The Mayor of London has warned that the UK is at its “greatest risk yet” of leaving the European Union on a “no deal” basis and said the capital’s economy is already being hit by Brexit as key industries are hit by falls in migration by workers from other EU states.
Speaking at his monthly Mayor’s Question Times session this morning, Sadiq Khan said a “no deal” exit from the European Union would be “catastrophic for businesses, catastrophic for the NHS, catastrophic for construction and catastrophic for how Londoners feel about their future as well”.
Damning the government’s negotiations with the EU as “hopeless”, he also claimed that Theresa May’s current proposed Brexit deal would “worsen life chance and opportunities in London and across the UK for future generations” and that she should withdraw Article 50. “It’s time to give the public the final say on Brexit and the option of remaining in the EU,” he said.
He described as “noteworthy” that while the Prime Minster saw fit to offer MPs a second chance to vote on her Brexit deal and may offer them a third, she does not want to extend a similar opportunity to the British public in the form of a fresh referendum or “Peoples’ Vote”. He accused her of being “scared” to do so.
The Mayor told London Assembly Labour Group leader Len Duvall, who represents Greenwich & Lewisham, that the capital’s economy is already seeing “adverse consequences” from a fall in migration from EU states, and stressed that this is happening even before the government’s planned imposition of an income threshold on prospective migrants, which, the Mayor said, means that “unless you earn more than £30,000 a year it will be very hard for you to come here and work” and would “decimate many industries across London”.
He also criticised a “lack of urgency” around government measures for training more British citizens to fill the gap, saying employers have expressed to him concerns about the workings of the apprenticeship levy system.
The Mayor agreed with Andrew Dismore, the AM for Barnet & Camden, who put it to him that politicians who argue that a “no deal” outcome would not be problematic because World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules that would come into play are favourable are being “disingenuous”. Rebuking Conservative AMs, all of whom are Brexiters, for “hectoring” while he spoke, the Mayor endorsed Dismore’s point that WTO article 28 would create less favourable conditions for the export of services, which make up the bulk of the capital’s economy. He described Brexiters’ upbeat claims about WTO rules as “nonsense”.
Mayor Khan’s comments came as an online petition calling for Article 50 to be revoked and for the UK to remain in the EU was signed by over 600,000 people before crashing the government’s website. A site map showed that Londoners were very strongly represented, including over 3,000 people in Jeremy Corbyn’s Islington North constituency, the highest number of all 73 in the capital at that stage. As this article goes live, the national total of signatories has exceeded 800,000.
Mayor’s Question Time proceedings were preceded by a minute’s silence in memory of the victims of the recent terror attacks on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, which claimed the lives of 50 people.
The tensions triggered by redevelopment schemes in London can be toxic and extreme, none more so than when a housing estate is lined up for knocking down.
Estate regeneration, especially of council rented homes, has produced a string of high-profile conflicts between, on the one hand, borough leaders, social landlords and developers and, on the other, housing activists and their political and media sympathisers. Each struggle has been emblematic of larger ones about the future of the capital, with its simultaneous needs to improve and increase its housing stock and to provide stability in a city in a constant state of churn. Strong emotions are stirred about power, progress and local attachment. What are the lessons of these stories for achieving the best regeneration outcomes?
One principle should be paramount. It is never, ever to push people around. Borough planners and politicians, mindful of the cost of repairing dwellings that are beyond proper repair and the queues for social and other “affordable” homes stretching round the Town Hall block, might be forgiven for surveying leaky, low density products of post-war municipalism done on the cheap and concluding that they are, quite literally, a waste of space. Regeneration is often informed by a desire to facilitate “mix” and “connectivity”, which are fine, if sometimes over played. But estates critised as warehousing poverty can be, for those who inhabit them, havens of comfort and security within vital networks of friendship and support.
This is the bedrock stuff of social cohesion, an asset to be prized. When regeneration feels imposed, it’s not surprising there is resistance. Better to accept from the off that any proposal to tear down an estate is sure to be seen by some only as a threat. At the same time, the law of averages alone insists that others will perceive it as an opportunity to solve some of the biggest problems in their lives. These are the silent majority that louder anti-regeneration groups, not all of them rooted in the communities they claim to represent, omit from the “social cleansing” narratives they provide for liberal journalists.
Imagine someone from the council rang your bell and said, “We’re going to knock your house down, but don’t worry we’ll build a better one for you nearby.” If you like where you live you might provide a dusty answer. Older people, understandably, are often the least receptive. But if you’re sick of damp and vermin and thin walls through which your neighbours can be heard and your 28-year-old-son is sleeping on your sofa because there is no bedroom for him, you might prick up your ears.
A spectrum of sentiment is only to be expected and all of it must be respected. Securing a critical mass of resident support requires transparency and candour, including about finance and land. Formal consultations have too often been easy to dismiss as the covert rubber-stamping of decisions that have already been made. Might there be a central role for proper focus groups to gauge opinion more thoroughly? Mayor of London Sadiq Khan’s new requirement that residents must approve regeneration schemes through a ballot if he is to help fund them, having previously opposed that approach, was seen by some as a capitulation to the anti-regeneration left. Yet the earliest ballots have produced resounding “yes” votes, including for schemes proposed by Labour-run Ealing Council and two housing associations.
