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Tall buildings ‘increasingly accepted’ in London, says annual survey

The latest report from New London Architecture paints a picture of proliferation across the capital
Charles Wright

London is increasingly building up, and tall building is increasingly spreading from the centre to the outer boroughs, according to the latest annual London Tall Buildings survey.

The authoritative report, produced by the New London Architecture centre, shows a record 76 tall buildings planned for completion in 2019, three times as many as last year, with a total of 541 more schemes in the pipeline.

“We can finally declare 2019 as the Year of the Tall Building,” said NLA chair Peter Murray, launching the survey. “Tall buildings are becoming increasingly accepted as a necessary form of urban development, not just in commercial centres like the City or Canary Wharf, but to provide much needed new homes right across the capital.”

While tall buildings, defined by NLA as being of 20 storeys or more, continue to proliferate in Central London, the survey found a noticeable increase in parts of Outer London, with more active growth there now than in Inner London. While seven outer boroughs still have no tall buildings in their pipelines, 13 have 175 in progress between, with the majority in six boroughs – Barking & Dagenham, Barnet, Brent, Croydon, Ealing and Newham.

Significant schemes include Barnet’s Brent Cross development, with 18 high-rise blocks, and Newham developments at the Olympic Park, Westfield Stratford and the nine tower Parcelforce site in West Ham.

The tall building pipeline could eventually provide more than 110,000 new homes, approaching two years-worth of supply as set out in Sadiq Khan’s draft new London Plan target of 66,000 homes a year.

Mayor Khan’s targets are themselves a factor in the high-rise boom, the report says, with lower land values and improved transport connections also fuelling higher density development outside the centre.

“It is apparent that the intensification of density in some areas of suburban London has already begun,” the report notes. “Outer London is likely to continue to grow upwards…most boroughs will see significant development of new tall buildings.”

Enfield Council’s draft Local Plan, currently out to consultation, is highlighted as an example of the new positive approach. “If tall buildings were rejected outright,” it states, “the borough would struggle to meet its objectively assessed housing need, particularly for affordable housing, and the targets contained in the London Plan”.

Growing enthusiasm for tall buildings is reflected in planning permission data, with the permission rate up to 291 in 2018 with only eight refusals. And a wider mood change is also noted. “The NLA’s annual stats do not generate the cries of protest they once did,” NLA chair Murray writes in the survey’s introduction. “Tall buildings are normal.”

City Hall supports the upward trend. “The Mayor and I are clear that, when located in the right place and designed with their surroundings firmly in mind, tall buildings have a role to play in meeting the needs of our rapidly expanding city,” deputy mayor for planning Jules Pipe said.

The high-rise debate is not over, though. Mayor Khan’s London Plan still needs to clear its public inquiry hurdle, with sessions currently underway, and a robust challenge from the London Assembly.

“The Assembly does not believe that tall residential buildings are the answer to London’s housing needs and should not be encouraged outside of a few designated and carefully managed areas of London,” it says in evidence to the inquiry. “High densities can be achieved by approaches that are more suitable for families, more in keeping with London’s traditional form and less intrusive on the skyline.”

Citing concerns around sustainability, tenure “monoculture” and social and community impacts, the Assembly calls for more rigorous masterplanning and a “skyline commission” to advise on the “design impact of tall buildings”.

An NLA exhibition, London Tall Buildings 2019, showcasing 100 recent high-rise projects completed or underway, runs until 30 April.

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Categories: Analysis
Tags: Barking & Dagenham, Barnet, Brent, Brent Cross, Croydon, Ealing, Enfield Council, housing, Jules Pipe, London Assembly, New London Architecture, Newham, Olympic Park, Peter Murray, Sadiq Khan, Stratford, The London Plan, West Ham

Haringey: Labour councillor resists resignation calls after praising antisemitism row MP

Noah Tucker, a cabinet member of the "Corbyn Council", is under pressure for backing Chris Williamson
Dave Hill

A cabinet member of Haringey’s Labour Council has defied calls to step down from his role prompted by his claim that recent defections by Labour MPs had “nothing to do with antisemitism” and criticising the suspension of Chris Williamson MP for saying that his party has been “too apologetic” over the issue.

