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Vic Keegan’s Lost London 50: the Ring of Forts

Victor Keegan

It is difficult to believe, but London was once protected by a vast ring of fortifications, which have completely vanished. It is without question the largest bit of Lost London ever found – or rather not found, because no-one has ever discovered any remains. They don’t come any more lost than that.

The forts were built in the 1640s during the civil war to protect London against invasion by King Charles I’s royalist army, which had retreated to the country but was preparing an attack on the capital. It must not be confused with the London Wall built by the Romans, much of which still exists. Cromwell’s fort cordon was over three times bigger than that wall, with the section north of the Thames stretching in a sort of semi-circle from Wapping in the east to near Vauxhall Bridge in the west before rounding off at Southwark. 

We know from contemporary accounts that it was constructed by thousands of citizens who dug ditches, trenches and a series of forts along the perimeter including at Shoreditch (top end of Brick Lane), Mount Pleasant, Hyde Park Corner and Constitution Hill before dropping down to what was known as Tothill Fields, south of today’s Victoria where I now live.

To find the nearest fort to my home I consulted George Vertue’s map of the fortifications (below) which was drawn some time later, in 1738, and is almost the only map of the wall extant. My local fort is simply marked as being in Tothill Fields. But where? The redoubtable Ian Mansfield, author of Ian Visits,  who has walked around the presumed lines of the fortifications, says that Vauxhall Bridge Road was the likely line of the wall where it meets Rochester Row, an ancient trackway where later maps “show a distinctive earth disturbance at the end of Rochester Row”.

 Guy Mannes Abbot, writing in the Westminster History Review, puts the site of the fort further down Vauxhall Bridge Road where the prize-winning council estate Lillington Gardens Estate now is (see main picture). 

Either of these sites could be the right one, not least because both of them follow the course of the River Tyburn, whose presence would have made the fort more formidable. The Tyburn still runs underground – albeit merged with Joseph Bazalgette’s sewage system – from the junction of Rochester Row with Kings’s Scholar’s Passage along the western side of Lillington Gardens (Tachbrook Street) to the Thames west of Vauxhall Bridge.

The main reason there is no trace of these monumental structures is that parliament ordered their destruction. Since then, there has been no reason to rebuild them. But if the Mayor of London wants to protect London from an onslaught by Brexiteers, he knows where to get the plans.

On London is immensely grateful to Vic Keegan for completing a glorious half century of Lost London articles. Read the previous 49 here.  

Categories: Culture, Lost London
Tags: Brick Lane, Constitution Hill, George Vertue, Hyde Park, Ian Visits, Joseph Bazalgette, London Wall, Mount Pleasant, River Thames, Rochester Row, Shoreditch, Southwark, Tachbrook Street, Tothill Fields, Vauxhall, Vauxhall Bridge, Victoria, Wapping

Brexit will make London less safe unless government acts on security concerns, says Sadiq Khan

Dave Hill

Sadiq Khan has said that Londoners’ safety will be put at risk unless the government pays more attention to the security implications of leaving the European Union in its Brexit negotiations.

At his monthly Mayor’s Question Time session this morning, the London Mayor told London Assembly Members he doesn’t believe there has been “enough discussion around the security arrangements post-Brexit” or that “the government has been taking it seriously and prioritising it.”

Answering questions from Labour London Assembly Member Unmesh Desai, the Mayor described Brexit as “a national challenge facing policing and our security services,” and listed “six key measures” he wants the UK to remain part of after Brexit, including Europol, the European arrest warrant arrangement and the Shengen Information System 2 (SIS2)

He said that the government’s negotiating position was putting the UK’s current terms of inclusion these systems at risk and could result in slower, less efficient and more expensive access. “The inevitable consequence [of that] will be Londoners being less safe, and I refuse to believe anyone voted for that.”

Mayor Khan said he had been given “a full presentation by the expert who leads on this for the Met police” and offered as examples of “what we’d lose” the automatic searching of the SIS2 database 539 million times by law enforcement personnel and the arrest of “1,735 criminals” using the European arrest warrant, both during 2017.