The biggest problem with ballots is that they risk leaving those enduring the worst housing conditions as a defeated, stuck minority. But the need of landlords to win them has concentrated minds on serious engagement with tenants and with leaseholders too. The latter, as homeowners, often feel robbed by the replacement homes they are offered. There is a fairness case for more generous compensation – as there is for more public investment in affordable homes – but also for explaining that, sadly, a home owned on an estate is quite likely to have a lower market value than an equivalent street property nearby.
Regeneration in its widest sense can improve lives in lots of ways, be that through employment support as provided by Notting Hill Genesis to people on the Aylesbury estate in Southwark, or by involving residents in the design of their new homes, as happened with the celebrated Packington estate in Islington. These are virtuous endeavours that build trust. This helps developers, councils and landlords, who strive to retain it. Political leaders should be active custodians of regeneration schemes, engaging closely with the people they are elected to serve and bringing them on board.
Good regeneration is the product of painstaking negotiation and all interested parties finding a shared, progressive path. All involved must eschew a bulldozer mentality that would crush the very people regeneration most effects. It might not the easiest way, but it will be the happiest one in the end.
Haringey Council’s cabinet member for finance has stood down from his post, claiming that “imprudent” budgetary decisions have been taken “over my head” and that manifesto pledges have been “watered down or ignored”.
Patrick Berryman, a former hedge fund trader who represents Bounds Green ward, also said in his resignation letter to council leader Joseph Ejiofor that he was unhappy that two erstwhile cabinet colleagues had been “arbitrarily sacked” on New Year’s Eve, saying that this action did “not reflect the promises made when you were elected”.
Though expressing pride in some of the council’s endeavours, including extending council tax relief for poorer residents, Berryman claimed that “in recent months some key decisions have been made and come before us as a cabinet that have lacked proper process, consultation and threaten some of our key manifesto pledges”.
He added that, “I have been put in difficult situations when last minute finance decisions have been taken over my head without my, or seemingly anyone else’s, input that involves our budget, our capital plans and even how councillors are paid. I can no longer support decisions that I consider to be financially risky and imprudent”.
Although Berryman assures Ejiofor that his decision “does not reflect my personal regard for you”, his departure is unlikely to lessen speculation about possible moves within the Labour Group and Haringey’s wider membership to replace the current leader.
Ejiofor was elected leader by the Labour Group following his party’s victory in last May’s London borough elections, when its majority was reduced by seven – the highest number of losses incurred by Labour in the capital.
He succeeded Claire Kober, who resigned from the council following a successful campaign by local Momentum activists and non-Labour allies to deselect sitting councillors and enable the formation of a Labour administration more aligned with the views of Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn. Haringey has since become known as the country’s first “Corbyn Council”.
In October, Ishmael Osamor, the son of Edmonton MP and then shadow cabinet member Kate Osamor, resigned as a councillor and from a “deputy cabinet” role after news emerged of his conviction on three charges of possessing drugs with intent to supply.
The cabinet members sacked on New Year’s Eve were Zena Brabazon and Peray Ahmet, both of whom were defeated by Ejiofor in the election for council leader. Ejiofor said the action was needed in order to build “a cabinet team able to work closely together to deliver out manifesto”. Both women have criticised the decision.
Last month, the Labour Group’s chief whip, Gideon Bull, wrote to all the group’s members expressing his “deep disappointment and concern about the level of both personal acrimony and discourtesy that I have seen displayed over the last nine months between colleagues”. Bull emphasised that only some councillors were guilty of this behaviour but insisted that “enough is enough”.
Responding to Berryman’s resignation, Ejiofor said in a statement: “I am saddened by the resignation of Pat Berryman, and would like to thank him for his work, commitment and dedication over the past ten months. However, I strongly disagree with the reasons behind his resignation and restate my absolute commitment to delivering our manifesto pledges and running a prudent and collegiate administration.”
Sadiq Khan’s City Hall calls it “the UK’s largest regeneration project” and it was hailed as a future “Canary Wharf of the West” under Boris Johnson. But last month, the largest private landowner within the 1,600 acres of Old Oak Common and Park Royal, where this vast new piece of London is intended to take shape, loudly and publicly slammed the mayoral body set up to deliver it.
Cargiant, a major second hand vehicle sale and refurbishment firm employing 770 people, called for a “full inquiry” into the strategy of the Old Oak and Park Royal Development Corporation (OPDC) and claimed its financial calculations for the project “just don’t add up”. It said the OPDC will get nowhere near delivering the 25,500 new homes and 65,000 new jobs it has been promising and for that reason the government should not give it the tidy sum of £250 million of public money it had asked for to help it on its way.
Managing director Tony Mendes spoke plainly: “This is an absolute scandal and Old Oak Common is fast becoming known as Old Oak Cock-up”. Strong words, they brought a strong response from City Hall. “These comments are barely worth the paper they are written on,” was one reported response. Another was more diplomatic but also more pointed: “The Mayor is disappointed Tony Mendes is looking to frustrate a project that will deliver tens of thousands of much-needed homes and jobs”.