Noah Tucker, who is cabinet member for corporate services and insourcing with the so-called “Corbyn Council”, had been urged to quit by Liz Morris, leader of the opposition Liberal Democrat Group, after a recording of a speech by Tucker was published by the website Red Roar.

In a statement reported by the Evening Standard, Tucker said he fully supports “the work of the party leadership to fight antisemitism and I would never seek to downplay the seriousness or importance of the fight against it”. Morris called this response “deeply disappointing”. The Standard also reported that Ilford North MP Wes Streeting, vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group against anti-semitism, believes Tucker should be sacked from the cabinet.

On London asked the Haringey Labour Group if, in the light of Tucker’s comments, council leader Joseph Ejiofor, who appointed Tucker to his cabinet job after the elections last May, still considers him a suitable person to be in his team, but, twelve hours later, at the time of this article’s publication, there had been no response.

Ejiofor sacked two other members of his cabinet on New Year’s Eve, saying this was necessary in order to build “a cabinet team able to work closely together to deliver our manifesto”.

In January, one of the sacked cabinet members, Peray Ahmet, wrote to Tucker about his progress in his cabinet role and why he had commissioned the Association for Public Service Excellence (APSE) to look at insourcing council work done by two other contractors. In an email seen by On London, she remarked that, “It would be more than ironic if we continued to outsource the insourcing in this way”, and appearing to question Tucker’s productivity by asking: “When can we see these plans you that you have been working on for eight months?”

Tucker, who used to publish the now-defunct Far Left website 21st Century Socialism, was sacked from his job at Hackney Council in 2001, where he was also a trade union organiser. The union, Unison, claimed that Tucker had been victimised because of the amount of time he spent on union business. Tucker was supported in his dispute with Hackney by the Socialist Workers Party and the Socialist Party, formerly known as Militant.

In June 2016, Tucker highlighted on Facebook a motion passed by the Haringey branch of Momentum, the activist group formed to support the leadership of Labour by Jeremy Corbyn, which characterised suspensions of Labour figures at the time as a “witch hunt” resulting from a campaign emanating from the right wing of Labour and others to “shut down” debate about the Middle East. Tucker was first elected as a councillor at a by-election held four months later.

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Categories: News
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Southwark: Campaign for legal challenge to Elephant and Castle Shopping Centre regeneration plans

Opponents of Delancey scheme approved by City Hall claim it could accommodate more social housing
Dave Hill

Campaigners against consented plans for replacing the Elephant and Castle Shopping Centre with a new one have launched a crowdfunding campaign to mount a legal challenge to the decision in the hope of having it quashed.

Final approval for the full scheme, to be delivered by developer Delancey, was given by City Hall in December after Southwark Council’s planning committee had approved it by a narrow margin.

Its opponents, who had raised more than half their target of £5,000 within 24 hours of launching their appeal for funds, claim that the council was “misled” about the maximum amount of “affordable” housing the developer could provide within the development and that with funding from the London Mayor the number of social rented homes could be increased from 116 to 158.

It also contends that Delancey could end up building “little or no social rented housing” if it fails to deliver another section of the overall development. The scheme as it stands offers 330 “affordable” homes of different kinds out of 979 in total, meeting the Mayor’s 35 per cent “affordable’ requirement for developments that don’t qualify for mayoral funding support.

City Hall planning officers subjected the plans to their own viability testing before giving them a green light and concluded that they offered the maximum level of affordable homes that could be achieved at the current time. This followed revisions to the scheme designed to meet the Mayor’s concerns about the level of affordable homes previously offered.

The Shopping Centre was hailed as a retail breakthrough when opened in 1965, but soon fell into disrepair and “has only ever been partially occupied,” according to research by academic Ben Campkin. It is variously regard as an eyesore and as a valued local landmark.

Many of its present traders and others in railway arch units to its rear are of Latin American descent, reflecting a significant section of the local population. The plans contain a “relocation strategy” for these and other centre retailers, which includes funds to meet costs and new spaces to be let at 40 per cent of local market rates for a five year period and 75 per cent for the next ten. A bingo hall at the top of the building will not be replaced. The campaigners say they are dissatisfied with these provisions and that the plans threaten the diversity of the area’s population.