As a “third party” state, you can’t have access to these beneficial systems “on the same terms”, the Mayor said, citing confirmation of this by Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator on the terms of the UK’s exit from the EU. He explained that the Metropolitan Police Service is working with the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the National Crime Agency to establish a team to “drive and co-ordinate Brexit contingency planning for UK law enforcement”.

Earlier in the MQT session Mayor Khan told the Assembly he had written to Prime Minister Theresa May last week “to warn her that the government’s White Paper completely fails to meet the needs of our leading service sectors, which represent 92% of our economy in London” and that his concern is “shared by many business leaders” in the capital.

“There is no doubt that the kind of Hard Brexit the government is now proposing will throw up new regulatory barriers and damage the ability of our world-leading creative and financial services to do business across the EU,” he continued, and claimed there is now a “grave risk” of leaving the EU “with no deal at all” could lead to “nearly 90,000 fewer jobs in our city.” The Mayor added that he had instructed City Hall officials to make preparations for such an outcome.

The Mayor’s criticism came with the government’s new secretary of state for exiting the European Union, Dominic Raab, in Brussels to meet Barnier for the first time. Mayor Khan underlined his wish for the UK to remain in the single market and customs union in order to “protect jobs and growth.”

Categories: News
Tags: Brexit, Dominic Raab, European Union, Metropolitan Police, Mopac, policing, Sadiq Khan, Theresa May, Unmesh Desai

Kevin Davis: why I should be the next Conservative London Mayor

Kevin Davis

I want to be the next Conservative Mayor of London and I believe I am well qualified. I have led a London borough, grown businesses, started charities and acted on the West End stage. I was born in London, brought up in London and have raised a family here. I know London and I know the important role it has as both a global city and a capital city.

But London, like the London Conservatives, is at a crossroads. Growing pains, rising crime and underinvested transport define London after two years of Sadiq Khan. The Conservatives in London need a narrative and a vision to tell Londoners why we deserve to run London.

London is a divided city. The Labour Mayor and the Left have always sought to divide us and see division as the space in which they thrive. Khan divides us on faith, ethnicity, Leave or Remain, Inner or Outer London. The Left pour vinegar on our divisions but the future story of the Conservative party is how we bring the city together once we leave the European Union.

The Conservative London message must be that we will heal those divisions and tackle the big issues together. I talk about our vision being of OneLondon – Londoners working together to tackle our future and ensuring that London is built on its communities and its boroughs, not on the Mayor’s office.

On crime we need to give more control over local policing to the boroughs and their leaders and end the centralisation under Khan that divides communities between those who get policing and those who don’t. Knife crime is the most difficult issue to tackle today, but with crime rising who knows what will we need to deal with by 2020.

Personally, I believe we need to increase stop and search and start using portable knife arches at stations on a random basis, especially where we know crime hotspots are. My father was a Metropolitan Police officer and he always believed that those with nothing to hide have nothing to fear. With scooter crime we need to see what can be done to ensure only clear visor helmets are used and restrict pillion riders. We also need to be careful about how we report and talk about crime.

It suits Khan’s narrative to divide us by blaming government funding for rising crime but as any borough leader will tell you there are many ways to maintain services with a declining budget. Khan’s problem is that he does not understand London local government and appears not to speak to those in his team who do.

On transport we need to reform the entire fare structure so that we move away from the complicated multi-zone approach to a simpler fares system, a OneLondon system. Additionally, I think it is time we gave Londoners a fairer share of the benefits of living in London in a way that improves the quality of life of all Londoners. How we do that is something we need to develop over the coming months.

Ever increasing housing targets are not getting more homes built and Londoners are beginning to lose patience with the lack of delivery. We need to question whether London can really build the homes we need, either in the quantities or at the speed required. Working together, we need to help boroughs support growth. We can start that by deregulating, by means of a less prescriptive London Plan. We should let boroughs, not Transport For London, plan for the future of TfL land and stop the ridiculous delays in getting homes built on public land as a whole. We also need to start using London money to help areas outside of London build more homes, supported by our infrastructure.

Over the coming months there will be lots of policy to adopt and new challenges to solve, but a OneLondon approach recognises that in a diverse London, formed from 32 boroughs and a financial centre, what we do together will create a more sustainable London and one that preserves the quality of life of all Londoners.

