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Richard Brown: Is Sadiq Khan’s mayoralty too much like an algorithm?

Richard Brown

Halfway through his first term, there are some curious paradoxes about Sadiq Khan’s tenure as Mayor of London. He has a solid record of announcements under his belt, from a remixed London Plan to cash for affordable housing and eye-catching initiatives such as the borough of culture or ballots on estate regeneration.

While there’s a mounting funding crisis in Transport for London, initiatives such as the Hopper fare for buses have been successful, even if pedestrianising Oxford Street has fallen foul of Westminster Council politics. And Sadiq has campaigned for a capital-friendly Brexit, been vigorous in promoting London’s openness, and appointed well-respected and diverse deputy mayors and committees of advisors.

And yet. And yet. Despite assiduous media management, there are some voices – from Greater London Authority officers to housebuilders to senior borough executives – who talk of the Mayor as remote, inaccessible, disengaged. You can’t meet with him or speak with him, they say. You think you’ve agreed something with a deputy mayor, they complain, but then Sadiq does his own thing. It’s all smoke and mirrors, run by a tight gang around the Mayor who already have their eye on his next big job.

It’s worth pausing to ask whether these murmurs of discontent are simply the protests of the former in-crowd feeling the chill of a change in administration and a significant change in political direction. There’s certainly some of this, and you could argue that previous mayors were perhaps too eager to court housebuilders to little effect in terms of housing delivery.

But I think there’s something more – a change in style, or even mode of governance. Boris Johnson and Ken Livingstone both governed in a highly personal manner; they wielded their authority in a way that the sociologist Max Weber might have described as “charismatic”. For Ken, leadership was a matter of drawing together the factions and alliances that had enabled him to rise to the top of the Greater London Council, doing deals with developers even when he felt like bringing a long spoon, schmoozing the blazered sportsocrats of the International Olympic Committee, and alternately raging at government and wheedling powers and resources from it.

Boris’s regime was even more personalised. From successes such as the promotion of the “Olympicopolis” legacy plan for the Olympic Park – now renamed Eastbank – to more questionable follies such as the ArcelorMittal Orbit, the Garden Bridge and Emirates cable car, his most prominent initiatives were high risk, opportunistic deals, bearing only a glancing relationship to mayoral powers or remit, but using sheer force of personality to lever resources from high net worth individuals and corporations.

All of which seems very far away from Sadiq’s approach. He’s not interested in doing deals, you sense, but in tightening and adjusting the policy levers at his disposal to secure the results he wants. His governance rests on the “legal-rational” (Weber’s term again) basis of the mayoral powers and remit, with decisions taken calmly and rationally – albeit with a keen eye for politics – rather than on the basis of deals done personally or with subordinates.

It’s a fundamentally different model, and one that other people in City Hall (perhaps lower down the pecking order and therefore less likely to miss direct access to the Mayor) relish. One said to me, “With Boris, you got the feeling that he had a highly-tuned machine that he couldn’t be bothered to steer. With this lot, you get clear direction, and authority to go out and do things.” It is also probably more like the technocratic mayoralty that I and fellow members of the transition team expected before the first mayoral election in 2000, when we played “war games” about how the newly established Mayor and London Assembly would operate in practice.

Whether Sadiq’s approach will be more or less successful than his predecessors’ remains to be seen. A city cannot just be governed by deals with developers and ad hoc initiatives devised in Davos cloakrooms, but it probably can’t run like an algorithm either. The Mayor’s resources are limited, so he needs to work with investors and developers to build the city he wants. With a few exceptions, I applaud Sadiq’s policies. But I wonder how some of them will be implemented.

Richard Brown is research director of Centre For London, the capital’s dedicated think tank. Read previous pieces he’s written for On London here, here and here.

Categories: Analysis
Tags: Boris Johnson, Brexit, City Hall, Garden Bridge, Greater London Authority, Greater London Council, Ken Livingstone, Olympic Park, Oxford Street, Sadiq Khan, Transport for London, Westminster Council

Vic Keegan’s Lost London 48: the Fishmongers’ Hall

Victor Keegan

For centuries the Fishmongers’ Hall on the north side of London Bridge was the tallest secular building in London. Look at it now! It is more like one of the smallest as it gets lost in the dash for the sky.