The City Hall report, compiled by GLA planning officers, concluded that both the “displacement of traders” and the impact on the bingo hall users would be “outweighed by the wider benefits of the scheme”, which include improvements to the Elephant and Castle Underground station, a new home for the local London College of Communications along with the new housing and shopping centre.

If the campaigners hit their target of £5,000 they will be represented by barristers Sarah Sackman and David Wolfe QC, both of whom of whom have wide experience in this area of law.

Categories: News
Tags: Ben Campkin, Delancey, Elephant and Castle, Greater London Authority, Southwark Council

Dave Hill: Labour cannot take its London dominance for granted

The party trails the Conservatives nationally and many of its MPs are in despair, yet the Corbyn Left in the capital is busy stirring up more trouble for it
Dave Hill

Over the weekend, the London Labour Party held its annual conference, two days of speeches, debates and the outcome of elections for positions on its London regional board, a body with considerable influence over such potentially fraught matters as the selection of candidates for elections and breaches of party rules.

A sense of which way the ideological wind was blowing is conveyed by a motion which urged, among other things, “exploring alternative budgets” and ways of raising income “including those suggested by Chris Williamson MP”. Note that Williamson was last week suspended, after a fashion, by Labour for claiming that his party has “given too much ground” in response to criticism that it has become rotten with Jew-haters.

It will not surprise On London readers that the motion was proposed by Tottenham Constituency Labour Party, perhaps the most comprehensively Corbynised in London. It has long been controlled by figures who eagerly supported the successful and disingenuous campaign to install a Haringey Council Labour administration more in the image of St Jeremy. The motion was seconded by Lewisham Deptford CLP. Lewisham borough too is a stronghold of Corbyn Left influence and activity.

To at least one Labour member at the conference, the words “alternative budgets” were code for setting illegal ones, a pet cause since the rate-capping saga of the 1980s of what I call the Outer Left – an endlessly splitting and reconfiguring shower of supposedly socialist radicals, some of whom, like Corbyn, have always been in the Labour Party, most of whom join it or make common cause with it when they think they can get hold of its internal power levers.

And the big news from the London Labour conference is that such elements have made a significant advance in the capital. On Saturday, the alt-left website Skwawkbox crowed that all but one of the elected positions on the London regional board had been won by candidates on the “Left slate” – essentially, those backed by Momentum and other admirers of the current Labour Party leader. The most senior posts were taken with striking ease. For example, the new chair, Jim Kelly, of trade union Unite, got nearly nearly three times as many votes as his incumbent rival Len Duvall, leader of the Labour Group on the London Assembly.

Exactly what such crushing victories mean is hard to predict with certainty. The traditional capacity of the Outer Left for bickering, scheming and schism-ing remains undiluted, as the feuding on Haringey’s “Corbyn Council” helpfully illustrates. That said, the political complexion of the board appears generally aligned with that of the region’s recently appointed director, the Corbyn-supporting Hazel Flynn, who has been critical in the past of Sadiq Khan for failing to demonstrate enough enthusiasm for Corbyn’s leadership. And if nothing else, the regional board outcomes show that Labour’s Left fundamentalists remain both willing and able to out-organise other groupings a lot of the time.

A prime example is the selection of candidates for elections. The London region has already set about changing the re-selection process for London Assembly candidates, setting the bar higher for sitting constituency AMs hoping to defend their seats next year and giving the capital’s 100,000 party members control over the order in which London-wide “list” candidates, elected to the Assembly by proportional representation, are placed.

With four of the current 12 Labour AMs having already announced they will be standing down and one more at least expected to do so, the chances have increased of a more Corbynite Labour Group sitting at City Hall for Mayor Khan’s likely second term. The Assembly’s powers are weak, but any Labour AMs prepared to be loudly critical of a Labour Mayor for being less than the Full Jeremy would get applause from their own faction and wider attention. Khan, acutely sensitive to shifts in the political landscape and what they could mean for his future, might prefer to avoid that. Senior Labour (and other) local government figures who find the Mayor infuriatingly cautious, remote and too preoccupied with political positioning, might end up tearing even more of their hair out. Londoners would not benefit.

Meanwhile, the formation of the Independent Group (TIG) of MPs in the House of Commons, three of them previously London Labour MPs, seems to have fuelled the fervour for de-selection purges at constituency level.

