her business elsewhere. How her customers reacted to being locked in a brothel for a month can only be guessed at. 

Screenshot 2020 01 26 at 09.17.55

This brothel was also unusual in that it had a play written about it called Holland’s Leaguer, written by the improbably named Shackerley Marmion. It was staged in 1631 at the Salisbury Court Theatre near St Bride’s Church off Fleet Street and ran for six consecutive performances, making it one of the most successful plays of its time. 

A contemporary court case shows that Shakespeare lived around Paris Garden for a couple of years after moving from north of the Thames in 1596, possibly in the area known today as Upper Ground. The case, in which William Wayte brought a restraining order against Shakespeare and others because he was in fear of his life, does not show Shakespeare in a favourable light. 

If you stand on the streps of Tate Modern, the Swan Theatre would have been about 100 yards in front of you, where a new office block is under construction and the Holland Leaguer would have been a short walk to your rear. It’s name is preserved today in Holland Street.

OnLondon.co.uk is dedicated to providing fair, thorough, anti-populist coverage of London’s politics, development and culture. It depends on donations from readers and would like to pay its freelance contributors better. Can you spare £5 (or more) a month? Follow this link if you would like to help. Thank you.

 

Categories: Culture, Lost London
Tags: Bankside, City of London, Southwark, The Clink, William Shakespeare

London Mayor candidates criticise Met roll out of facial recognition technology

Two of Sadiq Khan's rivals for City Hall have expressed their concerns
Dave Hill

Sadiq Khan and the Metropolitan Police have been criticised by two candidates seeking to replace Khan as London Mayor over the Met’s decision to make use of facial recognition cameras as a means of identifying people wanted in connection with violent and other serious crimes.

Describing the technology as “hopelessly inaccurate”, Liberal Democrat Siobhan Benita said “it is unacceptable for a new form of mass surveillance like this to be rolled out onto London’s streets with proper consultation, regulation or oversight,” while the Green Party’s Siân Berry condemned what she called “yet another deeply concerning infringement of our basic civil liberties” when studies had found “this intrusive technology was not effective”.

The Met announced the move yesterday, saying each camera will cover a “small targeted area” an scan passers-by at locations “where intelligence suggests we are most likely to locate serious offenders”. The cameras will operate for five or six hours at a time and be signposted, with officers distributing explanatory leaflets. The move follows trials of the system in locations including the West End and the Westfield shopping centre in Stratford.

The Met says the technology is “not taking over from traditional policing” and will merely give officers a “prompt” that someone they are looking for might have been spotted. Assistant Met commissioner Nick Ephgrave said, “I believe we have a duty to use new technologies to keep people safe in London,” and also stressed “I have to be sure that we have the right safeguards and transparency in place to ensure that we protect people’s privacy and human rights”.

The BBC has reported the Met saying that trails of the technology so far suggest that 70 per cent of wanted suspects would be correctly identified while false alerts were rare, but a review of the results by researchers based at the University of Essex concluded that only eight out of 42 matches could be relied on with complete confidence, that the trials were inadequately planned and that use of the technology could very well be found unlawful. It also found that the criteria for including people on the watchlist of suspects were “not clearly defined”.

Berry highlighted the researchers’ reservations and also said that in her role as a London Assembly Member she had received assurances from the Met commissioner and the deputy mayoral for policing and crime that the technology “would not be deployed unless ethical and legal barriers  could be overcome”.

Benita drew attention to arguments that the technology “is biased against women and ethnic minorities” and said “Liberal Democrats do not want London to become a city where innocent people feel as though their every movement is being watched”.

In 2018, the information commissioner gave the Met six months to get its Gang Matrix database into line with data protection rules after an investigation, prompted by Amnesty International with Berry’s support, found it was “unclear and inconsistently applied” and lacked “effective central governance”. The Mayor’s office for policing and crime, which oversees the Met, later called on the Met to “comprehensively overhaul” the matrix.

