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New Thames bridges: the many plans and their varying prospects

After the Garden Bridge debacle, what new river crossings might actually get built?
Charles Wright

Bridges are good for all sorts of obvious reasons, joining up places and boosting job opportunities. The Garden Bridge apparently ticked these boxes, as the 2014 business case put together by Boris Johnson’s Transport for London in support of public funding for the project set out. The bridge
would improve the “pedestrian environment” and tackle the area’s “lack of connectivity” by providing the currently “missing link between Waterloo and Blackfriars bridges for pedestrians.”

The rest, of course, is history; five years on the project is dead, with taxpayers’ footing a £43 million bill and the sorry saga the subject of continuing London Assembly inquiry and calls for a parliamentary probe.

The Garden Bridge was always problematic – no cycling, controlled access, closed at night – and connecting areas which couldn’t be described as top of the list for regeneration. It was an answer to a question no one was asking, according to the Financial Times. “Tourist tat posing as infrastructure in order to siphon off public money?” it asked back in 2014.

Nevertheless it remains the case that London has fewer river bridges than other comparable cities. After a spate of Victorian and early 20th century bridge building and renewal, the only Central London bridges completed this century are the 2002 Millennium Bridge and the Hungerford footbridges. There are 22 bridges west of Tower Bridge and currently only one to the east, where the arguments around connectivity and regeneration are most acute.

Will we see any new bridges any time soon? City Hall has three plans currently progressing. The most advanced river crossing is not a bridge at all, but the twin-bore road tunnel linking Silvertown and the Royal Docks – site of what’s billed as London’s largest regeneration scheme – and the Greenwich peninsula. It is intended to relieve pressure on the Blackwall Tunnel. Transport Secretary Chris Grayling signed off the scheme in May last year and construction could start by the end of this year, despite significant opposition on congestion and air pollution grounds.

Next up are the proposed Rotherhithe to Canary Wharf pedestrian and cycling bridge (pictured), with public consultation to come, and possible Docklands Light Railway and London Overground extensions to Thamesmead Waterfront, where thousands of new homes are planned in a Peabody housing association and Lendlease partnership.

Meanwhile two new pedestrian and cycle bridges to the west are proposed, aiming, like the Garden Bridge, for private funding. The Diamond Jubilee bridge, first mooted in 1924, would span the river between Imperial Wharf and Chelsea Harbour and Oyster Wharf on the east bank, adjacent to the
existing Battersea Railway Bridge. While the proposal is generally supported and planning permissions secured, funding remains uncertain in the absence of City Hall commitment.

Significantly more controversial is Wandsworth Council’s plan for a bridge between Pimlico and Nine Elms, where 20,000 new homes are in the pipeline including the Battersea power station development. The plan has attracted local opposition north and south as well as growing cross-party
concerns about the location and cost. Labour members of the London Assembly have voiced opposition and Westminster Labour councillors launched a petition against the plans this week calling the project “unwanted and unnecessary”. The Mayor isn’t enthusiastic either: “There is no provision in TFL’s business plan for expenditure on this project – nor do I anticipate there will be,” he told the London Assembly in November.

Bridges are complex and costly, and it’s clear that under Mayor Khan City Hall money is going east. Back in 2015 Mayor Johnson set out plans for 13 new river crossings by 2050. How many actually get built any time soon remains to be seen.

Categories: Analysis
Tags: Battersea, Battersea Power Station, Blackfriars Bridge, Boris Johnson, Canary Wharf, Chelsea Harbour, Chris Grayling, City Hall, Docklands Light Railway, Garden Bridge, Greenwich, Hungerford footbridge, Imperial Wharf, Lendlease, London Assembly, London Overground, Millennium Bridge, Nine Elms, Peabody, Pimlico, Rotherhithe, Sadiq Khan, Silvertown, Silvertown Tunnel, Thamesmead, Tower Bridge, Transport for London, Wandsworth Council, Waterloo Bridge

Haringey: Labour chief whip upbraids ‘unprofessional’ councillors for ‘bullying’, ‘barking’ and ‘bad mouthing’

Managing the "Corbyn Council" is proving as difficult as you'd expect
Dave Hill

On New Year’s Eve, Haringey Council leader Joe Ejiofor sacked two members of his cabinet, citing difficulties with getting his top team “to work closely together”. It now seems the chief whip of the Labour Group as a whole has his own concerns about comradely cohesion.