The Worshipful Company of Fishmongers has been active for well over 700 years, mainly because for a long time it had a monopoly of fish sales in London. Even today, unlike many other livery companies that have morphed into social and charitable institutions, the Fishmongers Company maintains one of founding missions, monitoring the quality of fish at Billingsgate.

The livery companies, with their opulent halls and and the churches mainly built by Christopher Wren, are the two great survivors of ancient times in the City of London. Since it is much easier to enter a church than a livery company, I jumped at an opportunity to visit the Fishmongers’ Hall. And I was not disappointed.  

There are lots of interesting artefacts inside, not least the famous portrait of the Queen by Pietro Annigoni which, surprisingly looking back on it, was controversial when it was painted in the 1950s. The Fishmongers commissioned the painting but inadvisedly sold the image rights to the Annigoni estate. This means that when films are shot in the Hall the makers have to pay a sizeable chunk of royalties to the estate if they want the painting in the background. In the background of the portrait on the left is a tiny figure in a boat, meant to be Annigoni who, like Alfred Hitchcock, enjoyed appearing in his own productions. He also did a similar portrait of a slightly scowling Duke of Edinburgh which is kept in a smaller room. Wonder why.

On the stairway of the Hall there is a wonderfully detailed statue carved from an elm tree of Sir William Walworth, a grandee of the  Company, raising his dagger to kill Wat Tyler at Smithfield during the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. Until recently it was thought to be the actual dagger used by Sir William but it turns out it is of more recent origin.

There is plenty of silverwaree around and also a marvellous relic of the medieval London Bridge in the form of a large armchair hewn out of wood from the bridge. The slats across are carved in the shape of the old bridges. Thus is preserved a long link with London Bridge which separates the Fishmongers’ Hall from the old Billingsgate market where it ploughed its trade.

The original building was one of the first to be burned down in the Great Fire of 1666. The present Greek revival version was designed by Henry Roberts. He is not a well-known architect, but his helpers included the illustrious George Gilbert Scott and he worked under the supervision of Sir Robert Smirke, whose works include the main block and facade of the British Museum.

Find all of Vic Keegan’s Lost London pieces here.

Categories: Culture, Lost London
Tags: Fishmongers' Hall, London Bridge, Queen Elizabeth

Five years of the New Routemaster. How has Boris Johnson’s hallmark policy fared?

Dave Hill

Five years have passed since the New Routemaster, also known as the “Boris Bus”, went into full service on one of the capital’s 700 routes – the prestigious No 24, linking Hampstead and Pimlico, via Trafalgar Square. There has been no noticeable marking of this anniversary, which should not surprise us much: Johnson’s successor Sadiq Khan has ordered no more of the vehicles and those who dislike it have always made more noise than those who do. It is, though, an opportunity to reflect on a signature policy of the former Mayor and what judgement London history might make of it.

In some ways, the New Routemaster has had a raw deal. The loudest complaint about the earliest models was that they became mobile saunas on hot days, hence the jibe “Roastmaster”. However, according to my modest investigation at the time, the main problem in most of the vehicles was not so much temperature as lack of ventilation. This was rectified in later batches of the bus by providing windows that open to let in a balmy breeze.

Later, the Guardian wrongly claimed that, far from being powered by the cleanest available hybrid technology, the buses were “running almost entirely on diesel”. That is an impossibility. The way the “series hybrid” vehicle is put together means the bus is not directly propelled by diesel fuel at all, but by an electric motor powered by a battery. The battery is charged in transit by a small diesel engine. That engine switches on only when the battery needs topping up. What happened was that cells in some of batteries wore out faster than they should have, meaning those batteries needed charging more often and, therefore, the diesel engines in some cases being in use more than they should have been. The faulty battery cells were replaced under warranty and the extra diesel fuel burned was minimal.

The strongest arguments against the “Boris Bus” are less sensational. Its cost has been contentious since the project was conceived, with Johnson struggling to put a price on it during the 2008 election campaign and later saying he expected the bus industry to pay for its development. In fact, Transport for London had already pledged £3m towards that and later also bought the buses, which is unusual – normally, the bus operating companies do that. And although the New Routemaster set new environmental standards at the time, these would soon be matched by off-the-peg buses available for less money.