Labour deputy leader Tom Watson and even shadow chancellor John McDonnell have, in their different ways, responded to the TIG breakaway by trying to stop it becoming bigger and still more damaging. But Momentumite Noah Tucker, a leading Haringey Council cabinet member who previously ran the Far Left website 21st Century Socialism and who has dismissed claims about antisemitism in Labour as part of a “witch hunt”, reacted by instigating a call for all local party organisations to be immediately permitted “to begin the process of selecting parliamentary candidates in constituencies with a Labour MP”. He also urged the rebuttal of claims that “our party leadership is antisemitic and that antisemitism is fundamental to OR widespread within our party”.

Tucker’s intervention did not secure majority support from those it was aimed at. But a very similar one made last week by Labour members in Hackney North & Stoke Newington did. A motion disputing that anti-semitism is a big problem in the party, blaming “right wing” Labour MPs for saying that it is, and demanding that Labour’s national executive committee “immediately implement trigger ballot procedures in all constituencies” was carried, amid considerable disquiet. This, in the seat of shadow home secretary Diane Abbott where a large community of Jewish Londoners lives.

You might wonder what goes on in the heads of Labour Party members who presumably believe this sort of action will help, as the hashtag has it, GTTO – Get The Tories Out. In a radio interview, Neil Nerva, an experienced Labour councillor in Brent and member of the Jewish Labour Movement, made the point that to be seen as a credible alternative government, Labour needs to be seen as credible on this troubling matter. “The public, Jews and non-Jews, are looking at the Labour Party very carefully and asking if it is capable of overcoming this issue,” he said. Very true. Yet the only too predictable response of at least some Labour members in the capital is not to look outwards to the wider electorate, but to instead look inwards, dispute the problem’s existence and move to remove those disinclined to do the same. Deny, denounce and purify. For the few, not the many. The Outer Left never changes its ways.

How much harm might Labour be doing itself in London? Aside from limited reverses in the 2010 general election and Boris Johnson’s two mayoral victories, the story has been one of growing dominance and consolidation, from Town Halls to City Hall. Fears that a negative Corbyn effect would cost Labour MPs in marginal parliamentary seats in 2017 proved unfounded. The Conservatives are in their own mess in the capital, out of step with majority London opinion on everything from austerity to Brexit. Mayor Khan, clearly wise to this, looks on course for a comfortable win over the Tories’ Shaun Bailey next May.

But just as Labour’s membership character varies across London, so does the composition of its vote. If may be that TIG’s early impact in parliament proves the high point in its influence. But it says it intends to form a national party and, if that happens, it will surely seek to make a mark in London. Unequivocally anti-Brexit – unlike the Labour leader, of course – forged in revulsion at Labour’s antisemitism problem, socially liberal and believers in “a diverse, mixed social market economy”, it isn’t hard to imagine them appealing to disaffected Labour and Tory voters alike, at least in some parts of the metropolis.

Might the right TIG-type candidates in the right seats be competitive in a general election? After all, the two boroughs where Labour lost the largest numbers of seats in last year’s council elections, in a year of overall gains, were Haringey and Barnet, in that order. In both cases, the damaging impact of Corbynism was clear. The PR part of the London Assembly elections, which has enabled Greens, the Lib Dems, Ukip and even an oddball from the BNP to get seats at City Hall, would be a tempting target for them. And, who knows, might a distinctive, charismatic mayoral candidate running under whatever party name the TIG-gers settle on make a bit of a splash in what otherwise looks set to be a boring race?

The answers to such questions are as unclear as who the identity of such a mayoral candidate might be. That doesn’t mean London Labour should not reflect on some political history. The party has lost three general elections in a row and – remarkably, given the wretched state of the Conservative national government – looks in danger of losing a fourth. The last time Labour was out of power nationally for so long, much blame was heaped on the so-called “London effect”, caused by chaotic, confrontational gesture politics by Labour politicians and activists in the capital. Should history repeat itself, London’s Corbynites will never, ever accept any blame. They will nonetheless be highly culpable.

On London depends on donations from readers to keep going and growing and is now actively seeking funding from suitable organisations. Read more about that here.