On Sunday morning, Labour Group chief whip Gideon Bull sent an email to all 42 Labour councillors 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”. This has mostly been in emails, according to Bull, but “also in Group meetings”. He continued:

“Quite frankly, the level of unprofessionalism displayed by some, and it is very much only some, would leave residents – those people that we have been sent here to represent and are here to serve – speechless, and would reinforce the very justified, low opinion that they have of politicians…If this level of unprofessionalism was replicated in the workplace then colleagues would be reprimanded, disciplined and dismissed for misconduct.”

He demanded:

“No more personalisation of debates and questioning, no more barking and growling at meetings, no more bad mouthing and rubbishing of colleagues behind their back and above all no more bullying either consciously or otherwise.”

Bull’s closing message, delivered in capital letters, was that “ENOUGH IS ENOUGH” and he warned that, following attempts to informally resolve the “many complaints” he and his assistant whips have received, he will “use the full force of disciplinary rules and procedures to tackle unprofessionalism and, dare I say it, uncomradely behaviour wherever we see it and/or wherever it is brought to our attention”.

Ejiofor, of course, became Haringey leader in May following the ousting of the previous Labour administration by Corbynites and Far Left fellow travellers by means of a deselection campaign, egged on by the Guardian in its wisdom. The feuding and factionalising both he and Bull have had to cope with ever since is entirely usual on this part of the Left, as anyone who recalls London local government in the 1980s knows.

In the same tradition, a “betrayal” narrative is up, running and going strong outside the Civic Centre. Yesterday, Efiofor appeared on Eddie Nestor’s BBC Radio London show. Unsurprisingly, the two callers who got through had questions relating to campaigns that think the “Corbyn Council” isn’t being Corbynite enough.

One was a complaint about the planned temporary relocation of the Seven Sisters “Latin Village” indoor market across the road as part of the area’s wider redevelopment. The other was about the amount of social housing in a development in Tottenham Hale. Both causes are supported, more or less covertly, by members of the Labour Group and others who would like to see Ejiofor replaced. Bull’s ENOUGH IS ENOUGH probably still goes for the council leader too.

Categories: News
Tags: BBC Radio London, council housing, Eddie Nestor, Gideon Bull, Haringey Council, housing, Ishmael Osamor, Jeremy Corbyn, Joseph Ejiofor, Labour, Northumberland Park, Seven Sisters, The Guardian, West Green

Dave Hill: It’s time for Chuka Umunna to dust off his ‘devo default’ national vision thing

Free of Jeremy Corbyn's Labour, the Streatham MP can showcase an alternative to the politics of nostalgia and denial
Dave Hill

Whatever else the 11-strong Independent Group of MPs decides it wants, a bold and rational decentralisation of United Kingdom government should be right up at the top of its list. TIG – as it has quickly become known – could make a serious splash on the national stage by painting a picture of a future UK where really big decisions about its cities and regions are taken much closer to the people who live in those areas. This would radically separate them from the “old politics” they say they oppose and also be a good idea. Handily for them, one of the bounciest TIG-gers already has a blueprint up his sleeve.

In October 2015, just weeks after Jeremy Corbyn became leader of the Labour Party, Streatham MP Chuka Umunna set out ideas for creating a “federal Britain”, under a system he dubbed “devo default”. The guiding assumption was that “power should be devolved from the centre unless there is a good reason to do otherwise”.