I want to be Mayor because I believe I have the skills and understanding of our city to create a Conservative vision for OneLondon and, importantly, I have the tenacity and will to hold Sadiq Khan to account and defeat him.

Kevin Davis is one of ten Conservative mayoral hopefuls included on a longlist of ten. This will be whittled down to a shortlist of three at the weekend and Conservative members in London will choose their candidate from that trio in time for their national party conference. You can follow Kevin on Twitter.

Categories: Comment
Tags: Conservatives, Labour, Metropolitan Police, Sadiq Khan, Transport for London

London’s boroughs are back in the house-building business and could do more, says new report

Charles Wright

London’s boroughs are set to deliver some 23,600 homes over the next five years, but that total could be boosted to more than 37,000, according to a new report from think tank Centre for London, Borough Builders, launched today.

The growing imperative to tackle the capital’s affordability crisis and overall housing shortage, alongside the need to generate income, has already seen an increase in council-led development – the capital’s local authorities built more than 2,100 homes between 2011 and 2018, compared to just 70 in the preceding five years.

Innovative new approaches getting into gear should see this total boosted significantly, the report says. The 23,600 homes, representing nearly eight per cent of the Mayor’s target for all London boroughs to 2022/23, will be delivered by 22 of London’s 32 borough councils, some by means of companies they own entirely themselves, some directly and some through other models. Hackney’s direct build Housing Supply programme and Croydon’s company Brick by Brick are showcased.

But more could be done, the report says, with delivery levels in different boroughs varying significantly, from 20 per cent of individual draft New London Plan targets to just to two or three per cent.

According to Centre for London research manager Victoria Pinoncely, “If every borough were involved or did more, it could represent a real step change in new housing delivery”. The report argues that if all boroughs committed to delivering a minimum of 10 per cent of their targets, council delivery would increase to 37,300 homes over five years, producing 12 per cent of the overall target.

Challenges identified in the report include government restrictions on borrowing, shortages of internal capacity and expertise, and lack of political backing. The boroughs, said Pinoncely, “Have one hand tied behind their backs. Restricted access to funding, underfunded planning departments and weak political support for schemes hampers their ability to deliver the homes the London desperately needs. These barriers need to be removed if we’re to realise the full potential of borough builders and meet the Mayor’s ambitious housing targets.”

As well as more commitment from councillors and more cross-borough working, the report calls on the government to give more recognition to councils’ housebuilding role and relax the conditions attached to funding streams, including Right to Buy receipts and borrowing via Housing Revenue Accounts.

It also urges the Mayor to extend his new public practice scheme, which currently sees Greater London Authority planners seconded to councils, to cover development staff as well and calls on City Hall to fund sub-regional partnerships to help boroughs work together.

Responding to the report, Councillor Darren Rodwell, leader of Barking & Dagenham Council and executive member for housing and planning at London Councils, focused on funding as the key barrier. “Boroughs are committed to delivering the affordable homes that Londoners need. But housebuilding requires substantial, long-term funding,” he said.

“In a climate where these restrictions remain in place and where London boroughs continue to have their funding reduced, it is nigh on impossible to deliver council homes, let alone on the scale required. The government urgently needs to empower boroughs to build – freeing local authorities to borrow prudently and invest in new homes is the surest way to boost supply.”

Rodwell added that last year the boroughs had granted planning permission for 55,000 homes overall and launched initiatives including a City Hall-backed modular housing company set up in May to build to high-quality accommodation for homeless people.

Image from the Brick By Brick gallery.

Categories: News
Tags: affordable housing, Barking & Dagenham, Centre For London, council housing, Croydon, Darren Rodwell, Hackney, housing, London Councils

Haringey Labour cabinet pulls plug on previous administration’s development vehicle plan

Dave Hill

Haringey’s newly-formed Labour administration has confirmed that it will abandon its predecessor’s plan to form a joint venture company with a major regeneration specialist with a view to redeveloping council-owned land and increasing housing supply.

In keeping with an election manifesto pledge, the council’s cabinet last night voted not to proceed with forming the Haringey Development Vehicle (HDV), which had been intended to deliver 6,400 new dwellings in Wood Green, Tottenham and Muswell Hill, 40% of them affordable, along with new public amenities and retail space.

