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Kensington & Chelsea leader asks for ‘united council’ and pledges to ‘reach out to all communities’

Dave Hill

Elizabeth Campbell, the Conservative leader of Kensington & Chelsea Council (RBKC), has urged her Labour opponents to “reach consensus” and “work together” with her new administration, and challenged councillors of all parties, including her fellow Tories, “to work to heal wounds, mend bridges and reach out to all communities” in the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower fire.

Addressing a full council meeting for the first time since the 3 May elections, which saw the Conservatives retain a commanding majority on RBKC, Campbell described the occasion as a “sombre” one and a time for “facing up” to the need to “modernise the council” to ensure that “we are held properly to account by the people we serve”.

Addressing criticism the council has received since the fire, Campbell said: “The suspicion today is as the royal borough has got wealthier and wealthier, the political class, the people running the borough, have really forgotten some of the less advantaged members of their community. While there is massive compassion, I don’t think there’s enough empathy as to how important this issue actually is and how seriously people of different faiths and certainly different communities take this issue”.

She said that she and her deputy leader Kim Taylor-Smith, who has cabinet responsibility for Grenfell, had attended each day of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry this week, listening to the “grief and desolation” of the bereaved.

Labour gained one seat at the elections while the Liberal Democrats held their single seat, leaving the Conservatives with a majority of 23. But Campbell said that although as the majority party the Tories were entitled and obliged to deliver their manifesto, they cannot “claim to have the full support of an undivided borough” and warned that “a mandate only stretches so far”.

Addressing Robert Atkinson, leader of the 13-strong Labour Group, she asked him and his colleagues to “reach consensus” where possible, to “look for what unites us in our mutual goal to support all our residents” and to help produce “a united council’.

Campbell said the council has received a report it commissioned from the Centre for Public Scrutiny, intended to “help us reach out beyond these four walls”, and will bring make recommendations drawn from it in July.

The Conservatives Group on the council has given over three of the places on council scrutiny committees to which it is entitled in an apparent response to Campbells’ call for a consensual approach and an acknowledgement that many of the new Tory councillors are new to their jobs – only 20 of the 37 Conservative members of the previous council defended their seats.

As a result, Labour’s representation is increased to three out of nine on the special Grenfell recovery scrutiny committee, which will chaired as before by Labour member Robert Thompson. The same 6:3 split now also applies on the executive and corporate services committee, which Labour will also continue to chair, and on housing and property, though in a new development Labour’s Monica Press will now chair the latter. Committee chairs are elected by the committee’s members. Labour is understood to be generally pleased with its increased representation, though disappointed to have just a single member on the five-person planning committee, which will examine major planning applications.

Campbell has increased the size of her leadership team from seven to eight, with newcomer Sarah Addenbrooke taking the new post of lead member for adult social care. Another new member of the cabinet, Catherine Faulks, will have responsibility for skills and enterprise policy. The other six are all retained from Campbell’s first team, appointed when she became leader in July 2017 following the resignation of Nick Paget-Brown in the wake of the Grenfell blaze, though some have been assigned new roles.

Responding to the leader’s speech, Atkinson thanked her for her “olive branch” and assured her that he would “only beat her with it when it is necessary and appropriate”. He added that in her speech she had “once again shown humility and a promise to earn the respect of all the people of Kensington and Chelsea”.

Having Labour councillors chairing three scrutiny committees provided a structure for holding the leadership to account, he said, and also remarked approvingly on the large number of new council officers recruited since the fire “intent on delivering decent services to residents and in particular to tackling many of the borough’s problems in housing”. However, he cast doubt on some of Campbell’s “modernisation proposals” and questioned whether the majority party has “even now, really realised the extent of the ongoing trauma and damage that has been inflicted on many of our residents”.

Updated at 17:47. 

 

Categories: News, Uncategorised
Tags: Catherine Faulks, Elizabeth Campbell, Grenfell Inquiry, Grenfell Tower, Kensington & Chelsea, Monica Press, Robert Atkinson, Robert Thompson, Sarah Addenbrooke

Vic Keegan’s Lost London 42: the statues of Vauxhall Bridge

Victor Keegan

Vauxhall Bridge definitely qualifies as a hidden gem, though you would never think so from walking across its mundane, deteriorating surface. It is almost designed not to be appreciated, because you can’t easily see its treasures – eight marvellous, twice life-size sculptures hanging on the sides of the bridge, seemingly risking life and limb.