The row continued in Estates Gazette, where OPDC chair Liz Peace stuck to her target numbers and enthused about “the largest and perhaps the most exciting mixed use regeneration programme in the UK”. She said that she and the OPDC are working cooperatively with local landowners and business to that end. But Mendes scorned this as “barely credible”. He asserted that, on the contrary, the OPDC bid for the £250 million of government money “is based on utilising land which we own and which is essential for the operation of our business”.
It is therefore unsurprising that Mendes did not greet with delight last week’s announcement by Chancellor Philip Hammond that the £250 million has indeed been awarded to the OPDC. And while government, the Mayor and the corporation said the money would prepare the ground for 13,000 of the new homes it says will be built, Mendes retorted that “it does nothing of the sort”. What makes him so sure?
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To understand this row it helps to grasp how important to the OPDC vision the land Cargiant occupies is and the size of the task of transforming it. Neither Park Royal nor Old Oak Common are as leafy as they sound. The first covers the western side of the regeneration area. It contains around 1,700 businesses, notably food manufacturers, and has been described as “the bread basket of the capital”. The largest area of formally designated strategic industrial land in the city, Park Royal currently employs about 43,000 people. The Mayor says he wants to strengthen and “intensify” it through the OPDC, increasing job capacity by 10,000 and also building 1,500 homes there.
On the eastern side of the regeneration area, Old Oak Common is no sylvan enclave either. Bisected on its east-west axis by the Grand Union Canal, it is threaded with railway tracks and sidings. A recent addition to the landscape to the south of the canal is a Crossrail depot, where over half of the Elizabeth Line trains will eventually be stabled. Also in what has come to be called Old Oak South is the site of the forthcoming High Speed Two (HS2) station, images of which were released by the government on 5 February. The prospect of what will be called Old Oak Common station being put there is what led to the OPDC area being identified as a regeneration zone in the first place – rail investments are big catalysts for wider development. It has been billed as an interchange of similar size to Waterloo, a “superhub” as the government calls it, connecting Heathrow, Central London, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds.
Greeting publication of the designs, Liz Peace underline the case that the planned HS2 station represents an opportunity “to create a vibrant new quarter of London that will bring jobs, housing and a whole new social infrastructure” for the benefit of local people and newcomers alike. It is, after all, in Old Oak, on both sides of the canal, that the brand new London neighbourhood and the vast majority – 24,000 – of the new homes are pledged to be. But it was just two days later, on 7 February, that Cargiant went public with its objections to what the OPDC is promising and the way it has been going about its work. In jarring contrast to all the upbeat assessments, the company painted a picture of slow progress, recurring ineptitude, fanciful predictions and poor treatment of itself at the OPDC’s hands.
Though situated in Old Oak North – the area north of the canal – some of the company’s displeasure was directed at the plans for Old Oak South. Alarm about these had already been expressed by veteran architect and city planner Sir Terry Farrell. In March 2016, Sir Terry, who had previously conducted an assessment of Old Oak’s development potential for Hammersmith & Fulham Council, pointed out that construction of the Crossrail depot had failed to make provision for it to be decked over at a later date, creating space for offices and homes to be built above it. In his view, this showed a lack of foresight under Mayor Johnson, which risked turning the wider project into London’s “worst cock-up in 50 years”. Cargiant cited Sir Terry saying it could cost £1 billion to get the depot moved somewhere else and claimed that the OPDC had “accepted that the development at Old Oak South could not happen” as a result.
However, the company’s most detailed and urgent critique was of the OPDC’s approach to Old Oak North, where it is situated. There had been a tense build up to this. A letter from the OPDC’s lawyers to Cargiant’s, sent earlier this year and seen by On London, reveals a wrangle over OPDC proposals to build a road, at that time to be called Park Road, whose route would impinge on Cargiant-owned land. As the planning authority for the area, the OPDC has the option of using compulsory purchase powers (CPO) to take ownership of land it wants. Concerns had been expressed by Cargiant that land taken from it to make way for the road, along with additional space for future building, would have a serious impact on its operations. The OPDC’s lawyers maintained that the impact would be minimal. However, the same letter stated plainly that the OPDC had yet to undertake a detailed assessment of Cargaint’s operations as a whole. The letter went on to say that the OPDC did have information about these matters that Cargiant itself had provided. But for Cargiant that wasn’t good enough.
On 4 February, Cargiant’s owner, Geoff Warren, wrote to the Ministry for Housing Communities and Local Government (MHCLG). This is the department to which the OPDC had made its bid for the £250 million, a substantial portion of the government’s housing infrastructure fund (HIF). Cargiant had not been able to see the bid document – or, to its annoyance, play any part in compiling it – but had already advised the MHCLG that it did not believe it could possibly meet the necessary requirements to succeed. Warren restated this point in his letter, and added:
“In view of the consequences for Cargiant, we would have no option but to challenge the process being undertaken by the OPDC to deliver these plans and seek to hold it transparently to account, at every legitimate stage.”
He continued:
“It cannot be right that such an important and long-standing major business – built-up over 40 years and directly employing over 700 local skilled workers – faces potential closure when a basic and fundamental assessment of the impacts of the proposals has not taken place. Such an assessment should have taken place with informed talks with Cargiant when the original bid was contemplated.”