A report for the cabinet by council officers said that discontinuing the HDV could reduce or delay new housing supply in the borough, resulting in the council missing targets, losing income and finding it harder to attract private investment to the borough, but new council leader Joseph Ejiofor, writing in the same report, explained that the new administration takes a “different view” from the last one about the HDV’s balance of risks and benefits (see cabinet member introduction, page 28).

The cabinet received a personal deputation from Lendlease Europe chief executive Dan Labbad, in which he stressed Haringey’s urgent need for new homes, recognised that the council “rightly wants to stay in control of public assets and minimise its exposure to risk” and maintained that it is common ground that the council “needs capable partners” if it is secure the housing outcomes it seeks.

Labbad urged the cabinet to delay its decision about the HDV in order to explore other ways in which they might work together. He had previously made the same case in letters to the council and also warned that if the company’s status as “successful bidder” for the HDV contract was removed “we will have no choice but to protect Lendlease’s interests, given our very significant investment over the last two and a half years”. The officers’s report said that under an existing agreement, the council will have to replay Lendlease £520,275.

Labbad also said it was unfortunate that the HDV public procurement process prevented Lendlease from engaging with local people. A campaign against the HDV, led by local members of Momentum, the pressure group formed to support the leadership of the Labour Party by Jeremy Corbyn, claims that “the people of Haringey” brought about the collapse of the HDV.

The report to the Haringey cabinet reproduces findings from a five-month consultation of Tottenham residents by the organisation Soundings, conducted in 2013. These included a desire among residents of the Northumberland Park area, which contains a housing estate that would have been redeveloped under the HDV, for improvements to existing housing, more shops and community spaces and a cleaner, safer and more attractive environment (pages 88, 89).

The new Haringey cabinet includes several supporters of Corbyn and members of Momentum, including Ejiofor and his deputy Emine Ibrahim, who is also cabinet member for housing and estate renewal, both of whom hold national positions in the organisation. One local activist anticipated the new Haringey administration being the country’s first “Corbyn Council”. The council intends to set up a house building company based on different model from the HDV. A new report by think tank Centre For London says there is considerable scope for an increase in council-led housebuilding across the capital to be increased.

A webcast of last night’s cabinet meeting can be viewed via here.

 

 

 

 

Categories: News
Tags: affordable housing, Centre For London, council housing, Emine Ibrahim, Haringey, Haringey Development Vehicle, housing, Jeremy Corbyn, Joseph Ejiofor, Labour, Lendlease, Momentum

Greenwich councillors block 1,000 new homes. How will Sadiq Khan respond?

Dave Hill

The newly-formed planning committee of Labour-run Greenwich Council decided recently to block two housing schemes in the borough which between them would produce over 1,000 new homes and both which reached Sadiq Khan’s 35% affordable “threshold” requirement, designed to speed housing delivery.

As Estates Gazette reported, both a 771 home Charlton Riverside scheme and a 272 home Harrow Manorway project in Abbey Wood were turned down unanimously, despite council officers recommending that permission be granted. The London Mayor has the power to intervene in the affair by overriding Greenwich and determining the two planning applications himself. In other words, he can see to it that those 1,000 new homes get built. Will he? And if not, why not?

There were local objections to the style, height and scale of the Charlton plans, which were obviously relevant and may be very valid. Even so, the rejection presents a challenge to Mayor Khan as he gets gets into the second half of his four year term and overall housing supply falls. Two threads of criticism from within the overlapping spheres of London’s housing sector and its local authorities are now well established. One is that he is too remote from senior colleagues within City Hall and important partners elsewhere, resulting in too little action on the ground. The other, related to the first, is that he is too pre-occupied with political positioning to say what needs to be said and do what needs to be done in order to get housing supply moving in the ways he says he wants.

For these critics, who include generally supportive Labour borough leaders, the Mayor is failing to make the best use of either his considerable “hard” power to see that housing projects that meet his strategic requirements come to fruition or his important “soft” power, which derives from hands-on involvement with decision-makers, housebuilders and financiers.