 

Categories: Comment
Tags: Barnet, Boris Johnson, Brexit, Diane Abbott, Hackney North & Stoke Newington, Haringey Council, Jeremy Corbyn, Jewish Labour Movement, Jews, John McDonnell, Labour, Len Duvall, London Assembly, Momentum, Neil Nerva, Noah Tucker, Sadiq Khan, The Independent Group, Tom Watson, Tottenham

Tom Copley: Rough sleepers are dying. Humanity must triumph over indifference

Around 650 homeless Londoners have perished on the city's streets in recent years
Tom Copley

It’s hard to imagine a more tragic end to a person’s life – without permanent shelter, without a place to call home and to die in those circumstances. It’s heart-breaking. And yet that was the fate of approximately 136 homeless Londoners across one year, right on our doorsteps.

Most of those people were sleeping rough or using emergency accommodation such as shelters and hostels, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), which published the data. The estimated number of deaths per year in the capital remained relatively static in the five years to 2017, despite growing numbers of people forced into rough sleeping. But that is no cause for celebration, because it still means that nearly 650 Londoners have perished on our streets since 2013. The words “one is one too many” have never rung more true.

We find ourselves at a tipping point. Many, many Londoners speak of their horror at seeing an increasing number of people brutally coerced, through circumstance and state negligence, into homelessness. They want decisive action now to reverse this upward trend. And their sense of outrage and urgency is warranted. Because if we allow this incline to become entrenched we condemn others to the same sorry end.

Humanity must triumph over indifference. The incident at Sutton station earlier this month, in which staff threw a bucket of water over a homeless man, indicates that the clock is running down on this struggle. Of course, we must be honest about the challenge before us. Ending homelessness will be an uphill battle.

Rough sleeping in London has more than doubled since 2008-9, from 3,472 people that year, to 8,108 in 2016-17. We saw a slight decline in 2017, the first in more than a decade, but towards the end of last year the numbers began to rise again. And homelessness doesn’t start and end with people sleeping on the streets. Hidden homelessness, in which people find shelter in friends’ or family members’ homes, or in insecure accommodation such as squats, does not present itself in official figures. Beyond that are the more than 54,000 households in the capital living in temporary accommodation, which includes 87,000 children.

These figures are stark, but are we really to be surprised? Since 2010, vulnerable people across the capital have found themselves at the cold front of malicious welfare cuts. A National Audit Office report cited the end of private rented tenancies as the primary cause of homelessness. The research showed that welfare reforms, most notably the cap and freeze on local housing allowance, were making rents increasingly unaffordable.

Moreover, among the many pitfalls of Universal Credit there is growing evidence that it is a key contributor to homelessness. An investigation by the BBC found that council tenants claiming it owed on average £662.56, compared to £262.50 for those on housing benefit. Commenting on this, Bill Tidnam, chief executive Thames Reach, which runs homeless hostels across London, said: “We are seeing an increasing number of people experiencing real problems with the way Universal Credit is working for them. What this means in practice is that some people can’t pay their rent and lose accommodation and they stay homeless for longer because they are seen as risky by landlords.”

It should not surprise us, therefore, that the ruthless stripping away of state-provided safety nets has put vulnerable Londoners on a trajectory to misery. The conundrum now is how we turn this around.

At City Hall, the fightback is underway. Last June, Sadiq Khan published London’s first ever rough sleeping plan of action, which set out how the mayoralty will use its powers and resources to end rough sleeping. The Mayor currently spends £8.5 million per year on these services, including 24/7 outreach teams and No Second Night Out hubs.

Last year, City Hall invested £15 million in buying 330 homes for vulnerable Londoners at risk of becoming homeless. This winter saw Mayor Khan doubling the size of his street outreach team and increasing the frequency with which cold-weather shelters would be open. Londoners may also have spotted the new TAP London contactless donation points at 90 locations across the city, which allow them to donate to a coalition of 22 homelessness charities. Further investment was provided last month when the Mayor’s 2019-20 budget was passed by the London Assembly. It includes an additional £7 million to deliver immediate and long-term support for rough sleepers and improved winter provision.