Warren went on to explain that Cargiant has suggested to the OPDC an alternative route for Park Road, designed for it by engineering giant Arup. He assured the MHCLG that this would “enable the successful delivery of early infrastructure without significant impact on our business operations” although he claimed that adopting the alternative route it would also entail the OPDC submitting a completely fresh HIF bid. As we now know, the department was not persuaded by this argument. The OPDC has, however, said that it will give the Arup alternative consideration.
However, Warren’s argument to the MHCLG went wider than the alignment of the proposed Park Road. In his letter of 4 February he maintained that:
“Even if the delivery of Park Road were to be facilitated through joint working with Cargiant, we believe the costs of developing the Cargiant land to be prohibitive and that such development is extremely unlikely to be capable of being delivered without enormous further public subsidies that simply cannot be justified”.
He continued:
“In such a scenario it is wrong to lose further important local industrial land, especially when so much has already been lost to residential development, causing unprecedented price rises in both land and rents.”
Warren said that the designation of Cargiant’s site for regeneration had already caused it to put on hold plans to enlarge its business by investing in new facilities to enable 24-hour working and “create many hundreds more jobs” – an expansion that would demand no money from the public purse at all. And he went on to cast doubt on the OPDC’s objective of intensifying industry in Park Royal, saying the many businesses there had no interest in helping it happen. He was, effectively, contending that pretty much the whole basis for Old Oak Common and Park Royal being subjected to a full, public body-led regeneration was hugely flawed and that putting further public money into it would be a complete waste. He signed off by giving notice that Cargiant felt it had “no option but to now put this issue fully in the public domain”.
That duly happened three days later. The heading of a lengthy press release reprised Sir Terry Farrell’s comments of 2016 – “Old Oak Cock-Up”. In it, Cargiant said that although “small scale development at the fringes of Old Oak North would be possible” it bluntly stated that a “comprehensive scheme” taking in Cargiant land “cannot be delivered”. It stressed the complexities of delivering the infrastructure necessary for creating a residential neighbourhood in Old Oak North: not only will new roads be required, the canal and the railway lines would need to be bridged; the land there is undulating and contaminated, adding to the difficulties and, therefore, to the expense. To these financial strains it added Mayor Khan’s and OPDC’s policy that 50 per cent of the homes delivered across the OPDC area as a whole should meet the Mayor’s definition of “affordable”, the point being that the more affordability any housing scheme has to provide, the less money is likely to be available to pay for the things that are needed to make a residential area function – transport links, utilities, community amenities and so on. And on top of all this would be the cost of the removal of Cargiant from its land in the first place.
As the aerial photograph above shows, Cargiant is well named. There is a lot of it: a large mosaic of factory workshops, offices and parking spaces. For a brand new residential neighbourhood to be built in its place, the whole lot would have to be knocked down and cleared. That of itself would cost plenty of money. In any case, Cargiant does not want to disappear, and re-locating the business would cost plenty of money too, if were that practical. As Warren stressed to the MHCLG, the price of land for industrial use has been rising and Cargiant currently has no site lined up elsewhere that it could move to. Warren said in his letter that should suitable land to relocated to be unavailable, the business might well end up being shut down – “extinguished” is the official term – by the OPDC using CPO. It says the price of either a theoretical relocation or extinguishment has been estimated at £600 million. Add that to the taxpayer’s bill, the company argues, and the OPDC’s vision of a fine new London district is plainly unviable, however that word is defined.
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The OPDC’s view of the project is, as you’d expect, very different. But before getting on to that, there’s a bit more backdrop to Cargaint’s displeasure to sketch in.
Boris Johnson’s vision for the area began to take shape back in 2013. He set up the OPDC two years later under the chairmanship of his deputy mayor for planning, Sir Edward Lister. Cargiant, knowing that its future had been thrown into flux, decided to take the initiative. If its premises were going to be knocked down and something built in its place, why not try to become the builder?
In partnership with developers London and Regional Properties, the company came up with proposals for redeveloping its site into a residential neighbourhood called Old Oak Park, which aspired to producing thousands of the new homes Mayor Johnson had envisaged. It factored in meeting the expense of relocating Cargiant. The company (quite literally) began preparing the ground for such a move by assembling land elsewhere in West London outside the OPDC area, starting in 2015. It says it made substantial progress towards putting enough to together to create a new Cargiant home.
The Old Oak Park plan progressed further than number crunching and some nice CGIs of a high density settlement rolling back from the north bank of the canal. Its evolution involved ongoing, regular discussions with the OPDC of that time within a formal planning performance agreement and a series of public consultations, the fourth and last of which took place in July 2016. Published feedback suggested a favourable response from local people and community groups. The final version was for a development of 6,500 new homes, commercial spaces with scope for 8,000 new jobs, a “cultural quarter”, a primary school, health and community facilities, a new High Street and a new London Overground station to be called Hythe Road.