A contrast is sometimes made with the two previous Mayors. Ken Livingstone was attacked by media enemies for his reliance on an inner circle of close advisers (“Ken’s Cronies” etc), but others valued that closeness because the circle was comprised of trusted policy directors – these days called deputy mayors – who they knew spoke directly for their boss. This meant they usually knew where they stood with City Hall, which matters a lot to boroughs and housing providers when making planning and investment decisions. And Livingstone himself is still praised in surprising quarters as an excellent dealmaker, including with people who were not natural allies.

With Boris Johnson, who was considered somewhat more “outward facing” – a polite euphemism for attention-seeking – and far less interested in the detail of policy delivery than Livingstone, reassurance took the form of, firstly, the late Sir Simon Milton and then Sir Edward Lister, both of them hugely experienced in London local government and how planning and housing finance in the capital work. They too were regarded as mayoral representatives on Earth, speaking for and to Johnson directly and frequently.

With Mayor Khan, though, things are said to be rather different. Those uneasy with the workings of his mayoralty regard his more political advisers, such as Patrick Hennessy, David Bellamy and Jack Stenner, as his innermost circle, with his deputy mayors – those responsible for policy formulation and delivery, such as James Murray and Jules Pipe – of secondary importance in the organisational hierarchy. Whilst Murray and Pipe are highly regarded in local government and housing development circles, a feeling that the Mayor is rather detached from them means they are not perceived as bearers of the mayoral will in quite the way their predecessors were.

The story goes that this can mean that borough politicians feel unsure about backing housing schemes because they aren’t sure they will have the Mayor’s backing for them if they need it. The same goes for some housing and other property companies. Housing associations are said to be pleased with their relationship with City Hall with regard to the Mayor’s affordable housing programme. But, whatever they say in public, they are not happy about his backing for ballots of residents before he will help fund estate regeneration programmes.

And other types of housing investors have concerns too. Property developers and overseas investors are, of course, held by some to be villains of the capital’s housing crisis story, but the reality is far less black and white. As research for the Mayor has underlined, they actually finance much of the “affordable” new housing built in the capital, along with the important build-to-rent sector. It is a fact of modern life that commercial developers can easily move their millions to whatever location on the planet suits them best. Knowing they have the personal, eye-to-eye support of the the city’s Mayor can make an important difference to decisions about whether that location is London.

The backdrop to all this is, of course, the condition of the Labour Party in the capital and, indeed, nationally. It has for some time been the standard wisdom that Khan – like Johnson, but unlike Livingstone – regards the mayoralty as a stage of a longer career journey and is behaving accordingly. Quite naturally, he wants his forthcoming re-selection process to go as smoothly as possible and doesn’t want to get on the wrong side of London’s heavily Corbynite London membership, which has already impeded housing delivery – including of new affordable homes – in Labour-run Haringey and Lewisham. His U-turn over estate ballots is seen as a capitulation to Corbynite pressure and its ideological Grand Narratives. Looking ahead and more widely, he has no current interest in becoming deemed an Enemy of Jeremy by Momentum and the seething alt-left media.

Well, not many ambitious and practical Labour politicians do and it’s not hard to see why. But with housing delivery dipping and London’s population still growing towards nine million and beyond, Khan’s response to that rejection of 1,000 news homes in Labour-run Greenwich is going to be closely watched by many with the means and the desire to supply many thousands more.

Categories: Analysis
Tags: Abbey Wood, Boris Johnson, Charlton, David Bellamy, Estates Gazette, Greenwich, Haringey, James Murray, Jeremy Corbyn, Jules Pipe, Ken Livingstone, Lewisham, Patrick Hennessy, Sadiq Khan, Sir Edward Lister, Sir Simon Milton

Charles Wright: unanimity and obstacles on the road to delivering Mayor’s transport strategy

Charles Wright

There was an impressive sense of unanimity – as well as an impressive line-up of speakers, from Transport for London boss Mike Brown and new deputy mayor for transport Heidi Alexander to acclaimed postmodernist architect Sir Terry Farrell – at the Centre for London’s recent conference looking at the Mayor’s transport strategy.