OnLondon.co.uk is committed to providing the best possible coverage of the 2020 London Mayor and London Assembly election campaigns. The site is small but influential and it depends on donations from readers. Individual sums or regular monthly contributions are very welcome indeed. Click here to donate via PayPal or contact davehillonlondon@gmail.com. Thank you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories: News
Tags: Green Party, Liberal Democrats, Metropolitan Police, Mopac, Sadiq Khan, Sian Berry, Siobhan Benita

Brent: Big by-election swings against Labour as Lib Dems make gain

Four seats were contest in three wards of the north west London borough yesterday
Lewis Baston

Yesterday (23 January 2020) was an electoral “Super Thursday” in the London Borough of Brent. Three wards (out of the borough’s 21) had by-elections, with the electors of one of them having the opportunity to fill two vacancies that had opened up on Brent Council.

These were the first London council by-elections since December’s general election and another pretty depressing experience for the Labour Party, with swings against it ranging from 12 to 25 per cent and the loss of a seat to the Liberal Democrats.

Brent’s electoral map from 2018 gives a misleading impression of uniformity. There is a solid wall of 20 red wards with a blue outpost in Kenton, creating a council composition of 60 Labour councillors and three Conservatives. But the borough is a complex social and political environment. It is hyper-diverse in a way that few other places, even in London, are. Its patchwork, evolving ethnic composition and its quarrelsome politics are reminiscent of New York’s.

Politics in Brent ranges from the acutely parochial to the broadly global. The borough covers a slab of the capital stretching from the threshold of Central London at Kilburn to some spacious suburbia on the south side of Harrow Hill. Although there are factors common to the three wards where people went to the polls yesterday – they are all in Wembley and in the Brent North parliamentary constituency, and all have BAME majorities – there are also important differences.

Barnhill, the ward where two seats were up for grabs, is a suburban ward in north Wembley, lying north east of the Metropolitan Line around the stations of Preston Road and Wembley Park. It was developed mostly in the inter-war years as a desirable residential area for people commuting into Central London or to Harrow – a prime slice of Metroland that mostly consists of avenues of pleasant 1930s semis. Andrew Teale has written an engaging and informative essay on the history of Wembley and the origins of the by-elections there.

The exception to Barnhill’s general suburban comfort is the Chalkhill area, which had a troubled late 1960s concrete estate of the same name built near the former Brent (and Wembley) Town Hall in Forty Lane. The estate was redeveloped into a new form in the 2000s, and although the place still has its share of problems, it is much the better for it.

The estate’s presence means that Barnhill has 26 per cent social tenants, which is rather high for suburbia. Politically, it used to be rock-solid Conservative in local elections (it voted 74 per cent Tory in 1994 and 54 per cent even in 2002) but flipped decisively to Labour in 2010. Part of the reason is its steady shift in ethnic composition. At the time of the 2011 census it was only 19 per cent white British or Irish, with the largest single ethnicity being Indian (22 per cent), and substantial numbers of black (16 per cent), other Asian and “white other” (mostly mainland European).

The two Labour councillors who resigned in Barnhill were Sarah Marquis and Michael Pavey, who had both served in senior roles in the council administration and were stepping down for family and life-balance reasons. The double vacancy was defended by Mansoor Akram and Gaynor Lloyd. Akram is the brother-in-law of council leader Mohammed Butt and Lloyd is married to a current Labour councillor, so the family-friendly nature of Brent council politics continues.

The Conservative team of Kanta Mistry and Stefan Voloseniuc offered the stiffest electoral competition in this ward contest, but the record of the Labour council was also strongly criticised by the two Greens who entered the fray. One of them, Martin Francis, writes a local blog called Wembley Matters. The Barnhill result saw a huge swing (17 per cent) from Labour to the Conservatives, with the majority of the less popular of the two winning candidate dropping from 1,453 votes to a mere 70. Turnout was a very poor 22 per cent, down from 34 per cent in May 2018.

Moving south within Brent, Wembley Central councillor Luke Patterson stood down in December, telling the Kilburn Times that, “I have recently been given increased responsibility in my career in education and due to the birth of my third child, time has become a major factor in my decision. Out of duty to the people of Wembley Central I feel it is only fair on them if I stand down.”