But that was as far as the Old Oak Park scheme got. By the time of that fourth and, as it turns out, final consultation exercise, the OPDC landscape was already changing. Two months earlier, Sadiq Khan had succeeded Johnson as London Mayor. Johnson’s departure from City Hall also meant Sir Edward Lister’s departure as OPDC chairman. In June 2016, as part of a broader stocktake of what he had inherited from his Conservative predecessor, the Labour Mayor Khan ordered a review of how the OPDC programme was progressing. In November he declared on the strength of the review’s findings that Johnson had left things in “a mess”. He drew particular attention to a signed understanding that had been reached with the government over the transfer of public land, which he said represented a bad deal for London. The review also recommended that Transport for London conduct “a thorough options appraisal for repositioning or retrofitting the Crossrail depot” and the appointment of a new OPDC chair.
Map of Old Oak North land ownerships
Liz Peace became that replacement, though it was not until March 2017 that the new Mayor named her as his choice. By then, Cargiant had published findings of its final public consultation. But in May 2017, the OPDC appointed a new masterplanner, AECOM, to put together a new delivery plan for a 30-plus year period and a draft Local Plan, focussing on Old Oak North. And by the end of the year, it was pretty clear to Cargiant that the new OPDC under the new Mayor was not going to support its Old Oak Park scheme. In late 2016, the corporation had appointed leading consultants GL Hearn to assess the plans’ financial viability. A draft initial appraisal produced in August 2017 concluded that it fell short – the projected profits from the scheme were judged insufficient to meet the share of the cost of the transport and other infrastructure and the “affordable” housing that Cargiant would be required to contribute as a condition of being granted planning consent.
Negotiations about these things are completely normal between developers and planning authorities. But Cargiant contends it was never given a fair chance to make its case. It says that, despite having worked with the Johnson era OPDC when putting the scheme together, it wasn’t told by the Khan era OPDC until November 2017 that all previous assumptions about the infrastructure needed had been changed. The company also complains that GL Hearn’s final report wasn’t shared with it until July 2018, even though it had been presented to the OPDC five months earlier. The previous month, the latest draft Local Plan for the whole OPDC area had been published. The Old Oak Park scheme is now dead and the upshot of all this, according to Cargiant, is that a “narrow window” during which the development of its site and its business relocation could have got underway has now closed. It says it has spent £8.5 million on working up what it considered a very good scheme that would have delivered good results for all concerned. Nonetheless, it calls itself “a reluctant developer”. It is now a thwarted and fed up one too.
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So where does the OPDC stand on all of this? Liz Peace CBE is a considerable figure in the world of real estate, a former chief executive of the British Property Federation, chair of the Government Property Agency, chair of trustees of think tank Centre for London, and a member of Mayor Khan’s Homes for Londoners board. Speaking to On London a couple of weeks before the government took its decision about the £250 million of HIF money, she did not accept Cargiant’s uncomplimentary characterisation of the state of play with Old Oak and the rest of the regeneration programme. She had already written in Estates Gazette that the HIF money would enable a “public-led intervention” to “give the Mayor and OPDC the certainty that up to 10,000 new homes and 5,500 new jobs would be delivered for Londoners by the early 2030s” as a direct result and described Cargiant’s approach as “disappointing”.
Asked to address some of Cargiant’s criticisms in more detail, she described the concerns raised about the Crossrail depot as a “red herring” in the sense that what’s done is done and complaining about it now is a distraction. “It is in the way, but it’s going nowhere and we can get round it,” she said. “Decking over it would cost £1 billion. It won’t be decked over or moved elsewhere unless a developer is prepared to find the cash. We deliberately haven’t started on Old Oak South precisely because the HS2 station is getting underway there. That puts it out of bounds for the next eight years.”
She said the presence of Cargiant north of the canal puts its 46 acres out of bounds too, at least for the time being, but public land to the north of Cargiant is already accessible. Peace has told told Mayor Khan that the provisional terms for its transfer agreed under Mayor Johnson had actually been OK. Now, with the HIF money becoming available, it is entirely logical for the OPDC to concentrate its initial efforts there. These will open up that section of Old Oak North for the first of the 10,000 homes it has in mind (the government’s mention of 13,000 reflects hopes that the same “unlocking” process will eventually pace the way for a further 3,000 close by).
Eventually, though, further progress towards the 10,000 depends on Cargiant vacating the necessary space. Peace described Cargiant as “a fabulous business” and characterised Geoff Warren’s producing the rejected Old Oak Park plan as admirably enterprising: “They will want my land, here’s an opportunity for me.” But she stuck to the OPDC view that that plan didn’t stack up financially. “It had some flaws. It needed a lot of infrastructure and the problem was that they assumed a lot of it would be provided by someone else”. Who might that someone else be? Could Transport for London pay for the new Overground station? Peace pointed out that TfL at the moment doesn’t have much cash to spare. As for the wrangle over the road, she mentioned Cargiant’s alternative route suggestion and said she was “hoping for a negotiated outcome”.
What about Cargiant’s more general complaints about the OPDC in the last couple of years? Peace accepted that there had been “a bit of a hiatus” with the change of Mayor and that, of course, the recruitment of new masterplanners meant that some previous assumptions about how the new neighbourhood would take shape changed. She acknowledged that the 50 per cent affordable policy makes the housing finances “challenging” but that the Mayor had introduced it “for good, sound reasons” and that, with the help of some grant funding, the challenge can be met. She also stressed that nearly 4,000 homes in other parts of the regeneration area have already been completed or started, with planning approval for nearly 6,000 more granted or on its way.