Among London policy-makers, academics, developers even, there seems to be little opposition to the central principles of the Khan approach: a significant shift from private car to walking, cycling and public transport, to tackle congestion, improve air quality and unlock growth in new areas, summed up in Alexander’s vision of “places that work for people rather than spaces that work for cars”?

London has led the way on tackling transport problems, particularly through Ken Livingstone’s congestion charge – it’s hard now to remember how radical and contentious that scheme was, back in 2003. And Khan’s new strategy aiming for eight out of 10 trips to be on foot, by bike or by public transport by 2041 (up from 63 per cent today) is also “world-leading”, according to TfL commissioner Mike Brown.

But below the surface, and not only on the Central Line, pressure is beginning to build. Modal shift to the extent the strategy envisages, according to Brown, would need a “significant step-change in delivery”. And with the clock ticking on Khan’s first term, the Mayor faces plenty of barriers to progress.

Traffic congestion across London is on the rise, with big increases in private hire vehicles and all those vans delivering our online purchases, plus the impact of road works and road space given over to cyclists rather than cars. More congestion means buses become less reliable, leading to a downturn in bus passenger numbers.

Progress on new safe cycle routes has also slowed, according to the London Cycling Campaign, with just 14 kilometres of TfL cycle tracks completed since Khan came to power, significantly down on Boris Johnson’s record, with boroughs contributing another 15km, well below what’s needed for Khan to meet his pledge to triple the amount delivered by his predecessor.

Funding is a key issue. As the draft new London Plan points out, the capital requires “sustained investment…to ensure that alternatives to the car are accessible, affordable and appealing”. But London’s transport system, uniquely in the developed world, receives no direct government subsidy, while none of the £500 million currently raised in Vehicle Excise Duty from London-registered vehicles is reinvested in the capital. TfL is in the midst of another round of spending cuts.

And as Khan reminded the London Assembly last month, TfL controls just five per cent of London roads. Implementing the mayor’s strategy depends on the ability and willingness of the boroughs to comply.

Fractious relations between some of the boroughs and City Hall aren’t new, but the imbalance of power is starkly highlighted by Westminster Council’s ability to veto pedestrianisation plans for Oxford Street after two years of joint planning and consultation, a move backed by the council’s local Labour opposition.

As with housing, these growing political concerns at borough level, where transport proposals are always hotly contested, particularly where restricting car use is planned, suggest more work is needed at City Hall on winning hearts and minds, if we are to see significant progress towards the mayoral vision. Heidi Alexander is pledging to “supercharge” the delivery of new cycle routes, but is City Hall still over-wary of “moves that will upset residents, motorists and businesses”, as the London Cycling Campaign alleges?

Charles Wright is a former Labour councillor in Haringey. Read more by him here.

Categories: Analysis
Tags: Central Line, cycling, Heidi Alexander, Ken Livingstone, London Assembly, London Cycling Campaign, London Underground, Mike Brown, Sadiq Khan, Sir Terry Farrell, The London Plan, transport, Transport for London

Labour selects think tank chief as Duncan Smith challenger in Chingford

Dave Hill

Labour Party members in the Chingford and Woodford Green constituency have chosen think tank director Faiza Shaheen as their parliamentary candidate to challenge local Conservative MP Iain Duncan Smith at the next election.

Shaheen, who grew up in Chingford, supports Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party and was chosen from an all female and black and minority ethnic shortlist.

The decision to restrict the shortlist to non-white women removed from the contest Jenny Lennox, another Corbyn supporter who had appeared to be Shaheen’s closest rival, enjoying the support of shadow chancellor John McDonnell and councillors from the cabinet of Haringey’s Labour-run “Corbyn Council“.

Shaheen, who heads the union-funded Centre for Labour and Social Studies (CLASS), was backed by Momentum and several unions. She has no experience of elected public office and is believed locally to have been a Labour Party member for approximately one year. On London has asked Shaheen to clarify this point, but received no reply.

Demographic change has helped Labour close the gap on the Conservatives in recent general elections, giving rise to hopes that they can oust Tory incumbent Iain Duncan Smith, a former party leader and minister.

 

 

 

 

Categories: News
Tags: Chingford, Conservatives, Faiza Shaheen, Haringey, Iain Duncan Smith, Jenny Lennox, Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell, Labour, Momentum, Woodford Green