Made by two distinguished artists, F.W. Pomeroy and Alfred Drury, they hymn the praises of British creativity in the fields of pottery, engineering, architecture, agriculture, education, fine arts, science and – wait for it – local government. It is the only bridge in the whole country with statues on it, according to Historic England.

You get a fleeting glimpse of them if you pass under the bridge in a boat, but not enough time to savour them. Most people don’t even notice. They are probably best seen from a drone. Apparently, they were only added as an afterthought when the bridge was, unusually, completed under budget.

In 1963 there were plans to replace Vauxhall Bridge with a modern version of the old London Bridge, complete with seven floors of shops, offices, hotel rooms and leisure facilities. But this barmy scheme, which would have ended the life of the statues, was abandoned because of costs. We must be thankful for small mercies.

Vic Keegan’s Lost London items 1-41 are archived here.

Categories: Culture, Lost London
Tags: Historic England, Vauxhall

Liberal Democrats promise ‘fresh start’ for Richmond, as Greens prepare to be ‘critical friends’

Dave Hill

The new make-up of Richmond Council will be formalised at a full meeting tonight, with the Liberal Democrats resoundingly back in charge following the recent borough elections, the beaten Conservatives in opposition and the interesting prospect of four Green Party councillors trying to make their mark.

With a majority of 24 to buttress him, leader-to-be Gareth Roberts has already  made his nominations for his nine-person cabinet. They include Liz Jaeger (deputy leader, housing and community safety), Alex Ehmann (deputy leader, transport, “streetscene” and air quality), Piers Allen (adult social care and health), Penny Frost (children’s services and schools) and Geoff Acton (business, economy and employment).

All are fellow Lib Dems. The electoral agreement the local party made with local Greens for campaigning purposes – which seems to have worked very well – had no follow-on in terms of guarantees of Green cabinet places. However, the four Green councillors – their group leader Richard Bennett, his deputy Andrée Frieze, Monica Saunders and Dylan Baxendale – are members of important committees, through which they will hope to be critical friends of the new administration.

Both Bennett and Frieze are to be members of the busy planning committee, with the former also scrutinising business and economy policy and the latter, the council’s performance in children’s services. Saunders will be on the case with adult social care, with Baxendale covering transport and streetscene and taking a particular interest in Heathrow.

Frieze, with engaging candour, says she and her colleagues were “shocked” to be elected the first ever Green councillors in Richmond but are also “delighted” about it. They intend to persuade their erstwhile Lib Dem allies to implement policy in the greenest ways possible, and hope that the productive electoral relationship will continue to produce results to their liking. She is encouraged by the Lib Dem pledge to speed up implementation of a 20 mph speed limit and to look again at the Twickenham Riverside regeneration project with a view to reducing car parking space.

Gareth Roberts has promised a “fresh start” for Richmond upon Thames through a council that is “engaging, open and innovative” and “puts real and meaningful dialogue with local people at the heart of all its decisions”. Sounds pretty Green-friendly. Will things turn out that way? Definitely a borough worth watching.

Categories: News
Tags: Alex Ehmann, Andrée Frieze, Conservatives, Dylan Baxendale, Gareth Roberts, Geoff Acton, Green Party, Heathrow, Liberal Democrats, Liz Jaeger, Monica Saunders, Penny Frost, Piers Allen, regeneration, Richard Bennett, Richmond, Twickenham

A question about London’s cycle lanes: ‘where are the women’?

Dave Hill

Video footage taken by active travel campaigner @HalHaines last week has inspired a debate about the effectiveness of London’s new cycle lanes. He was making a point about traffic signals on Cycle Superhighway 3 at Parliament Square, but @Cyclemonitor responded to the footage with a different one, asking “Where are the women?” He or she argued that “videos like this tell us that cycle infrastructure in London fails to normalise cycling”.

There followed a thread of a familiar kind about what conclusions can and cannot be drawn from 35 seconds of evidence from a single junction at a particular time of day. But nothing in it really addressed @Cyclemonitor’s basic point, which is a very important one.