Councillors often find that John Lennon had a point when he sang that, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans”. There do seem to be problems with the demands that councillors’ workloads impose, particularly on younger people and families, and with the ability of the existing system to accommodate public service with a balanced life. To have three such resignations within weeks does suggest that Brent in particular could do more to help and also, perhaps, that political life can be bleak and frustrating, even with the cushion of a massive majority.

Wembley Central ward is tightly drawn around the eponymous station, and its electoral history is Labour with a Lib Dem interlude in 2002-10. It is an older suburb than Barnhill and less green and spacious. While Barnhill is hyper-diverse, Wembley Central is preponderantly Asian-British, particularly Indian (48 per cent). Sonia Shah, Patterson’s successor as Labour candidate, held the seat in the by-election but in the face of another double-digit swing to the Conservative candidate Sai Karthik Madabhusi and a big fall in turnout (from 42 per cent in 2018 to 28 per cent in 2020).

Just south of Wembley Central one finds Alperton ward, the scene of the strangest and most interesting of the Brent by-elections. It is a residential area lying mostly to the east of Alperton Piccadilly Line station, backing onto the Park Royal industrial area across the borough border in Ealing. Like the other Wembley wards, it is mainly inter-war suburban and majority-minority, with its Indian-origin population being 44 per cent at the time of the 2011 census: it and Wembley Central are near the top of the charts for the Hindu percentage of the population.

Alperton has a higher proportion of owner-occupiers than the more obviously outer suburban Barnhill. It is a relatively insular community, within which – unlike in most of London, where neighbours come from different places and ethnicities – it is possible to live without speaking much English. In theory, its housing stock and accessibility by Tube should make Alperton prime territory for gentrification, but there are no signs of this happening. The sky, as in Wembley Central, is often lit by a weird orange glow of light pollution from Wembley Stadium.

Alperton is a bit geographically isolated within the borough and from 1990 to 2010 was a Liberal Democrat stronghold – the two facts go together, as wards at the edge of a borough are perhaps most susceptible to pavement politics and dislike of the Town Hall (see also Southfield in Ealing, Fortune Green in Camden, West Barnes in Merton…). But Labour won a seat in 2010, picked up another when councillor James Allie switched from Lib Dem to Labour in 2012, and gained the third in 2014.

The by-election came as a result of Allie’s resignation under a cloud. He was found in a High Court case to have used his position as executor of an estate to obtain money from the legacy for personal use rather than passing it to the intended beneficiary, the Canon Collins Educational and Legal Assistance Trust. He was dismissed by his employers and his conduct is being further examined by the relevant authorities. 

Brent Labour did not do very well at cleaning up their act after this embarrassment. The replacement candidate, Chetan Harpale, was suspended from the party mid-campaign when Islamophobic (and anti-Labour) utterances on Twitter came to light – another basic failure of candidate quality control. Nevertheless, he still seemed to be getting help from some Labour activists through to polling day.

Hoping to revive the local political tradition, the Liberal Democrat candidate Anton Georgiou (pictured above) campaigned vigorously and helpers from outside Brent lent their support. The circumstances of the election, Labour’s general demoralisation, the candidate trouble, the tight-knit nature of the Alperton local community and the borough-wide politics of Brent made it fertile territory. Georgiou pulled off an impressive victory, beating Harpale by 395 votes and achieving a swing from Labour in excess of 25 per cent. Turnout fell from a very high 46 per cent in 2018 to a still respectable 34 per cent.

Taken together, the results in the three wards indicate both local and national Labour malaise.

Having a massive majority, perhaps particularly one that has been stitched together by forming a consensus between Brent’s myriad parts and its contending political and personal factions, can sometimes induce stagnation and complacency. Campaigners in the by-elections found that there was a ready audience for criticism of the standards of Brent’s basic services – old fashioned local politics issues like rubbish collection and street sweeping worked against the Labour candidates. So too did the developing pattern of politics among British Hindu voters – the swings to Zac Goldsmith against the tide in 2016, and the close relations between some Conservatives and the Hindu nationalist politics of Modi in India have had an impact, with Labour stereotyped as a Muslim party.