Was the extra expenditure justified? That is partly a matter of taste. Johnson sold the new bus to the electorate as a seductive and very Conservative blend of visionary enterprise and cultural revivalism, the latter driven by a conviction that Tory voters in particular yearned for the return of signature features of London’s famous original Routemaster. Chief among these were an open rear platform to enable passengers to “hop on” or “hop off” at will between stops and a second crew member, or conductor. But these features began to disappear soon after the bus went into regular service. The conductors were an expensive luxury and without these “customer assistants”, as they were officially called, the rear platform could not stay open after all. There were also hopes that other cities would want their versions of the bespoke new London bus and pay TfL for the rights to its Thomas Heatherwick design, but none have been forthcoming.

The New Routemaster was never a direct replacement for the two-part articulated vehicles Johnson’s predecessor Ken Livingstone had introduced and which Johnson phased out, but Johnson relished criticising the “bendy”, partly on the grounds that its having three doors encouraged fare evasion – to some, it was known as “the free bus”. However, that very same feature was ingeniously incorporated into the Wrightbus creation. This, along with two internal staircases, meant the New Routemaster could hope to replicate the bendy bus’s strength in facilitating swift passenger exit and embarkation. But has that, therefore, also meant a lot of fare-dodging on the “Boris Bus”?

According to two surveys TfL conducted in 2016, fare evasion overall was “approximately 1% higher than the network average, which is currently running at 1.3%”, and direct comparison of evasion rates on New Routemasters and on other types of buses running through “similar areas” were found to be “broadly similar”. This fairly reassuring picture was, however, somewhat at odds with what a member of one of TfL’s revenue protection teams told me when I bumped into it mustered at a bus stop in East London earlier this week.

“Do you get more fare-dodging on the New Routemasters?” I asked.

“Yes.”

A lot more?

“Yes.”

Certainly, as a frequent bus-user, I quite often notice fellow New Routemaster passengers “forgetting” to swipe in.

Two months before Johnson stepped down as Mayor, in February 2016, TfL ordered a further 195 New Routemasters from manufacturer Wrightbus, bringing the total purchased up to 1000. The price per bus was a little lower than for previous batches, but the election of Khan in May that year ensured that they would, nonetheless, be the last the city purchased. At the end of last year, route 267 became the most recent to converted to the New Routemaster and also the final one. We have, therefore, reached peak Boris Bus. Should we be happy or sad?

That will depend on how you view the New Routemaster balance sheet in general and, in many cases, how you feel about Boris Johnson. Although there are now cleaner buses around, the Boris Bus remains one of London’s cleanest. Some find the look of them too fussy and the seating cramped, but others enjoy what Johnson called their “sinuous curves”, their retro moquette and flooring and their moody internal lights. Whatever your opinion, it will be a long time before they start to disappear. The typical lifespan of a London bus is 14 years. With only five having elapsed since the New Routemaster rolled out on to route 24, this particular legacy of the Johnson mayoralty looks set to last until at least 2030.

Categories: Analysis, Culture
Tags: Boris Johnson, buses, New Routemaster, public transport, Sadiq Khan, The Guardian, Transport for London

Mayor’s transport deputy demands TfL control of Govia Thameslink ‘crisis’ rail franchise

Dave Hill

Sadiq Khan’s new deputy mayor for transport has demanded urgent talks with the government with a view to bringing parts of the troubled Govia Thameslink (GTR) rail franchise under Transport for London’s control within two years.

Heidi Alexander, the former Labour MP for Lewisham East, said in her first public speech in the job that the problems with the service are a “crisis” that is “blighting the lives of Londoners and risks causing our city economic damage if it continues much longer.”

Her comments, made at a conference about the capital’s transport challenges being held by think tank Centre For London, will reinforce the same message sent by Mayor Khan to transport secretary Chris Grayling in a letter.

New timetables introduced by GTR on 20 May have resulted in numerous peak time cancellations and many trains running late, creating major problems for many commuters using the Thameslink and Greater Northern routes it oversees.

Khan and Alexander believe TfL should be given responsibility for improving services out of Moorgate to Enfield, Stevenage and Welwyn Garden City in 2020, the earliest date possible under proposals that depend on GTR losing its franchise, along with services to suburban south-west London out of Victoria and London Bridge.