Despite this, the continuing rise in rough sleeping shows that we have not yet turned a corner. For this, we need national government to come to the table. The Mayor’s action plan says that an injection of £574 million is required to fund a wide package of initiatives to finally end rough sleeping. And that is just the tip of the iceberg. It might be stating the obvious, but if we are to eradicate all forms of homelessness, then we need more homes. City Hall is investing £1 billion in delivering 11,000 much needed council homes, but London requires an annual injection of several billion pounds more in order to deliver the 42,000 new affordable homes we need each year.

There is no getting away from the fact that the true solution to this endemic issue is far greater government intervention. Frustration with its approach is undoubtedly best captured by Jon Sparkes, chief executive of Crisis, who said: “It’s a damning reflection of our society that night after night, so many people are forced to sleep rough on our streets – with numbers soaring in the capital – especially when we know that with the right commitment, rough sleeping could be ended for good.”

Tom Copley is a London Assembly Member and spokesperson on housing for the Labour Group. Follow him on Twitter.

Categories: Comment
Tags: Crisis, homelessness, housing, London Assembly, National Audit Office, Office for National Statistics, rough sleeping, Sadiq Khan, Sutton, Thames Reach, Universal Credit

Vic Keegan’s Lost London 80: The Lambeth roots of Royal Doulton

A stretch of the south bank of the Thames was once home to a preponderance of potteries
Victor Keegan

Few places better illustrate dramatic changes in the landscape of London then the road between Lambeth Bridge and Vauxhall Bridge on the south bank of the Thames. Walk along it today and you pass end to end hotels and luxury flats, apart from the headquarters of the International Maritime Organisation. If you had done the same journey in the 19th century, it would have been end to end factories, wharves and potteries. Especially potteries. 

Potteries in Lambeth can be traced back to Tudor and even Roman times. But their presence achieved revolutionary status with the arrival of the Doulton family, who, in around 1826, teamed up with John Watts to form Doulton and Watts and eventually the Royal Doulton company. After a slow start it expanded, gobbling up rivals, to transform the whole stretch from Lambeth to Vauxhall into the home of an internationally successful pottery industry. In its early days, the company supplied drains, pipes and sanitary ceramics for the industrial revolution. One of its factories was dedicated to making drainpipes, which were loaded onto Thames barges and exported all over the world.

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The most fascinating stage of the development of Doulton was when it linked up with Lambeth School of Art, run by a pioneering headmaster John Charles Lewis Sparkes, who, realising the difficulty of getting money out of the government, started to cultivate local firms, Doulton included. This led to an extended period of co-operation between the two, which gave a huge impetus to the company’s foray into artistic ceramics. These soon became internationally famous and highly collectable.

According to Hannah Renier in her book Lambeth Past, by 1885 there were no less than 250 artists in Doulton’s pottery department and all but 10 had come from the art school. This was an extraordinary collaboration between art and industry and would have delighted Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s husband, who was the mastermind of the Great Exhibition of 1851 and the subsequent development of museums like the Victorian and Albert, dedicated to industrial design. How fitting that the road where Doulton had its main factory – long since demolished – is now the Albert Embankment.

In 1956, Doulton had to move its activities elsewhere as a consequence of clean air regulations, ending 400 years of pottery manufacture in Lambeth. It is now owned by a Finnish company, Fiskars Corporation. However the former head office (attached to what used to be the art studio) is still there in Black Prince Road in all its art deco glory. Further down the road are some lovely examples of Doulton artwork on the walls. 

Had I been told in the 19 century that all of the industries that peppered the south bank of the Thames would disappear, I would have feared for the future of London. But somehow we survived. Let’s hope we do in future. 

Please find all previous instalments of Vic Keegan’s Lost London here.

 

Categories: Culture, Lost London
Tags: Lambeth, Lambeth Bridge, Vauxhall Bridge

Windrush in London: the scandal and its effects look far from over

With a compensation scheme yet to be announced and the government's "right to rent" policy sunk in the High Court, how will the capital's campaigners and politicians response to a crisis some think has only just begun?
Joshua Neicho

Windrush campaigners filled Hackney Town Hall’s Assembly Hall last Saturday for a public meeting, organised by Windrush Action and Black Activists Rising Against Cuts. Speakers included immigration lawyer Jacqueline McKenzie, Martin Forde QC, who is advising the Home Office on the Windrush Compensation Scheme, former London Mayor adviser Lee Jasper and former chair of the Metropolitan Black Police Association Leroy Logan. Among issues on the agenda was a co-ordinated National Day of Action in six English cities on 22 June, the anniversary of the Empire Windrush’s arrival.