On a national level, parties often struggle to motivate their activists and voters in the months just after a general election defeat and this may have been a factor in Brent. While introspection may be necessary, it does not inspire support in the short term. Having given up his leadership ambitions, Brent North MP Barry Gardiner now has more time to study the lessons of the big anti-Labour swings on his own doorstep.

OnLondon.co.uk is committed to providing fair and thorough coverage of the capital’s politics, development and culture. The site is small but influential and it depends on donations from readers. Individual sums or regular monthly contributions are very welcome indeed. Click here to donate via PayPal or contact davehillonlondon@gmail.com. Thank you.

 

Categories: Analysis
Tags: Anton Georgiou, Barry Gardiner, Brent, Brent Council, Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats

Sadiq Khan takes violent crime issue head on at Haringey Peoples’ Question Time

The Mayor accused opponents of trying making political capital by claiming there are "simple solutions"
Dave Hill

London Mayor Sadiq Khan put reducing violent crime at the forefront of his bid to win a second term at City Hall, with a strident defence of his current policies at last night’s People’s Question Time event in Haringey.

Khan, who has been criticised by rivals for his response to a rising murder rate and concerns about offences involving young people and knives, used his opening speech to declare his own worries about the issue “as a parent and as the Mayor”.

He described addressing the problem as “by far the hardest” he has to deal with, both for the damage such violence does to lives affected by it and the difficulty of tackling it.

In a dig at opponents, including Conservative mayoral candidate Shaun Bailey, who shared the stage with him along with fellow members of the London Assembly, Khan said: “Unfortunately, some people are using this to seek political advantage by blaming the wrong things and by claiming there are simple solutions.”

Earlier this week, Independent candidate Rory Stewart published a plan for increasing the number of police officers and PCSOs in local neighbourhood teams. Liberal Democrat candidate Siobhan Benita has implied that Stewart and Bailey have been guilty of “ambulance-chasing” on the issue.

Khan listed the cost of living, the housing affordability problems of young Londoners and “an anti-London government that’s pushing ahead with its austerity agenda” as other major challenges.

He cited his record on funding “more social and council homes”, introducing estate regeneration ballots (which he’d initially opposed), “protecting the Green Belt”, and introducing the Hopper bus and tram fare and a four year freeze of all public transport fares set by Transport for London as achievements of his mayoralty since his election in 2016.

Bailey told the audience, “We have a culture of violence in London which we have to attempt to get under control. One of the big ways to do that is to give young people hope.” He said that over a third of young people convicted of possessing a knife in the past year had gone on to re-offend, underlining the importance of encouraging them into education or training “to keep them away from crime” and break the cycle of their being “in and out of jail”.

Khan responded by renewing his attack on Conservative national governments, asking rhetorically who is responsible for the prison and probation services, and for reducing spending on policing and youth services.

Questions from the audience on safety included one expressing concern about the use of stop and search when it risks alienating the young. Khan in his reply said, “We can’t arrest ourselves out of this problem. Stop and search by itself aint going to solve it” and that there must be a link “across the country” between youth and after school clubs closing down and school exclusions, as well as police budget cuts.

A woman who said she’s lived in Haringey for 18 years, has three children and has three times been a victim of crime, expressed fears that young people she knows are not safe when on the streets in Haringey and her feeling that financial investment by the Mayor in schemes to help young people is yet to have much effect.

She said that she herself now feels “quite unsafe to get home at night, get out of my car, looking around to see if there’s anyone there.” She added that when reporting crime to the police, “It is so hard to get a follow up, it is so hard to know who is dealing with your case, it is so hard to know if something is going to come of it or not.”

The event, which was attended by local MPs David Lammy and Catherine West, has held at the Dominion Centre, a former cinema in Wood Green, now used as a church.