Alexander said that TfL and the Mayor “stand ready” to also take over West London Line services between Clapham Junction and Willesden Junction and repeated calls for metro services run by the Southern, South Western and South Eastern rail companies to be brought within TfL’s orbit too, citing the efficiency of the London Overground network and TfL Rail.

In a wide-ranging speech, she listed road congestion, over crowded Tubes and trains, and “Victorian infrastructure” still “creaking under the weight of 21st Century demand” and the cost of travel as the main challenges she must address. “The truth is over the last two decades London has had to run to stand still,” she said. “As soon as extra capacity is added, it fills up. The challenges of growth and funding are constant and not going away.”

Alexander echoed points made earlier by TfL commissioner Mike Brown, that London is now the only major city in the word without government grant support for its daily transport operation. She added that none of “the £500m raised every year from Londoners paying vehicle excise duty” is invested in the road network in London, meaning that the capital’s Tube and bus passengers are “subsidising the maintenance and upkeep of London’s strategic road network”. Brown described that situation as “nuts”.

She said that “new forms of land value capture” or the “devolved vehicle excise duty” are possible ways of helping London to raise the transport investment it needs. Alexander also described encouraging a shift from car use to more active travel modes “has to be our number one priority”.

This article was updated on 5 July 2018.

Categories: News
Tags: Govia Thameslink, Heidi Alexander, London Bridge, Moorgate, Sadiq Khan, transport, Val Shawcross, Victoria

Corbynism is making London’s housing problems worse

Dave Hill

Earlier this year, shadow housing secretary John Healey produced proposals for addressing the nation’s housing problems that were described by the excellent Jules Birch at Inside Housing as “the most comprehensive plan for affordable housing put forward in England for 40 years”.

Healey’s green paper pledged that a Labour government would deliver 100,000 “genuinely affordable” homes a year, a definition that encompassed social rented homes, “living rent” homes and low cost home ownership with the ideal of “mixed communities” in mind. Local authorities would get more freedom to borrow, a refund of the takings from Right to Buy and assistance with forming local housing companies.

It is an agenda that draws widely on the work of housing policy researchers and chimes with aspirations shared in recent years by an array of London politicians, including, in some respects, Boris Johnson. Many in the capital’s housing sector would love to see such measures implemented as national government policy, including Conservatives who run London boroughs.

But, as Birch observed, there are problems. The largest of these is that a Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn would have to win a general election, an outcome that looks very far from certain. Others include the financial feasibility of such a programme, along with several other practicalities. To these, I would add something that is already apparent in London housing politics and having a detrimental effect – the mentality of Corbynism itself.

This was eloquently illustrated by Corbyn himself in his preface to Healey’s plans, with its scratched record recital of Protest Left mantras about “luxury flats” that “stand empty” (not many do, actually) while social housing waiting lists grow, seemingly unaware of the rather more complex and necessary relationship between private finance and “affordable” supply, and its robotic reminiscences for post-war Labour council home building, whose results included damaging failures as well as life-changing successes.

Corbyn also made the quite astounding allegation that housing policy failures could not be more fully captured than by the Grenfell Tower fire, with its “image of people burning in their homes in the richest borough in the UK for the simple reason that they were poor”.

It is hard to imagine a more facile, unfair or prejudiced remark about that terrible event. Yet the man who aspires to being the nation’s next Prime Minister appears to have believed it both morally and factually justified, even before the painstaking inquiry into the fire’s causes had begun. As such, it serves as an endorsement of the repellent mob attitude about who and what were to blame for Grenfell that took shape even before the flames were out.

A more general expression of such attitudes, with their glib certainties and Grand Narrative explanations, is already having a significant effect on housing policy in London government. The creation by Corbyn supporters – including some who aren’t even in the Labour party – of Haringey’s “Corbyn Council” has not only led to the likely rejection of a huge investment of capital and skills in the borough on grounds of ideology, it has also spread anxiety to other parts of the capital, with boroughs, housing associations and others in the “affordable” housing sector keeping quiet about regeneration schemes or putting them on hold.