When Boris Johnson published his Vision for Cycling in 2013, one of its various good objectives was to increase the variety of Londoners who get around by bicycle. Johnson wrote:

However, five years on, London’s cyclist population does appear to be as disproportionately white, male and drawn from its most affluent social strata as ever – a point encouragingly recognised by Sadiq Khan’s cycling and walking commissioner Will Norman soon after he took up his post, yet often met with ferocious displays of denial by some of the capital’s more fundamentalist cycling activists.

The belief of such activists that dedicated road infrastructure, in particular the building of segregated cycle lanes, will, all by itself, attract more women and more people who are not young, affluent or white to cycling, seems as unshakeable as it is as yet unproven. Perhaps, given more time, the range of Londoners who cycle will indeed start to broaden as a result of cycle lanes. But as things stand such an effect is not apparent.

The longer things stay that way, the stronger will become the case that encouraging the “truly mass participation” in cycling to which Johnson aspired will require a far more cultural and flexible policy approach than simply re-designing road layouts can achieve.

Categories: Analysis
Tags: Boris Johnson, cycling, Sadiq Khan, transport, Will Norman, women

Harry and Meghan’s cake: a slice of modern Hackney

Dave Hill

I’m neither enthralled nor appalled by the British monarchy. I expect this temperate stance will draw me to the TV for a little of today, and not just to watch the FA Cup Final. I have, in any case, some serious lying about to do in preparation for tomorrow Hackney Half Marathon. There is, of course, a Hackney connection with today’s royal wedding, because Prince Harry and Meghan Markle chose a hip Hackney bakery to make their wedding cake. It’s only a 20 minute walk from where I live. Last month I wrote a piece for Prospect Magazine about What It all Means. The piece began like this:

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s choice of an east London small business to make their wedding cake brings a long-term relationship between poshness and privation to a kind of royal climax. When the betrothed picked Violet, a café and bakery on a fairly quiet street at the edge of Dalston in Hackney to produce the star patisserie for their big day, it was a symbolic consummation of what some see as wholesome progress and others as wholesale colonisation.

Could there be a more complete manifestation of the wave of gentrification rippling across the inner city than Violet, and the values it represents? Not on the face of it. A part of the city that not so long ago was (unfairly) synonymous only with poverty and crime, has for some time had the word “fashionable” attached as a prefix, confirming Dalston in particular as a hotspot of hipsterism and all that follows in its wake, where a distinctively London working-class and an archetypally insurgent middle-class meet with an array of juxtapositions and effects.

Read the rest at Prospect here.

Categories: Comment
Tags: Hackney

Eight of London’s 32 boroughs to have new political leaders

Dave Hill

Only four of the capital’s 32 councils underwent changes of political control at the elections a fortnight ago, and in two cases the change was not very significant.

The replacement of Conservative administrations in Kingston and Richmond by the Liberal Democrats – in the latter case with help from the Greens – were clear cut. But Labour’s securing a majority in Tower Hamlets, which had previously been under no overall control (NOC), was less important due to a Labour Mayor already being in place, and he was re-elected comfortably. And the Conservatives’ won control of Barnet following a NOC period of less than three weeks, due to a deselected councillor resigning from the Tory group, thus briefly depriving the party of the majority of one it had got by on since May 2014.

However, the changes in the leaderships of the boroughs – some official, some impending –  have been more extensive and in several cases look likely to have quite big policy impacts. In all, there will almost certainly be eight London boroughs – one in four – with different people as their political head, six as council leader and two as mayor, once the formalities in all cases have been completed. Here’s an alphabetical list with a little information about each of them.

Enfield: Nesil Caliskan

Councillor Caliskan is just 29 years old and has been a councillor for only three years, after winning a by-election in May 2015. She is expected to be confirmed as the council’s new leader at a full council meeting next Wednesday evening, having wrested the leadership of Enfield’s Labour Group from Doug Taylor by the narrow margin of 24 votes to 22. Taylor has led the council since 2010 and led Labour to two victories, extending their margin both times. The Enfield Independent has reported that he was backed by the local branch of Momentum and that Caliskan is considered “closer to the party’s right wing”. As council leader, she will become the youngest in London, the first woman to lead Enfield and first person of Turkish heritage to lead any council in the UK. T-Vine, a magazine for British Turks, has profiled her.