Much of the proceedings were dominated by local Hard Left activists who used up time allotted for questions on transport, community safety and housing to demand that the Mayor intervene to prevent the second part of a redevelopment scheme in Seven Sisters which will see new premises built for traders in a small indoor market known as the Latin Village.

The traders are being provided with a temporary new location across the street, where the first phase of a two-part regeneration was “topped out” last year. Developer Grainger has committed to offering traders places at discounted rents in a new indoor market space in the same space they occupy now within new buildings which will replace a long-closed former furniture store on the site next to Seven Sisters Underground station, known as Wards Corner. Opponents of the regeneration have put forward an alternative “community plan”.  The Liberal Democrats also oppose the Grainger scheme.

OnLondon.co.uk is committed to providing the best possible coverage of the 2020 London Mayor and London Assembly election campaigns. The site is small but influential and it depends on donations from readers. Individual sums or regular monthly contributions are very welcome indeed. Click here to donate via PayPal or contact davehillonlondon@gmail.com. Thank you.

 

 

 

Categories: News
Tags: Conservatives, crime, Green Belt, Haringey, Haringey Council, Labour, Liberal Democrats, Momentum, Rory Stewart, Sadiq Khan, Shaun Bailey, Siobhan Benita, violent crime

Charles Wright: Rory Stewart’s local policing plan will be popular. But would it work?

The Independent candidate has made a strong intervention in the street crime debate, though some will question how useful it would be
Charles Wright

Independent mayoral candidate Rory Stewart’s first significant policy proposal, Operation Local, announced this week, is a bold and attention-grabbing initiative – to triple the numbers of uniformed neighbourhood police on the street in his first year in office.

The plan would put all of the 2,369 new officers currently promised for 2020/21 through a combination of government and City Hall funding into ward-based teams, coupled with “surge teams” for crime hotspots and major incidents. These would be in addition to existing specialist response teams and under borough-based command.

It’s a plan, according to Stewart, to “make policing local again: six officers assigned to your area, tripling current numbers out on the streets, building lasting connections with residents…You’ll know their names, have their phone number and see them in your community.”

Neighbourhood policing isn’t new, and it’s popular across the political divides as well as with Londoners, 83 per cent of whom want more police in their neighbourhood, according to Stewart’s polling. It was Ken Livingstone who first put six dedicated officers per ward into safer neighbourhood teams, calling neighbourhood policing his “top priority in policing”, before progressive funding cuts took their toll. Mayoral election campaigns have always focused on “bobbies on the beat”. 

Mayor Khan told the London Assembly this month that he wanted “most” of the government’s promised new officers to be on the streets, and the boroughs’ representative body London Councils has called for 600 new neighbourhood officers to help “create safer, more resilient communities”.

Good politics. But is it the best policy? Not everyone agrees that maintaining a universal neighbourhood service is the best response to the diverse nature of crime across the capital. 

In the 2008 mayoral election campaign Richard Barnes, later deputy mayor to Boris Johnson, referred to safer neighbourhood teams “twiddling their thumbs” in “safe” wards, and College of Policing research on visible patrolling, cited by Stewart’s team in support of their policy, itself suggests that “just having more people or responding more quickly…does not necessarily reduce crime or reassure people.”

Both the College and the Institute of Government have argued for a targeted approach, with the Institute calling for “hot spot policing to concentrate police activities and resources in areas where crime is concentrated”.

Detailed work on neighbourhood policing by the independent Police Foundation thinktank also highlights the need to recognise that neighbourhoods are “increasingly varied”, and the complexity of balancing reactive demand with proactive work acknowledging the “enduring value of locally embedded, problem-oriented practitioners.”

Their research found issues of neighbourhood recruitment and retention, as well as frequent “extraction” to police incidents elsewhere, and the Met has itself argued that increased resources also need to address demand at detective level, the pressure of dealing with online evidence, and the continuing need to support anti-terrorist work, public order in the capital, hate crime and domestic violence as well as targeting violent crime.