Despite massive social changes since then, London remains very much the centre of gravity of Black Britain – 1.1 million of the 1.9 black respondents to the 2011 census lived in the capital. Nationally, more than 3,000 members of the Windrush generation have been given British citizenship in the wake of the scandal. But 17 people, by the Home Office’s count, have died after being wrongly detained or deported. Appealing for “more people to make more noise”, in protest at victims still destitute or stuck abroad, McKenzie said: “This crisis is not over, in fact I think it’s just beginning.” Will this also be true of the political impact of the scandal?

There was moving testimony from those at the sharp end of hostile environment policies, such as Elwaldo Romeo who spent 12 years in Kafkaesque “no status” limbo until the Home Office admitted he had had right of abode all along. Mother-of-four Yvonne Duncan, who came to the UK from Jamaica aged 14, was told she was illegal after she landed a job, and asked to sign on at the immigration reporting centre at Croydon. She’s now trying to pay back £1,300 she borrowed for legal assistance to formalise her status, at the very moment her daughter had been rushed to King’s College Hospital with a suspected brain haemorrhage. Anthea Hart described how her husband, having served out his 20 month jail sentence, was, without warning, taken back into a detention centre that is “worse than prison” in January this year and, on 6 February, deported to Jamaica.

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Many speakers saw the Windrush scandal in a broader context of intolerance of migrants and infringements of civil rights going back to the previous Labour government. Society of Black Lawyers chair Peter Herbert argued black Britons should withhold their remittances to Caribbean relatives, to stop governments there cooperating over deportations. Mayor of Hackney Philip Glanville raised the Home Secretary’s stripping of British citizenship from Shamima Begum – “someone who was frankly groomed” – as a worrying precedent. He spoke of his pride in Hackney as the first local authority to pass a motion of “really strong solidarity with those facing criminalisation and deportation” (before being himself harangued over a Hackney Council worker who is a Windrush descendant being sacked from her job).

Logan said the government should be held to account over whether Equality
Impact Assessments have been performed on all its policies – presciently so, as the “right to rent” scheme requiring landlords to make immigration checks was today ruled in the High Court as violating human rights. Jasper, in rumbustious form, geed up the crowd with his call for no cap on compensation for Windrush victims and the co-ordinated Day of Action. But only a minority were enthused by his plan for civil disobedience by stopping traffic. From the floor, Clive Morrison suggested Windrush protesters should adopt hi-vis vests, French-style, to become “an army” against a self-interested political class.

The Windrush compensation scheme is not now expected to launch until Easter at the earliest, a year after it was announced. A hardship fund set up last December amid criticisms of the compensation process for taking too long was found to have made payment only to one person by the end of 2018. With more than 15,000 thought to potentially be entitled to compensation, the home secretary has called on the Treasury for an extra £150 million towards the estimated £310 million cost.

Forde said his aim was a “very accessible” scheme, “so that people have to produce a fairly basic level of information and explain how they suffered, and then hopefully we can make compensation payments relatively swiftly”. He reassured audience members his job is “to keep prodding on your behalf”. He offered examples which suggested a broad eligibility range:

“If your older relative was doing your childcare and they were threatened with deportation, and your ability to earn was compromised because you couldn’t rely on that support, then you could be eligible…People come to me and say they’ve been treated as foreign students. Where their earning capacity or entry into further education has been compromised they too could qualify.”

Citing the case of Willow Sims, born in the US before coming to the UK and found to have been wrongly been denied help, he was at pains to point out that “Windrush” did not just mean Caribbean or Commonwealth citizens.

Another proposal for the compensation scheme has come from campaigner Patrick Vernon, who was invited to the Hackney event but was unable to attend. It was Vernon who started the 200,000-signature petition for government recognition of Windrush Day. He hopes for a scheme on the same standard as a civil court’s – no cap on payouts, no block on compensation for those convicted of historic offences, and a recognition of the impact immigration status blunders has on mental health and wellbeing. A “poundshop” scheme would be counterproductive, he argues, as victims would take their cases to court and, if successful, the government would be liable for both the settlement and the legal costs.