Umunna envisaged accelerating devolution deals to big cities and also suburban and rural areas, with each authority having its own policies on big themes such as education, health and transport. The settlement we now have – London’s GLA and Mayor and the newer metro mayors in the North and Midlands of England – would be but the start of the process. Umunna argued that less centralised EU nations were also far less unequal. George Osborne had snatched the baton from Labour with his Northern Powerhouse initiative. For economic, democratic and cultural reasons, Umunna said, Labour should re-claim the initiative.

Fans of Jeremy Corbyn who continue to insist that his plodding, post-war, pre-Thatcher era revivalism represents hope for some kind of dazzling New Dawn should ask themselves why a Labour Party that is, incredibly, trailing the calamitous Conservatives in national opinion polls has not put building on the devolution agenda at the heart of a modernisation programme for a post-Brexit UK – or even a no Brexit one, for that matter. The answer is, of course, that core Corbynism is a state of mind that wants to monopolise and consolidate control, not spread it around more generously.

In this, the current Labour Party is every bit as reactionary as the Conservatives, perhaps more so. It is a close thing, too, over which of the two big parties is the most anti-London. Labour can claim that its 2017 general election manifesto promised more good things for the capital than the Tory one did, but both documents pandered to the populist presumption that if only London were deprived of public investment and more tax payer money given to everywhere else instead the “north-south divide” would immediately start to disappear – a bogus argument still doing the rounds that dodges inconvenient realities.

A truly progressive approach to the harmful disparities between and within cities and regions would be to hand far more power to them all, along with the resources to make the best use of it. That should certainly include both levels of London government, along with everywhere else.

No doubt, there would be plenty of arguments to be had about aspects of Umunna’s original prescription as a whole, including what he sketched out for a reformed House of Lords and a Westminster that served as a place for strong regional and city authorities to meet and make decisions about “matters affecting the whole  country”.

But as a way of recognising urban and regional identities, placing local strengths and knowledge above the “top down” Whitehall mentality and nurturing new ways for the different parts of the UK to be both proudly distinctive and part of the same broad national entity, it was a promising start. It could also be a part of the new and better relationship so badly needed between London and the rest of the UK. If the Independent Group wants to construct a policy platform that really could break the mould of UK politics, they should boldly build on it without delay.

Categories: Comment
Tags: Brexit, Chuka Umunna, Conservatives, Devolution, George Osborne, Jeremy Corbyn, Labour, Northern Powerhouse, Streatham

City of London launches London Living Wage campaign

The local authority believes many more of its financial sector companies could pay all their employees the voluntary rate of £10.55 an hour
Dave Hill

A two-week campaign to encourage more financial sector firms to pay all their employees the London Living Wage (LLW) has been launched by the City of London Corporation.

Posters advertising the campaign have appeared at nine of the capital’s Underground stations, and there will also be newspaper ads and what the Corporation calls “direct discussions with City businesses”.

Currently, over 100 financial and professional services firms in the City are registered LLW employers out of a total of around 9,500.

Launching the campaign, Corporation policy chair Catherine McGuinness said: “One in five people employed in the capital don’t earn a wage they can live on. I’m calling on City firm to help consign this statistic to the history books.” She urged more financial sector firms to pay the LLW, currently set at £10.55 an hour.

The campaign is backed by the Living Wage Foundation, which calculates living wage rates nationally. Its head of campaigns, Lola McEvoy, said: “Many financial services firms still don’t pay their security staff and cleaners enough to live on and we know more can be done.”

Stuart Wright, property and facilities director for Aviva, who also chairs the Living Wage Foundation, stressed that people paid the LLW “feel valued for their contribution” which “creates pride amongst workers and aids retention and recruitment for employers.” Aviva has been a Living Wage employer since 2006.

The City of London Corporation itself has been an LLW employer since 2014 and says that from this year it will begin paying all its staff and its suppliers’ staff the new rate for 2019 as soon as it is announced in November, rather than waiting until the following April as it is common practice among Living Wage employers.