Operation Local also includes a return to a borough command structures which will need to be fleshed out, coming as it would just a year after the Met – in the context of £900 million funding cuts since 2010 – completed an efficiency drive that replaced its borough-based structure with 12 large “Basic Command Units”.

It’s just the first part of his plan to tackle crime, according to Stewart, and he acknowledges that addressing the causes of crime and working with young people is complex and longer-term. But it is already a “compelling answer”, according to the Evening Standard. The campaigning to come, and the mayoral election itself on 7 May, will show whether or not Londoners agree.

Photograph by Omar Jan.

OnLondon.co.uk is committed to providing fair and thorough coverage of the capital’s politics, development and culture. The site is small but influential and it depends on donations from readers. Individual sums or regular monthly contributions are very welcome indeed. Click here to donate via PayPal or contact davehillonlondon@gmail.com. Thank you.

 

 

Categories: Analysis
Tags: Boris Johnson, College of Policing, crime, Evening Standard, Ken Livingstone, knife crime, London Councils, Metropolitan Police, policing, Richard Barnes, Rory Stewart, Sadiq Khan, violent crime

Creating Cundy Street Quarter: Ongoing threads for 2020

Negotiations and consultations about a planned new piece of south Belgravia have continued during the general election and festive periods
Dave Hill

Last summer, On London began a series of articles tracking the progress of plans to redevelop four blocks of privately-rented flats and another that houses Westminster Council tenants in order to create a new piece of south Belgravia to be called Cundy Street Quarter.

The developer, Grosvenor Britain & Ireland, foresees an attractive mixed-use scheme with better streets and amenities and homes for market sale and “senior living” along with two types of “affordable” housing, half of it for intermediate rent and half for social rent, including dwellings in which current council tenants can be rehoused.

Grosvenor wants its approach to this project to be seen as exemplifying its desire to improve public trust in developers and increase enthusiasm for regenerations that promise more and better housing and neighbourhoods. But their plans have attracted energetic and well-publicised opposition from some of the council tenants and others from the private blocks, with backing from the local Labour Party.

The distractions of the general election and the festive season have meant no On London coverage of this highly instructive case study since October. What has been happening since then?

Quite a lot. A third round of consultations with residents of the existing housing and other local residents was held in the first week of December, seeking views on detailed design plans. A further drop-in day for people to look at and discuss Grosvenor’s proposals took place last week.

Prior to all that, on 4 November last year, a meeting took place between representatives of Grosvenor and some of the campaigners against the scheme who live in the social rented homes in a block called Walden House, which is leased by Westminster Council from Grosvenor.

One of the leaders of the opposition campaign, Walden House tenant and Labour activist Liza Begum, described the meeting, which was attended by the then Grosvenor chief executive Craig McWilliam, as “informative”, though she complained that she “could not get confirmation about where we would live if demolition goes ahead”. However, she added that a dialogue had begun.

Much more recently, on Tuesday, Begum described on Twitter a meeting she had had with an officer at Westminster, complaining that she had received “no concrete answers” about the rehousing of Walden House tenants and claiming that Grosvenor and the council “keep misinforming us and constantly pushing the responsibility onto each other”. The backdrop here is that it’s yet to be decided who the landlord of the replacement social rented homes will be. However, the council, has committed to giving Walden House tenants a “right to return”.

What we do know is that the number of new homes planned for Cundy Street Quarter is approximately 250 – compared with 151 altogether on the site at present – and that 30 per cent of these would be for open market sale, 35 per cent would be senior living homes (for older people), 17.5 per cent would be for “intermediate rent” and 17.5 per cent for social rent. See text and diagram from the Cundy Street Quarter site below.

Screenshot 2020 01 23 at 12.35.44

There will be opportunities later this month for Walden House residents to take a closer look at the designs for the replacement homes they might be offered. Meanwhile, Grosvenor has been working on setting up a community forum for sharing ideas about Cundy Street Quarter, both before and after a planning application is eventually submitted to the council. They have also been talking to the Young Westminster Foundation, a partnership-building charity, about what younger people might want from the development.