Greenwich: Danny Thorpe

Rumours that Denise Hyland would not continue as Labour leader in Greenwich proved correct when she decided not to seek re-election as Labour Group leader. The local 853 blog has reported that Thorpe won the Labour Group ballot by a single vote. Although he won’t formally become leader until the full council meets on Wednesday, Thorpe has been announcing his nominations for cabinet appointments on Twitter. They include Hyland, who is set to  lead on economy, skills and apprenticeships. Greenwich-born, Thorpe has been a councillor since 2004. He was lead for regeneration and transport from 2014 until 2016, when he became deputy leader and his portfolio became regeneration and sustainability. As leader, he will also be in charge of policy on community and corporate services.

Haringey: Joseph Ejiofor

The new Labour leader of the nation’s first “Corbyn Council” is on Momentum’s national co-ordinating group although, unlike many Momentumites, he is a long-standing Labour Party member. He appears to already have cabinet posts lined up, as exclusively reported by On London yesterday. Ejiofor was previously deputy leader under Claire Kober, who stepped down as a councillor prior to the elections.

Harrow: Graham Henson

Despite some anxiety during the campaign, Labour retained control of Harrow and increased its majority to seven. However, Sachin Shah, who was the leader going into the election, was well beaten by Heaton, 22-13, in the ensuing contest to lead the Labour group. Henson was in charge of environment policy under the previous administration. He is expected to be formally become council leader next Thursday.

Kingston: Liz Green

A former leader a long-serving councillor, Liberal Democrat Green is already listed as leader of the council on Kingston’s website, following her party’s resounding eviction of the Tories – the Lib Dems have a majority of 30, having gained 21 seats. She has told the Surrey Comet that an “emergency budget”, promised in her party’s manifesto, will be introduced and a scrutiny panel for residents brought back. The Lib Dems highlighted local opposition to the Conservative approach to development, especially in allowing plans for high-rise buildings.

Lewisham: Mayor Damien Egan

Egan was practically assured of succeeding Sir Steve Bullock as Labour Mayor after securing the Labour candidate nomination in September, having re-positioned to the left in order to court the influential local Momentum faction. He was in charge of housing policy under Bullock and has appointed Paul Bell, the Momentum-backed mayoral hopeful who was runner-up in the candidate selection contest, as his successor in that role. London’s housing sector will be watching with interest.

Newham: Mayor Rokhsana Fiaz

Fiaz defeated long-time incumbent Sir Robin Wales to become Labour candidate after a tortured and questionable re-selection process, covered extensively by On London. She has promised to lead one of the capital’s three “one party states” – the others being Lewisham and Barking & Dagenham – in a more inclusive style with much more community involvement. Read an in-depth Q&A with her from the selection contest period here.

Richmond: Gareth Roberts

Liberal Democrat Roberts will be announced as Richmond’s new leader next Tuesday following the latest political turnaround in this famously big-swing borough – his party gained 24 seats to give it a majority of the same number. The Lib Dems were helped to victory by a successful local electoral agreement with the Green Party in some wards, which led to the Greens winning four seats. It will be interesting to see how the dominant Lib Dems work with their junior Green partners. Roberts is a prolific tweeter.

I’ve asked for more information on some of the new borough leaders and will update this piece if and and when it arrives.

Categories: Analysis, Maps & Stats
Tags: Conservatives, Damien Egan, Danny Thorpe, Enfield, Gareth Roberts, Graham Henson, Haringey, Harrow, Joseph Ejiofor, Kingston, Labour, Lewisham, Liberal Democrats, Liz Green, London, Nesil Caliksan, Newham, Richmond, Rokhsana Fiaz, Sir Robin Wales, Sir Steve Bullock

Haringey: ‘Corbyn Council’ cabinet line-up takes shape

Dave Hill

The borough elections went pretty well for Labour overall, but it seems significant that their two worst results in terms of losing seats suggest rejections of directions the party has gone in since Jeremy Corbyn became its leader in 2015: in Barnet, which Labour had high hopes of winning, they ended up with five fewer seats than in 2014 due largely to concerns about antisemitism in the party; and in Haringey, where a campaign by Momentum and various non-Labour allies, saw the replacement of many sitting councillors by candidates more to Corbynite taste, Labour did even worse, comfortably retaining control of the council but winning six fewer seats than four years ago.