There are approximately 23,500 companies of every kind in the area served by the Corporation, the great majority of these – nearly 20,000 – employ fewer than 10 people, though 265 are categorised by the Office for National Statistics as large companies with workforces of over 250 people.

Across the capital, in all sectors, more than 1,500 employers are registered as paying the London Living Wage, which is supported by the Mayor of London.

Last week, Peabody, one of London’s leading housing associations, published a report on low incomes in the capital which found that many Londoners in work are “living close to the breadline” after ten years of weak income growth and cuts to benefit entitlements.

Produced in partnership with think tank the Social Market Foundation, the report recommended national government to investigate introducing a mandatory London Living Wage, as distinct from the current voluntary one. Chief executive Brendan Sarsfield has called for “urgent action” on low pay.

Categories: News
Tags: City of London Corporation, London Living Wage, Peabody, Sadiq Khan, Social Market Foundation

Vic Keegan’s Lost London 79: The church of St Magnus The Martryr

An old church now tucked away by the north side of London Bridge is a rich source of insights into the capital's history
Victor Keegan

If you want to follow in Shakespeare’s footsteps, stroll through the yard at the side of the ancient church of Saint Magnus the Martyr on the northern side of today’s London Bridge.

The path it stood on, shown in the painting above, led to the ancient, original London Bridge – the one which stood for 600 years until the 1830s. The church served as a gateway to it. Shakespeare would have had to used this route on his way from Bishopsgate and Shoreditch – where he lived and worked for a while – to the theatres on the South Bank. 

The original church was destroyed by the Great Fire of 1666 but rebuilt under the direction of Christopher Wren between 1671 and 1687, and the bottom of its tower was reconstructed in the 1760s. The new London Bridge was built barely 30 yards to the west of the church.

In the foreground of the painting we see the The Monument, commemorating the Great Fire, designed by Wren and Robert Hooke. Today, if you walk from it along Fish Street Hill you can see across Lower Thames Street to the path that leads to the churchyard, where you will find two large chunks of stone from the original London Bridge. 

Screen shot 2019 02 23 at 08.39.15
The new London Bridge takes shape next to the old one.

Inside the church there is a large wooden model of the bridge, which provides an authentic idea of what it looked like, including all the houses that were built on it. Outside in the yard there is an even older link with ancient times in the form of a blackened chunk of wood from the piles of an old Roman quay which was excavated here around 1830.

It is a reminder of the enduring history of this fascinating church, which is named after Magnus Erlendsson, Earl Of Orkney (c 1080-1115), who was executed following a power struggle with his cousin. But that’s another story.

The previous 78 instalments of Vic Keegan’s Lost London can be found here.

Categories: Culture, Lost London
Tags: Christopher Wren, Fish Hill Street, London Bridge, Lower Thames Street, The Monument

Hammersmith & Fulham pressing ahead with compulsory purchase plan as Capco continues to seek Earls Court buyer

The Labour council's cabinet is to discuss the radical move next month
Dave Hill

Progress, if that is the right word, in the main section of the huge Earls Court redevelopment project can be summarised as an empty space where the Earls Court exhibition centre buildings once stood.

It is ten years since the scheme came into public view, back when Hammersmith & Fulham Council was run by the Conservative administration of Stephen Greenhalgh, and seven years since planning consents began being granted with the enthusiastic approval of Boris Johnson.

Since then, both the London property market and the political landscape have changed. A fall off in the “prime” central market has slowed essential “off-plan” sales and both the council and City Hall have switched to Labour.

Neither the borough administration of Stephen Cowan nor Sadiq Khan have ever been happy with the project, and both have been seeking changes, including the return to council control of two housing estates on the western side of the development area whose future is presently subject to a conditional land sale agreement entailing their transfer to principal developer Capco for demolition.