There had been a long wait for a decision about the HIF bid, which was submitted to the government last September. Peace described the wait as “a source of huge irritation”. But now, at last, the money has been awarded, and she greeted this public sector funding as “fundamental to meeting the Mayor’s ambitious housing targets” and as making “economic sense” that “sends the right message to the market” and will “unlock opportunities for public and private sector collaboration”. The money has to be spent by March 2023. OPDC says it will begin by getting utilities, drainage and an energy centre put in, along with the “early construction of Union Way”. It turns out that Union Way is a new name for the contentious Park Road – Hammersmith & Fulham turned the name Park Road down for being the same as or similar to other streets in the borough.
For Peace, the government’s decision is another step on a long, ever-changing regeneration journey that will take 30 years or more to complete. Old Oak Common station is a beacon on her horizon: “We can now kick start that northern arc of land and by the time that’s done HS2 will be there. That will create more viability and I will be banging on investors’ doors, if they are not already banging on mine.”
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Where does Cargiant fit into that prognosis? The OPDC still wants the company’s land redeveloped eventually because it remains fundamental to delivering its plans for Old Oak North. But Cargiant’s stance now is that this has become financially impossible. The draft Local Plan for Old Oak North includes a table (on page 46) showing how many homes would be built on the land of each landowner in the area during the 20 year life of the plan and beyond. It allocates 5,300 in total to Cargiant’s land and a further 900 to the spaces occupied by two business centres adjoining it, which Cargiant owns. So that’s 6,200 homes that will not, in reality, ever be built, according to Cargiant.
Before the HIF bid was accepted, the company called for an inquiry into the OPDC’s fitness to spend £250 million of public money wisely, given what it crossly termed “their track record of appalling waste and failure”. After the bid succeeded, Tony Mendes said that any use of CPO powers “to take operational Cargiant land” would be challenged every step of the way. In October, the Local Plan was submitted to planning inspectors for examination on behalf of the MHCLG. Next month, the examination process will move into its public hearings phase. Big regeneration programmes are long distance events. A great deal can happen and change along the way, including market conditions, national governments and London Mayors.
They also entail compiling a sort of social and economic balance sheet, with many factors to be weighed on either side. There will aways be losers as well as winners, and there will always be arguments about the balances struck between them and what outcomes represent the overall greater good. A cynical view is that Cargiant has simply moved into a new, hard bargaining phase of its response to its predicament with the ultimate goal of forcing the best financial result for itself that it can get. But if so, what would you be doing if you were them? Meanwhile, Liz Peace has set out her position followed the success of the HIF bid. “We’re keen to make sure that operating businesses are not negatively impacted wherever possible,” she says. “OPDC is committed to working constructively and flexibly with all landowners, and we look forward to future meetings and discussions.” There won’t be any shortage of those.
Leading national figures from Momentum, the campaign group formed to support Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party, will be among those conducting the selection of Labour candidates for next year’s London Assembly elections.
Jon Lansman, Momentum’s founder and chair, will be one of three representatives from Labour’s governing national executive committee (NEC) and Emine Ibrahim, who is one of Momentum’s vice chairs, was among those elected to the committee from the party’s London region.
Also elected to the committee through the London region ballot were its new chair, Jim Kelly of the Unite union and Michelle Gordon of the GMB union. Jim Kennedy and Sarah Owen, both of whom represent Unite on the NEC, complete that body’s complement on the selection committee.
The committee line-up is a reflection of the recent capture of almost every position on the London regional board by the Left of the party in the capital and appears to substantiate the view that Corbynites are eager to establish a strong presence in the Labour Group, which currently holds 12 of the 25 Assembly seats, at next May’s Assembly elections.
Two of the nine sitting Labour constituency AMs have already announced that they will not be standing again and On London understands that up to three others may do the same. Those wishing to seek a further term at City Hall will have to reach a higher threshold than in the past in order to win so-called “trigger ballots” and automatically go forward as candidates for their seats in 2020.
New procedures are also being introduced for AMs elected on a “Londonwide” basis through a form of proportional representation. Two of Labour’s three current Londonwide AMs have said they will not be running next time and the region’s new rules are expected to give ordinary party members the key say in which order candidates are placed on the party’s list of candidates for Londonwide seats.
Taken together, the rule changes and the strength of the Left on the selection committee and among the capital’s 100,000-plus party members suggest that the prospects of hopefuls from the Left becoming Assembly candidates and members have improved. Ibrahim, who is deputy leader of Haringey’s “Corbyn Council”, was strongly involved in the successful campaign by Momentum and non-Labour allies to de-select sitting Labour councillors prior to last May’s borough elections, enabling the formation of a council Labour Group and leadership sympathetic to Corbyn’s stewardship of Labour nationally.
On London has approached Labour’s London region for full details of the Assembly candidate selection process.
With the right approaches on housing, transport infrastructure and immigration, the capital can remain the business capital of the world for the good of the UK as a whole
The ability of Brexit to dominate every conversation continues to know no bounds. At MIPIM, the property industry’s international conference which took place last week in Cannes, it was a constant – particularly as news broke of votes won and lost, and what these might mean for the short and longer-term success of the UK economy.