Now, the new administration, dubbed by a local activist the nation’s first “Corbyn Council”, must set about delivering its fairly muted but nonetheless very Jeremy manifesto. From lists in circulation that have come my way, the likely make-up of the new Haringey Council cabinet and their responsibilities looks to have been decided. Nothing is yet official and changes could still be made. But information I’ve received has been pretty consistent and suggests the following cabinet appointments and roles.

Leader: Joseph Ejiofor

The new Labour Group elected Ejiofor its leader in a four-way contest last weekend, thereby ensuring that he will lead the council too. A member of Momentum’s national co-ordinating group, he was previous leader Claire Kober’s deputy. According to a detailed internal Labour document, Ejior’s responsibilities will also include communications and corporate governance, strategy and performance – these are as you might expect, but will be of crucial importance to the credibility of the “Corbyn Council”.

Also listed in Ejiofor’s job description are “external partnerships”, “strategic transport” and “inward investment”, something that might prove quite tricky to deliver, given that a large majority of the new Labour Group have declared themselves opposed to the substantial inward investment promised by the Haringey Development Vehicle (HDV) joint venture scheme the previous administration wanted to pursue with regeneration giant Lendlease – a plan that ultimately led to their downfall. Whatever the rights and wrongs of that, the hostility directed at the HDV by Momentum-dominated Haringey Labour has not sent an encouraging signal to potential private investors in the borough, some of whom might already have decided to take their money elsewhere.

Deputy Leader and cabinet member for Housing Planning and Estate Renewal: Emine Ibrahim

Ibrahim, who sometimes spells her forename “Emina“, is national vice chair of Momentum and said to be a close ally of its founder, Jon Lansman. She was strongly opposed to the HDV, believing that the council should look at setting up a wholly-owned private housing company rather one owned 50/50 with a commercial developer. The advantage of the various forms of local housing companies that many London boroughs have set up is that they have more freedom to borrow private capital than local authorities are allowed to in their own right. Ibrahim’s job description, according to one document, also covers engaging with the local private rented sector, partnerships with the Homes for Haringey ALMO and local social landlords, tackling homelessness and rough sleeping, and responsibility for the current Broadwater Farm estate redevelopment project, which involves significant work on potential structural problems.

Adult Care & Health: Peray Ahmet

There are variations on the job title floating around, but the responsibilities look to include adult social care – a major area of every borough’s responsibilities – disability support, public health, mental health and the local health and care devolution pilot. Ahmet held the environment brief under Kober until she resigned, having changed her position on the HDV in advance of the re-selection process. A longstanding personal friend of Ibrahim.

Children & Families: Elin Weston 

Weston was one of the few pro-HDV councillors to survive the attempts of Momentum et al to get rid of her. She is said to have badly wanted to keep this role, which she held under Kober. It covers early years provision, schools and education, adoption, fostering, looked-after children and those with disabilities and additional needs.

Civic Services: Zena Brabazon

An intriguing hybrid brief according to the documents, taking in customer services, “transformation programmes”, libraries, culture and leisure, along with equalities and responsibilities for a proposed fairness commission and landlord licensing. Also listed is a “redevelopment project” for the Northumberland Park estate, which would have been redeveloped under the HDV plan. On the face of it, this and landlord licensing belong in Emine Ibrahim’s territory. It would be interesting to know why it isn’t. Brabazon was, by a large margin, the choice of the strongly Momentumite Labour ward branch delegates, to be Group leader, but councillors, a more diverse electorate, were not so keen.

Community Safety: Mark Blake

Police engagement, antisocial behaviour, youth services, youth offending, the Prevent programme and tackling violence against women and girls all fall to anti-HDV Councillor Blake.

Corporate Services & In-Sourcing: Noah Tucker

Tucker used to run a website called 21st Century Socialism with his brother Calvin. He is also the brother of housing activist Pilgrim Tucker, who became prominent in the media after Grenfell, and the son of sculptor William Tucker, a member of the Royal Academy. Tucker joined Labour after Corbyn was elected its leader and became a councillor after winning a by-election in October 2016. In June of that year, prior to becoming a candidate, he had argued forcefully that complaints about antisemitism in Labour were “part of an orchestrated campaign” to undermine Corbyn and prepare the ground for an internal coup against him. Tucker’s responsibilities look set to include human resources and “staff wellbeing”, emergency planning, “corporate property”, including the council’s commercial property portfolio, as well as a programme for in-sourcing the delivery of services.