Khan has a particular interest in the exhibition centre part of the site, as it is supposed to be being developed by a joint venture company set up by Capco and Transport for London, from which the latter hopes to derive much-needed income.

But, as tumbleweed drifts across the flattened plot, Capco has been busily trying to sell its interest in the scheme, estates and all. Last autumn it began talks with Hong Kong-based CK Asset Holdings, and correspondence seen by On London suggests negotiations are continuing.

It was against that backdrop that Mayor Khan signalled in November that any fresh plans for the area, whoever drew them up, would have to include the return of the two estates to H&F and an increase in the affordable percentage of any new homes built on the rest of the site. His more recent declaration that his “patience is wearing thin” if anything understates the strength of feeling on this matter felt by some in GLA circles.

Meanwhile, as the Evening Standard reported earlier this week, H&F is “considering” using its compulsory purchase powers to take ownership of the exhibition centre land and the TfL-owned Lillie Bridge London Underground depot next door, which forms another part of the project area.

What does “considering” actually mean? On London has gleaned that in the immediate future it means detailed documentation about how the council will proceed is being being prepared for a cabinet meeting next month. Cowan’s administration, like Khan’s, is not best pleased by Capco’s attitude to the situation when there’s a housing crisis on and has now apparently reached a settled conclusion that a CPO is the route they will pursue to move this story into a new chapter.

Categories: News
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Brendan Sarsfield: Urgent action is needed to tackle low pay in London

The chief executive of Peabody, the capital's oldest housing association, says in-work poverty in this city is unacceptable
Brendan Sarsfield

Mary lives alone in Hackney. She works as a care assistant on a zero-hour contract and supplements her income by waitressing. She is paid less than £10 per hour for the care work and doesn’t get paid for the time taken travelling to different locations. Recently, she had her wages docked for being seven minutes late for an appointment due to traffic congestion. Sometimes, Mary is offered just 10 hours of work a week, leaving her without enough money to pay her bills. She is on Universal Credit, which supplements some of her lost wages, but because of her fluctuating income, this only causes more problems.

Mary is not alone. Her circumstances are similar to millions of workers up and down the country. For them, work is not paying. It isn’t offering an escape from poverty or a springboard to prosperity. Instead, work is keeping these people poor. 

The problem is particularly acute in London, which is perhaps unsurprising given that it is one of the most expensive places to live on Earth. Prices and private rents have outstripped wages for the lower-paid in the capital for more than a decade. For organisations like Peabody, concerned with supporting the most vulnerable in London, this is not right, fair, or sustainable.

In April, the National Living Wage will rise to £8.21 an hour for over-25s. That is good for the lowest paid outside London, but it does very little for people in it. For a living wage to enable a minimum standard of living, it has to reflect the true cost of living. If it doesn’t, then it clearly isn’t a living wage. And we know that it doesn’t in our capital city.

Increasingly, businesses in the capital are opting to pay the voluntary London Living Wage (LLW), which currently stands at £10.55 an hour. Partly, that is because it is the fair and responsible thing to do, but it is also because of the real benefits paying the LLW brings to their business – higher productivity and lower staff turnover, for example. Campaigners, businesses and the Mayor of London have done a lot to promote the LLW, and it’s a success story that there are now more than 1,500 businesses in the capital who are living wage accredited. But there is an awful lot more to do.

Peabody published research with the Social Market Foundation last week which suggests that less than half of working social renters earn the London Living Wage. Almost a third earn under £9 per hour. More than half of workers haven’t received a pay-rise in three years and nearly two-thirds haven’t had a promotion or “moved up” for five years. Thirteen per cent are on zero-hour contracts, like Mary, and six per cent have two jobs in order to try and make ends meet. These are stark and worrying figures.

How can we be in a situation where half of low-income workers in our capital city are not paid a living wage? How can we continue on a path where in-work poverty is the norm, while taxpayers subsidise the low-wage economy through the benefits system? Work is now entrenching poverty for many, many people in one of the richest cities in the world, but I don’t see any plan to reverse this trend.