Is it realistic to expect a scheme broad and deep enough to meet both Forde and Vernon’s objectives? Jacqueline McKenzie believes the government is very worried about the reaction from groups like the TaxPayers’ Alliance to the final cost. Ministers may be weighing up which is worse: yet more delay, or a scheme that leaves the government looking stingy.

When the Windrush Generation’s suffering finally topped the news agenda, it was, as British Future’s Sunder Katwala points out, a rare example of a cause backed by both the Guardian and the Daily Mail. Might a direct action approach keep the issue in the headlines  and yet prove alienating? Vernon thinks not, given that demos featured strongly in the build up to Windrush Day in 2018, although he feels April, marking a year since the scandal broke, is a more appropriate time for protests than Windrush anniversary day itself.

The issue is also a challenge for London’s Conservatives – whose support among BME voters flatlined or slipped back at the 2017 election, costing them diverse seats such as Croydon Central and Kensington – and for their London Mayor candidate Shaun Bailey.

Sadiq Khan has liaised closely with Windrush campaigners and allocated £20,000 to the Windrush Justice Fund, which provides legal support. Bailey has a close connection to Windrush. He wrote a heartful piece referencing his mother’s arrival from Jamaica in 1964 without her own passport and the need to ensure such a scandal never happens again, while defending the government’s response. He will need to start building bridges with community leaders with markedly different politics from his own and become comfortable talking about Windrush in a way which is both inclusive and in line with his values of “independence, self-reliance, and personal achievement”.

Meanwhile, the outcome of the scandal for thousands who have been shamefully treated remains uncertain. “I don’t want to be hopeful,” said Elwaldo Romeo at the end of the Town Hall meeting. “I’ve been hopeful too long”.

Joshua Neicho is a PR officer in the higher education sector and a freelance journalist. Follow him on Twitter here.

Categories: Analysis
Tags: Lee Jasper, Leroy Logan, Shaun Bailey, Sunder Katwala, Windrush scandal

What does house price stagnation mean for London?

It might seem like a good thing, but under the current system it could actually be the beginning of bad news
Richard Brown

The most recent edition of Centre for London’s The London Intelligence showed that London’s previously stratospheric house price growth had slowed to a crawl, with average prices rising by less than one per cent in the year to October 2018.

The housing market is quieter than it has been for years. Depending which data you use, transaction levels are down to their 2012 or even 2008 levels. Brexit uncertainty is the obvious culprit, but is this actually bad news? When so many people have been frozen out of buying in London, isn’t it a good thing to be turning our back on double digit annual growth and flats that are “flipped” before they have even been built – traded off-plan like options?

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There are some positive indicators. Home ownership levels, which have been falling in London for more than 20 years, have levelled out or even started to creep back up. Resolution Foundation analysis of survey data shows 37.2 per cent of families owning their own home (either outright or with a mortgage) in autumn last year, compared to 35.1 per cent in the same period in 2017, with a falling proportion of house-sharers making up some of the reduction.

So, amidst the gloom of the tabloid press, does house price stagnation represent an opportunity? Did record levels of new housing supply in 2016/17 combine with low prices, cheap mortgages and help to buy, to help a new generation of Londoners to get their foot on the property ladder which has helped their elders accumulate so much capital in the past two decades?

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Many people would welcome such a turnaround, but there’s a sting in the tail. Falling transactions and stagnating house prices also send a signal to housebuilders, many of whom can stop building new homes as fast as they can start, waiting out wintry conditions before the market picks up again. And with minimal grant funding, no new homes for sale also means far fewer homes for social or affordable rent. In the current system, stagnant house prices are as likely to deepen the housing affordability crisis as to alleviate it.

What is to be done? We need to fix the system, to find ways of building affordable and market housing that are not yoked to the bucking bronco of the housing market, to bring in new models of financing and building homes, using a wider range of developers from private, public and third sectors. In short, London needs a new deal for housing. Over the coming months, Centre for London will be working with housing experts from across the capital and beyond to define its shape and build a coalition for change.

Richard Brown is Centre for London’s research director, on whose website this piece originally appeared. Follow Richard on Twitter.

Categories: Analysis
Tags: affordable housing, Centre For London, housing