Environment: Kirsten Hearn

Another unsuccessful leadership hopeful, Hearn will be in charge of waste, recycling, street cleaning, parking, parks and open spaces, air quality and “carbon management”.

Finance: Pat Berryman

A former City trader, Berryman’s responsibilities are listed as council finances and budgets, procurement, commercial partnerships and delivering important manifesto pledges about council tax reform.

Strategic Regeneration: Charles Adje

Another wide-ranging brief, encompassing the broadest definition of “regeneration”. It covers the Wood Green and Tottenham area action plans, the latter including the redevelopment by Lendlease of the Love Lane estate within the High Road West regeneration area (across the road from Tottenham FC’s stadium). It also embraces “town centre management” in general, plus policies on unemployment and worklessness, adult learning and skills, “business engagement” and accommodation strategy”.

That’s all I have for now. I’m confident it reflects the current state of play. We’ll know for sure how the “Corbyn Council” cabinet posts and responsibilities have been allotted in the coming days.

 

Categories: News
Tags: Charles Adje, Elin Weston, Haringey, Joseph Ejiofor, Kirsten Hearn, Mark Blake, Noah Tucker, Pat Berryman, Peray Ahmet, Zena Brabazon

Vic Keegan’s Lost London 41: finding London Wall

Victor Keegan

London used to be surrounded by a wall that was built by the Romans around 200 AD and had later medieval additions. That very old London still is. But the wall has got lost and you have to look carefully for remnants – of which there are still plenty. 

Its course runs in a roughly horseshoe shape from around Blackfriars station northwards via the Old Bailey and the Museum of London before turning east along the road called London Wall and then meandering its way to the Tower of London. Following it is like chasing a serpent which disappears underground only to reappear before diving out of sight again. The locations of three of the most visible bits are as follows:

Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Newgate Street.

It would be difficult to find a more dramatic contrast between old and new London than this. Above ground, the throbbing trading floors of the US investment bank. Below it, an ancient section of Roman-built London Wall, now lying 20 feet beneath the streets of the city having been buried under layers of City development. The wall helped protect the City of London from its enemies. 

You need to have permission to see the full glory of this extensive chunk of wall, but you can get a good idea of what it is like through a window in the square. Go down an alley next to the Viaduct pub at the junction of Giltspur Street with Newgate Street (where it joins High Holborn). Walk down the alley and turn left into the courtyard opposite Caffe Nero. A little way along on the left you can peer through the window and see the wall. This is what remains of a four metre high wall and bastion built from stones carried by sea from Kent. 

There is another bit of the wall in the basement of the Old Bailey nearby along the passageway where prisoners once walked to the gallows, but you will need to be on one of the official Old Bailey tours in order to see it. 

Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA) area.

This is where one of the bastions or forts was located, which defended the wall. Start at Noble Street where remnants are visible (with a lot more underneath if you catch one of the MOLA tours). Then, on the other side of London Wall, there are more remains of the bastion and wall. If you double back and go down Wood Street to the churchyard of St Giles Cripplegate there is a generous expanse of the medievalised wall. There is yet another section in the underground car park, which runs the length of this part of London Wall road. Further along London Wall, part of the medieval wall (with Roman foundations) has been incorporated at All Hallows church.

Tower Hill Underground station.

The most dramatic section of surviving wall can be seen when you are exiting the station (see photo at the top of this post). It is the eastern end of it, Roman and Medieval, 33 yards long and standing at pretty much its full height of almost 12 yards. If you navigate around Coopers Row and the Grange Hotel, you can see more of the wall subtly blending in with modern buildings. A little further on, at One America Square, there is another large section, preserved on the lower floor of a commercial building. 

To fill in the gaps and learn much more, read Walking London Wall by Ed Harris. Previous instalments of Vic Keegan’s Lost London series can be found here.

Categories: Culture, Lost London
Tags: Blackfriars, City of London, Giltspur Street, London Wall, Museum of London, Newgate Street, Old Bailey, St Giles Cripplegate, Tower Hill, Tower of London