The housing policies espoused by Lewisham’s new Labour Mayor Damien Egan were significantly altered before he even became his party’s candidate, thanks to pressure from the local Momentum membership. As a result, the progress of a long-gestating regeneration scheme in south Bermondsey, which was on course to provide 35% affordable homes and new public amenities, has been obstructed and left the borough’s mayor in a predicament of his own making.

It is barely breathed publicly, but Sadiq Khan’s change of stance on the balloting of estate residents before regeneration schemes involving demolition can go ahead has caused widespread dismay among boroughs, housing associations and others in that part of the housing sector. There are good arguments for ballots, but also plenty of drawbacks if your first priority is to provide more and better affordable housing in London as soon as possible. Just organising them can cost a lot of time and money. That and the doubt surrounding their outcomes can work as disincentives to involvement with such schemes. Some of these have been misconceived and run into serious trouble. But others have greatly improved the housing and the lives of those most directly affected – a truth Corbynites prefer to ignore.

The Mayor’s shift in policy on ballots is itself widely seen as a capitulation to Corbynite pressure, made explicit by Labour’s national policy, in the context of his hopes of re-selection for a second term by a London Labour membership in which Corbynites are numerous. It is true to say that the impact of Momentum across London as a whole has been patchy, but the effects of their more successful attempts to change the approaches of Labour politicians to housing is more profound than widely recognised so far.

Some of Jeremy Corbyn’s policies are good and some of his values are sound. But he is, in his bones, a nostalgist rather than a progressive, a statist conservationist rather than a seeker of creative solutions to enormously complex problems that are quite different from those Londoners faced in the post-war decades before Margaret Thatcher came along. His influence and that of his supporters is already proving more of a hindrance in the capital than a help. Senior Labour politicians in London know this. Not many feel safe enough to say it.

Categories: Comment
Tags: affordable housing, council housing, Grenfell Tower, Inside Housing, Jeremy Corbyn, John Healey, Jules Birch, Labour

Andrew Boff joins London Mayor race for Conservatives. Anyone else?

Dave Hill

I’ve heard Andrew Boff describe his attempts to become Conservative candidate for London Mayor as a tradition. It’s a tradition we should be pleased he is maintaining. Boff has announced his intention to go for it again with a characteristic pledge to argue for the legalisation of cannabis as a way of short-circuiting the violence of the illegal drug trade and lessening young peoples’ exposure to black market substances that damage health. This is not an idea that has suddenly come to him – he’s been thinking in public along these lines for at least three years.

Today, Boff has also released a report calling for greater powers for members of the London Assembly, of which he is one. Boff points out that since the Greater London Authority was established in 2000 the mayoralty has acquired greater powers from central government, but the Assembly, elected to hold the Mayor to account, has benefited from no such extra devolution. “Without corresponding reforms,” Boff writes, “the powers that the Mayor possess can be misused.” He has a point.

Boff, a former leader of Hillingdon Council and Tory councillor in Hackney, has previously proposed the creation of a Thames City “southern powerhouse” region, which recognises that the London economy long ago burst the Greater London boundary and says collaborations should be developed between the metropolis and its surrounding region – what we’ve started to know as the “wider south-east”.

He has also called for the trial of a “managed street prostitution area” in London as a way to better protect street sex workers, spoken up for giving away bits of public land to people who want to build their own homes, made the case for imposing a height limit of six storeys on residential buildings except in five specified parts of the capital, and produced a report on human trafficking. He is a genuinely libertarian Tory, a intelligent radical and, by the way, a contributor to On London. It’s good to see him enter his party’s mayoral race again. He deserves to do well.

Who might join Boff on the starting line for the summer contest to come? The Evening Standard describes Richard Tice, chief executive of Quidnet Capital, as “already campaigning”. Last month, it reported research by Tice which he claimed showed that Sadiq Khan has overstated the number of affordable homes he has helped fund on which work has actually begun – a claim denied by City Hall. A keen Brexiter, Tice is co-chairman of the Leave Means Leave, which campaigns for what it calls “a swift, clean exit for the EU”.

The Standard also says that Munira Mirza, formerly Boris Johnson’s culture adviser, has been “tipped to stand”, but whoever has been doing the tipping seems not to have asked Mirza herself – responding to the Standard’s story, she has told On London that she is not standing and doesn’t know where any rumour that she might be could have started.