There was widespread incredulity among investors and business leaders that the government is still putting so much effort into planning for no deal so late in the day, when it should be taken off the table. “This is not a natural disaster, it’s entirely avoidable!” exclaimed one chairman with considerable government experience. Although parliament’s vote to extend Article 50 has led some to breathe a sigh of relief, the only way we can guarantee that unilaterally – and avoid a no deal – is to revoke Article 50 and create some much needed breathing space; something we’ve advocated at London First for some time.
Thankfully, beyond the Brexit debate, there are many businesses eager to look ahead and focus on the future of our capital in the decades to come, not least how we ensure it continues to drive prosperity and growth across the whole of the UK.
London is the business capital of the world – and so many business leaders I speak to are just as committed as I am to keeping it that way. But we all recognise that these are complex times and that there are big questions to answer on how London maintains its reputation as a great place to invest, live and work, particularly as our place in the world changes.
For my part, I was pleased to see the recent City of London report which showed that the capital is the best global location for innovation, ahead of the likes of Singapore, New York and Paris. Importantly, it was also ahead in terms of turning that innovation into a profitable proposition.
We now need to harness this advantage as we turn our attention to meeting London’s challenges and embracing its opportunities – not least by considering how the capital retains the people it needs to power the economy, which means taking a new approach to housing, immigration and infrastructure.
London is becoming a city of renters, with almost half of its inhabitants living in either affordable or private rented accommodation. Rental is forecast to be the most common form of housing by 2025. Within that changing landscape, the role of Build to Rent is becoming an important part of how we make the sector work for people – raising standards and taking some of the uncertainty out of the process – as well as creating a new investment opportunity in the capital. This was a major talking point at MIPIM and it’s clear that if we can house the talent we need, it will go a long way towards keeping the city attractive as a place to live and work in the years to come.
But we also need to get our approach to immigration right so that London remains open to talent from across the globe, and so that all Europeans who call it home continue to feel welcome. At London First, we’ve argued that critical to getting this right is lowering the government’s proposed salary threshold for skilled migrants from £30,000 to match the level of the London Living Wage – around £20,000 annually. This would keep us open to a broader range of skills used in many jobs, from lab technicians to nurses, which pay less than £30,000; prevent a sudden cliff-edge in recruitment; and allow employers time to adjust to changes. As the government’s White Paper consultation progresses over the next few months, it is vital that the voices of business and unions spanning all sectors from health, food and drink to construction are heard on this important issue.
Keeping London connected with the country and the rest of the world is essential for cementing its role as a global city, and as a capital serving the whole of the UK. We need to get Crossrail over the finish line and hand over the construction baton to Crossrail 2, along with other national infrastructure. We need to expand our global air links, by enabling growth across southeast airports with an expanded Heathrow and better rail links. And we need to enhance our digital infrastructure, giving Londoners better connectivity at home, in the office and on the move.
But keeping the city vibrant and successful goes beyond that – we must have a positive vision for its future. And as we explore what that next horizon is, we must embrace the best of what London is now, as well as a forward-looking vision of what it can become. Beyond the uncertainties of Brexit, if we can retain our spark, our people and our relevance, as well as our innovative drive, I am confident our capital city can continue to prosper for the benefit of the whole UK.
Jasmine Whitbread is chief executive of leading business organisation London First.
It has been an extraordinary and unprecedented time in British politics, with even those sitting in the House of Commons chamber struggling to keep a firm grip on what has been going on. Last week culminated in the rejection of a “no deal” outcome with the strange and existentialist spectacle of a beleaguered Prime Minister effectively voting against herself, and parliament pushing to extend Article 50. However, one thing is for certain: our country and Westminster still remains divided over the issue, as does the London Assembly.
I was disappointed to read a comment piece recently published by On London penned by my London Assembly colleague, Gareth Bacon, which urged Londoners to accept a form of hard Brexit to “lead the country to further greatness”. Firstly, I should make clear that I like Gareth, but not his politics, and I question his grasp of the challenges facing this city, the country and our political system now and beyond Brexit. It was an article that seemed to trivialise the serious concerns Londoners have about our departure from the EU. It also raised questions as to why he would, however inadvertently, align himself with views backed by unsavoury figures such as Nigel Farage, Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin et al.
Now more than ever, it is vital that we retain a calm and rational approach to Brexit that respects and follows parliamentary procedure. However, it is clear that we are in an endgame situation, where our options are becoming swiftly attenuated and the Prime Minister must now respect parliament’s rejection of no-deal, go back to Brussels, ask for an extension of Article 50 and then call a general election or, failing that, a People’s Vote.
In his 955-word diatribe against Remainers, the Mayor and, more obscurely, “the children of Blair”, my Conservative fellow AM waxed lyrical about the benefits that an ill-defined hard Brexit will bring to British democracy, but is perhaps unsurprisingly vague on the details. He draws ambiguous comparisons with the Suffragettes and Chartists, though it is hard to imagine which aspects of their direct action approach he’d support.
He’s even more unclear about whether he supports those ultras who would like to take us back to the dark ages. I suspect that our democracy would not be strengthened if parliament pursued a hard Brexit, which was not part of the Leave campaign, which ignores the needs of a significant portion of Leave voters as well as Remainers, and which will leave the next generation to pick up the pieces of a disastrous outcome that some were not even given the right to vote for.