Like so many regeneration projects, especially those that entail the destruction of peoples’ homes, the Cundy Street Quarter vision is not being warmly embraced by all those who would be most directly affected by it. At the same time, others, perhaps including some of those who will need to be rehoused, might be seeing it as means by which their lives and neighbourhood can be improved. Having picked up the threads of this particular story, On London will be following them up in the coming weeks.

OnLondon.co.uk is committed to providing fair and thorough coverage of the capital’s politics, development and culture. The site is small but influential and it depends on donations from readers. Individual sums or regular monthly contributions are very welcome indeed. Click here to donate via PayPal or contact davehillonlondon@gmail.com. Thank you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories: Analysis
Tags: affordable housing, Belgravia, Craig McWilliam, Cundy Street, Grosvenor Britain & Ireland, housing, Liza Begum, Westminster Council, Young Westminster Foundation

Crossrail Elizabeth Line takes ‘massive step forward’ towards new opening date, TfL board hears

The company's chairman and chief executive expressed confidence that there would no more timetable slippage
Dave Hill

Crossrail bosses have given a confident assessment of progress towards the opening of the main, central section of the Elizabeth Line in summer 2021, telling the Transport for London board that the way is now clear to test the safety of the new railway systems and then commence “trial running” of the service, with people on trains and in the new stations, in the autumn.

Speaking at a meeting at City Hall this morning, Crossrail chairman Tony Meggs said 2020 “will be the year in which we start to turn the Crossrail project into the Elizabeth Line” and chief executive Mark Wild described the project as now being in “a state of great maturity” as it entered “the most critical time in the history of this programme”.

Wild added that he expects the remaining “physical construction work” the Elizabeth Line stations to be completed early in the year” with the exception of Whitechapel and Bond Street, which he believes work will be finished on by October and Christmas respectively.

The meeting was the first time Meggs and Wild have address to the board, which is chaired by Sadiq Khan, since a summer 2021 central section opening was committed to at a Crossrail board meeting earlier this month. This followed TfL adopting an autumn 2021 date as its cautious assumption about when it would begin receiving much-needed fares and advertising income from the service.

TfL commissioner Mike Brown described recent progress as “huge” but confirmed that the transport body is forecasting a reduction of between £500 million and £750 million in revenues compared with its business plan for 2018, the year the Elizabeth Line was originally scheduled to open near the end of.

Brown also reiterated that “between £400 million and £650 million more” is now needed to complete the job than had been agreed with national government in December 2018, adding that “Discussions with the government around meeting the cost are progressing.”

Wild revealed that a “massive step forward” was taken yesterday when Crossrail’s independent safety assessor approved software known as PD11 as fit for its testing procedures to be completed. “That doesn’t mean the software is in the bag,” Wild explained, “it just means that for the next three to four months we can progress through the very, very proscribed set of 80 or 90 tests that are required to get the safety certification.”

He congratulated train manufacturer Bombardier and signalling control makers Siemens for the “superb job” they had done working with Crossrail, describing a collective effort by “about 2,000 people across the globe and about 20 engineering centres to get the software to this point.”

Asked by the Mayor to say more about the Whitechapel and Bond Street stations, Wild described the former as “probably the most complex railway job actually ever done in Europe” that now has “a clear path to complete, probably around September, October this year”. He characterised Bond Street as “always the problem project” but said he is “very confident” that it will be built within this calendar year” and that both stations will “open with the railway”.

The board also heard about the the start of Crossrail trains running under the TfL Rail banner between Paddington and Reading since 15 December and that the “final stages” of safety certification for them to also connect to Heathrow would be gone through in the next few months. If the Elizabeth Line’s central section does open in summer next year, Wild and Meggs believe the full railway linking Reading with Shenfield should follow “by the middle of 2222”.

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Categories: News
Tags: Abbey Wood, Bond Street, Crossrail, Elizabeth Line, Mark Wild, Mike Brown, Paddington, Sadiq Khan, Tony Meggs, Transport for London, Whitechapel