Boff’s fellow AM Shaun Bailey is also mentioned, as he has been elsewhere in the media and on the gossip grapevine for months. There is no word yet from Bailey himself, whose last high profile taste of election campaigning was in the 2010 general election when, as one of David Cameron’s new breed of Tory, he suffered a deflating defeat in Hammersmith at the hands of Labour’s Andy Slaughter.

With Justine Greening ruling herself out, the person many Tories are waiting for is former AM James Cleverly, these days MP for Braintree and cutting a bit of a dash as a Tory national vice chairman. Cleverly is pro-Brexit, anti-congestion charge, witty, gregarious and notably committed to free speech – he was the only AM I can recall who was prepared to be civil to Richard Barnbrook, who brought a lone and wholly clueless BNP presence to City Hall in 2008.

Cleverly would be hot favourite to become the Tory candidate, should he decide to give it a go. He is reported to be feeling 50-50 about it. Mayor Khan has confirmed that he intends to seek a second term. He will take a lot of beating, whoever his Tory opponent is.

Categories: Analysis
Tags: Andrew Boff, Brexit, Conservatives, Evening Standard, James Cleverly, Justine Greening, Munira Mirza, Richard Tice, Sadiq Khan, Shaun Bailey

Westminster to seek ‘place based’ solutions to Oxford Street problems. Will they be good enough for London?

Dave Hill

Having dumped what appeared to be the deliverable plan for transforming Oxford Street London has needed for decades, Westminster City Council has set out its alternative approach to developing what it calls “a district wide solution for the area spanning Tottenham Court Road to Marble Arch and surrounding areas”. On 9 July its cabinet will consider a report outlining how it believes “the Oxford Street District” can be enhanced to “meet the ambitions of the City Council, our residents, partners and stakeholders”. Pedestrianisation is out. A “place based strategy and delivery plan” is in.

Whatever exactly that might turn out to mean, serious change for the better is a matter of increasing economic and political urgency. Ben Rogers has rightly argued that it is “vital” for the West End and for the UK that a way forward is found that saves the capital’s legendary retail avenue from smogged and clogged decline. Some sort of progressive solution is also crucial to the credibility of Sadiq Khan, who promised pedestrianisation and looked set to secure what would have been a major mayoral achievement, perhaps the best and biggest of his four year term.

The Labour Mayor has criticised Conservative-run Westminster for abandoning “our joint proposals” and underlined that “I will not walk away from Oxford Street”. His power is limited, of course, because Oxford Street is Westminster’s, not his. But he does have at his disposal Transport for London, whose co-operation and financial input Westminster will want, especially with the opening of the Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) scheduled for 9 December. Khan has also said he is intent on supporting businesses in “making the most of the huge opportunity the Elizabeth Line brings”. He might not have control of Oxford Street itself, but he does have clout with big interested parties. It looks like he intends to make the most of it. According to one seasoned London politics observer, “it’s war”.

What might Westminster’s “place based” proposals turn out to be? A “comprehensive audit and engagement with residents and other stakeholders” is promised over the next two months, in order to “establish issues, priorities, vision and projects” for the district. A “strategy to inform the development of preferred solutions” is to be assembled in September and October and put out for public consultation in November. The strategy is timetabled for adoption by the cabinet in January.

Meanwhile, pedestrian safety measures relating to the opening of Elizabeth Line stations at Bond Street and Tottenham Court Road are to be implemented from the autumn. TfL forecasts that passenger numbers using these two stations will increase by 17% and 37% respectively and by 9% across all four Oxford Street tube stations right from the start, with much bigger increases by 2021.

Westminster has initially earmarked £327,000 of its own money to pay for all this work plus £400,000 of its local implementation plan (LIP) fund. LIP funding is dished out to boroughs by TfL for spending on projects that “support the Mayor’s Transport Strategy”, a fact that serves as a reminder of how interdependent different layers and institutions of London governance often are.

Westminster’s Tories, surely mindful that Labour closed the gap on them at May’s borough elections and won a West End ward seat for the first time in its history, has deferred to the concerns of well-organised, unhappy local residents whose political support it dare not lose – a process that began in earnest at the back end of last year, after opponents of the now rejected plans mobilised around the second public consultation on them. But local quality of life in the Oxford Street area is also affected by actions and input from TfL. Westminster won’t want to hack off the Mayor’s transport chiefs any more than they can avoid.