Clearly, the voluntary approach to paying a living wage in London is not enough on its own. Maybe it is time for the capital to have its own, higher statutory minimum wage in London. Maybe there are other ways, such as devolution of powers to the Mayor, business rate incentives or other tax benefits for employers paying the living wage. In any event, we hope the report reignites the debate about low pay in the capital, because there is no doubt that more action is needed to keep working people out of poverty. 

Brendan Sarsfield is the chief executive of Peabody.

Categories: Comment
Tags: Hackney, London Living Wage, National Living Wage, Peabody, poverty, Universal Credit

Earls Court: Sadiq Khan ‘patience is wearing thin’ with Capco over stalled scheme

The London Mayor has increased his pressure on the developer to hand back housing estates to borough and find a way forward to his liking
Dave Hill

Sadiq Khan has stepped up his pressure on property giant Capital and Counties (Capco) to return two West London housing estates to the control of their local borough, saying his “patience is wearing thin” with the lack of progress on the issue.

In a written answer to a question by London Assembly Member Tom Copley, the London Mayor also reiterated his insistence that the handing back of the adjoining West Kensington and Gibbs Green estates to Hammersmith & Fulham (H&F) is a pre-condition of any new plans for the development of the wider area being acceptable to him.

The Mayor last intervened in the stalled regeneration scheme, known as the Earls Court Project, in November, when he told On London that “a positive way forward would involve new plans that exclude the estates” and that offer more housing than the existing ones, “particularly more social rented and other genuinely affordable homes”. He specified that the return of the two estates would have to take place “ahead of alternative plans being progressed and determined”.

The Earls Court scheme is one of the largest in the capital. Capco secured finalised outline planning permission for the comprehensive redevelopment of 77 acres of land, including the two estates, in 2013 and the demolition of the historic Earls Court exhibition centre has followed. However, despite detailed consent for the latter site being granted in 2014, no homes have yet been built there.

The two estates are subject to a conditional land sale agreement made in 2013 by Capco and H&F, when the council was Conservative-controlled. Labour won the borough elections the following year and the administration has been trying to negotiate getting control of the estates back.

Last May, Capco announced plans for potentially splitting the company, separating its Earls Court operation from its Covent Garden estate. It has been in discussions with City Hall and also courting potential buyers for its interests in the Earls court scheme. The de-merger has yet to occur and no buyer has yet been found. Capco’s year end financial results are due to be published on 27 February.

The Mayor has powers to block planning consents granted at borough level and even to determine them himself, so his interventions are a warning to Capco and potential buyers that he will want any new plans for the area to meet his housing policy objectives.

He has direct interest in the progress of the site because Transport for London is a major landowner there. It entered into a joint venture with Capco to develop the exhibition centre land in 2014 and also owns the adjoining Lillie Bridge London Underground depot. Khan’s written answer to Copley says that TfL has “made very clear on behalf of the GLA group that progress depends on Capco transferring the estates back to LBH&F unconditionally.” The transport body is making progress with developing other sites in its portfolio through partnerships with other developers.

Khan’s answer also states his understanding that Capco has “suggested they would make the transfer of the estates conditional on a performance agreement and receipt of an acceptable planning permission.” A performance agreement is a fixed timetable for dealing with a planning application. Khan describes this suggestion as “not acceptable”.

H&F leader Stephen Cowan told On London: “The Greater London Authority and Capco have been in talks about a new deal for a long time now. We believe Capco are still trying to sell the whole scheme, including the two estates, and we question whether this is acting in the spirit of the GLA discussions.”

 

 

 

Categories: News
Tags: affordable housing, Capco, Conservatives, Hammersmith & Fulham, housing, Labour, regeneration, Sadiq Khan, Tom Copley, Transport for London