His article also betrayed a lack of acceptance of basic facts. We had an advisory referendum, which resulted in an extremely tight vote margin, leaving a vast number of complex legal and economic implications to be untangled. We live in the real world, and any trade agreement we enter or leave comes with rules and conditions that must be negotiated.
In a healthy and progressive democracy, why would Brexit not be subject to an intense and protracted process of parliamentary scrutiny and some level of passionate dissent from the public? It is concerning that even amid the current tumult and confusion this banal, but fundamental truth needs to be reiterated – that as politicians it is our duty to protect our constituents and our country from unnecessary harm and risks. Gareth refers to Leave voters as “mostly optimists”, but politicians who have been elected to implement historic decisions such as Brexit simply cannot do so with their head in the clouds.
It is also worrying that he so nonchalantly derides the overwhelming number of concerns and warnings issued by financial experts and business leaders as “Project Fear” or letting the country down. As a member of the London Assembly, he will be well aware of the potential consequences of a hard or no-deal Brexit for the capital.
Firstly, our security could be put at significant risk in the event of a no-deal Brexit. We have heard warnings from the Met that they would lose access to key European criminal databases. There are also legitimate concerns that food shortages could cause riots, hate crime could spike in the same way it did following the referendum result and officers could be abstracted from London to police the Irish border. In the longer term, there could be consequences for the union of this country should it result in efforts to bring forward a referendum on Northern Ireland’s future in the UK. After all, the Democratic Unionist Party does not speak for all unionists – in fact, many people in Northern Ireland view Brexit as a threat to their security and their prosperity.
We could also see a huge shock to the City of London, integral to the UK economy, with major job losses in our vital financial services sector and businesses scrambling to move outside of the capital and the country altogether. Our NHS services in the capital would also be likely to suffer, with limited access to medicines and spiralling staff vacancy rates likely to get even worse. Tackling the housing crisis in London would become even more of a challenge as our construction workforce would be hit. We simply don’t train enough people in this country in the necessary skills to fulfil the needs of our economy.
With all these things in mind, would Gareth venture to repeat his claim that his preferred, reckless form of Brexit would resemble a “progressive step” akin to “Chartism and the Suffragette movement”? On this, I am with, as he puts it, “politicians like Mayor Khan”, who “cannot understand why anyone would ever want to commit such reckless self-harm”.
There is not even a plaque to draw attention to it, but it was arguably the most iconic place in William Shakespeare’s life. When you consider that he is the most written about writer in the world, it is bizarre that there is nothing to record the site of the Blackfriars Theatre, the playwright’s main money earner, which was situated in the former Blackfriars monastery. If you want to know what the playhouse looked like you will have to go to Staunton in Virginia where Shakespeare-loving Americans have built a replica. The only clue to its former presence in London is that the spot it stood in lies in what is now called Playhouse Yard.
The monastery building actually contained two separate theatres. The first staged performances by boy actors, children of the chapel royal, from 1576 until 1584 and the second was built after the actor and impresario James Burbage purchased the Upper Frater or refectory rooms in 1596. Burbage was a leading member of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, the company to which Shakespeare belonged. They had been forced to leave the Curtain Theatre in Shoreditch after a dispute with their landlord, and Burbage’s intention was that his new Blackfriars playhouse would be the company’s new home.
But they were thwarted by a lobby to end all lobbies – a very powerful group of Puritanical Blackfriars residents led by the formidable Lady Elizabeth Russell, a confidante of Queen Elizabeth, whose single-mindedness makes Mrs Thatcher look like a girl guide. She not only harnessed her gold-plated address book – which listed her brother-in-law the all-powerful Lord Burghley as well as Elizabeth herself – to her campaign, but also managed to persuade other locals to join in. These included Shakespeare’s childhood friend Richard Field and Lord Hunsdon who as patron of The Lord Chamberlain’s Men would have benefitted financially from a Blackfriars venue. But not in her backyard.
Lady Russell’s petition to the Queen succeeded, so instead of moving to Blackfriars after their eviction from Shoreditch, Shakespeare’s troupe had to revert to Plan B and move across the Thames to build the Globe Theatre, a replica of which – built by an American! – is the best known symbol of Shakespearean drama in the world. The new Blackfriars did not go unused, however. It too put on shows by boy actors, which were thought generally harmless. But times changed, Lady Russell met her demise, and from 1609 or 1610 “Shakespeare’s company”, now known as the King’s Men following the crowning of King James in 1603, at last began performing there. They continued to until 1642.
Unlike the Globe, the Blackfriars was an expensive, candle-lit, all-weather indoor venue seating 700 people, who paid five times as much to get in as at the original of now more famous theatre reconstructed across the river, and proved highly profitable for Shakespeare as actor and part owner. It is a sobering fact – recounted in detail by Chris Laoutaris in his fascinating book Shakespeare and the Countess – that if the troupe had not been driven out of Blackfriars there would have been no Globe. Amazing thought. London is often accused of hiding its history but seldom has anything been as deeply buried as memories of the Blackfriars Theatre.
Read every previous instalment of Vic Keegan’s fabulous Lost London series here.