The cabinet paper expresses confidence that a local engagement process can help produce solutions “that will address the principle aspirations of our local stakeholders and our partners” without inflaming local opposition. Will such solutions go far enough to satisfy either the Mayor or the wider needs of London and the nation?

Photograph from Visit London.  

Categories: Analysis
Tags: Ben Rogers, Conservatives, Labour, Nickie Aitken, Oxford Street, Sadiq Khan, transport, Transport for London, West End, Westminster Council

Lib Peck: London boroughs must work together and with partners to tackle knife crime

Lib Peck

Lib Peck is leader of Lambeth Council and deputy chair and executive member for crime and public protection of London Councils. This article is a slightly edited version of a speech she gave at Wednesday’s knife crime summit convened by the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime. She was speaking in her London Councils capacity.

One of the hardest things to do as a council leader is meet the mother of a young person killed in your borough, to look into her eyes, see her profound and permanent sadness reflected back, and start to understand that in one frenzied moment of violence all the hopes and aspirations of her family have been extinguished – and to feel that as a resident of Lambeth and as leader of its council, that we all, society as a whole, have spectacularly failed.

That is the situation we as members of our local community, wherever we are, have had to confront far too regularly since the start of this year. We all know that sympathy is not enough. So, what do we do about it?  

First, we need action and leadership – leadership that works with and supports the strong leadership often shown in the aftermath of terrible murders by bereaved mothers themselves. In Lambeth, I think of Tracey Ford who set up a foundation after her son was killed at Streatham Ice Rink, or of Lorraine Jones of Dwaynamics, who honoured her son’s passion for boxing by expanding his club and working with the police.

Second, we need that response to address the challenge of the current crisis alongside a longer-term plan of action. The steep increase in knife crime over this year requires immediate action. We need to provide community reassurance and more police, get weapons off the street and do intensive work with victims and perpetrators.

But, in parallel, we also need a long term vision and plan, one that starts by unpicking the complex and multi-faceted problems that have led to the normalisation of violence. Essentially, let’s see knife crime as symptom of a much greater underlying series of problems.

To do that, we really need to acknowledge the different factors that drive violence in different localities. In some areas, there are significant changes in the drugs market. Waltham Forest has recently published an illuminating report on how it functions there. In other places, social media plays more of a role. Let’s be honest, we won’t find a single factor that works in all places. London Councils is collecting evidence of what works in different localities.

Earlier this month we brought together chief executives of children services, health professionals and community safety to draw up a package of resources that the boroughs can draw on. And we know that, whatever else it requires to be effective, partnership is key – a “whole system” approach, a joined-up service.

That could be of the type in Camden, where they have established a Youth Safety Taskforce, bringing together a broad alliance of statutory services, local schools, parents and young people to review all youth services and social media. Or it could be as in Hackney or Westminster, there they’ve been drawing on some of the best anti-gang prevention practices and re-offending strategies, and targeting hot spots.

Or there is Lewisham, where the approach has been a community-based trauma-informed restorative model. In plain language this means a recognition that to end a cycle of violence the impact and language around trauma and blame needs to change.

In my borough, Lambeth, we put community at the centre of a public health approach. We have prioritised this work and placed it at the heart of the council,  looking at the causes of violence in our borough with health professionals, and recognising the role of the community in addressing them. 

Each borough will have its own drivers and its own landscape. But we all need to draw on best practice. And we have to be honest and brave. We must be honest with partners in a continuing drive for improvements, including the challenge of getting real data and analytical support from the police and about the capacity of the public services. And we must be brave enough to articulate and defend preventative services.

We must develop borough responses that reflect local circumstances, but also work cross-London and cross-party to end this scourge. There is no monopoly of good ideas. And we all need imagination, determination and drive to end this horrible situation.

Read the Mayor’s knife crime strategy here. Follow Lib Peck on Twitter.

Categories: Comment
Tags: Camden, crime, Hackney, knife crime, Lambeth, Lewisham, London Councils, policing, Westminster