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Daniel Moylan’s London road user charging amendment. What is it for?

The Conservative peer's proposed adjustment to the powers of the capital's boroughs and Mayors has prompted learned discussion
Dave Hill

A week ago transport secretary Mark Harper published a letter he had sent to Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer. In it, he referred to an amendment that had been tabled to the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill which would, Harper wrote, “ensure that future clean air schemes cannot be introduced in London whilst ignoring the mandate of elected local councillors in London boroughs”. The government, Harper continued, “will support” it.

The context, of course, is Sadiq Khan’s introduction of a further expansion of London’s Ultra-Low Emission Zone (the ULEZ) so that it covers the whole of Greater London. Instant reaction from some to the amendment was unamused, notably from champions of devolution to the Greater London Authority and London’s Mayors, present and future alike. The amendment was seen as being (yet another) assault on the power and autonomy of the mayoralty, simply because the Conservative national government doesn’t like the current Labour incumbent.

Since then, the proposed amendment has been published and can be examined in detail. It is the work of Daniel Moylan, former deputy leader of Kensington & Chelsea and former deputy chair of Transport for London under the mayoralty of Boris Johnson. Moylan, a contributor to this website, is nowadays Lord Moylan. It is in that capacity that he has tabled the amendment in question.

What, then, is it for?

It starts on page 12 of the tabled amendments list and isn’t short. It proposes inserting a clause about “road user charging schemes in London” into the Bill, though it actually relates to the Greater London Authority Act (1999), which brought the Greater London Authority, the Mayor and the London Assembly into being.

Put very simply, the effect of the amendment would be, as Harper indicated, to increase the power of London’s boroughs in relation to that of the Mayor. It would also increase the power of Her Majesty’s Government relative to that of the Mayor. To that extent, the objections of those wanting more devolution to City Hall, not less, appear logical.

The exact significance of the change, should it take place, is less easy to assess. The Moylan amendment relates specifically to Schedule 23 of the GLA Act, which deals with road user charging (RUC). However, it addresses itself solely to new RUC schemes (the amendment is not retrospective) related to air quality (and not only the ULEZ variety).

This seems to mean Conservative mayoral candidate Susan Hall and her media allies will be able to continue to allege that Mayor Khan has a secret plan to introduce a pay-per-mile RUC scheme for all motor vehicles driving in London purely to raise money for Transport for London. Were the adoption of the Moylan amendment to make it impossible for any such policy to be introduced if, as would seem likely, a Conservative-run London borough objected to it, that Hall attack line would be rendered redundant.

On the basis of Harper’s remarks, such an outcome appeared plausible. The amendment itself suggests maybe not, although any new RUC scheme – or variation on an existing one, such as the Congestion Charge – might be held to be related to air quality, given that any RUC seeking to reduce the use of motor vehicles will have air quality implications.

Importantly, however, Moylan’s amendment does not argue for giving individuals boroughs a veto over any new air quality-related RUC scheme Mayor Khan or his successors might wish to bring forward. Rather, this potential new legal provision would give boroughs the option of seeking to opt out of a mayoral scheme under certain circumstances.

In an “explanatory statement” accompanying his amendment, Moylan writes that it would “enable London borough councils which are meeting air quality standards and objectives under the Environment Act 1995, or have an approved plan to do so, to opt out from certain road user charging schemes proposed by Transport for London”. In addition, “It gives the Secretary of State [for transport] a power to intervene in certain circumstances”.

The aim of the amendment is to ensure that once the wheels (as it were) began turning on any such new mayoral RUC air quality scheme – or significant variation on an existing one – in the form of TfL publishing a “draft order” to that effect, boroughs which believed they were meeting national air quality standards as set down in law or were taking steps towards doing so, would have ten weeks in which to put their opt-out case together and present it to both TfL and the transport secretary.

The latter would be provided with any “alternative plan” that borough may have for improving air quality (TfL would get a copy) and have 16-week “review period” in which to decide, in the words of the amendment, “if it is likely to achieve and maintain improvements in relation to air quality standards and objectives, in every part of the London borough council’s area”. That “review period” could be extended by the transport secretary “on one or more occasions”, the amendment says.

A seasoned transport policy professional who has looked carefully at the amendment thinks that in practice it would not significantly empower boroughs who don’t want to be bound by what a Mayor of London wants to do in this policy area. He says that, in the first place, no London borough has air quality that isn’t in need of improvement as measured against current national air quality standard regulations (set down in 2010). And, in the second, no London borough has an alternative plan for achieving the same or similar goals to any new mayoral RUC scheme that might encompass it.

For him, the real difficulty for London Mayors would lie in the potentially considerable delay in assessing opt out bids – that freedom proposed for transport secretaries to more than once extend their “review period” beyond 16 weeks, creating the potential for a government minister to impede the implementation of mayoral policy for months on end.

Moylan, of course, looks at the whole thing differently. He characterises his amendment as a modest measure for addressing a democratic imbalance between London Mayors and London boroughs, one which would have the added benefit of bringing London into line with, for example, the distribution of power that applies to the Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, and the local authorities within that region’s “combined authority” member councils.

He might also point out that bringing in new scheme or varying (such as by expanding) existing ones is already a lengthy process, entailing drawing up and consulting on TfL scheme orders and – as was the case with the latest ULEZ expansion – amending the Mayor’s transport strategy.

So take your pick. Is the Moylan amendment a temperate legislative tidying-up exercise which would rightfully provide London’s boroughs with a little more scope for autonomy from London’s Mayor? Is it a hurried, last-minute tweak to the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill whose undesirable ultimate effect will be to make it easier for national governments to make life difficult for London’s Mayors? Is it, perhaps, both? Last heard, the amendment could be debated today or on 6 or 13 of this month.

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Categories: Analysis
Tags: air quality, Daniel Moylan, transport, Transport for London, ultra low emission zone

James Cracknell: How I walked London’s Capital Ring

Linking a series of green locations where the outer and inner city meet, this 78-mile route is full of surprises and delights
James Cracknell

To my immediate right, out of sight up a short slope but certainly not out of earshot, was the North Circular. To my left was a little egret, staring down into the shallow waters of Dollis Brook, keeping an eye out for its next meal.

Little egrets are fabulous birds – small white herons more commonly found in continental Europe, having only started breeding in the UK in the last few decades. They love the coast but will venture inland along waterways. To see one in London is always a delight; to see one so close to one of its most polluted roads is extraordinary.

I wouldn’t have had this encounter with nature were it not for the Capital Ring. Cycling through Finsbury Park back in spring, I noticed one of the route’s many green fingerposts, which told me Woolwich was 15 miles in one direction and Richmond 28 miles in the other. My curiosity piqued, I decided to take on the 78-mile circular walk around London as a summer challenge – something to occupy me on weekends when the football season had finished.

The Capital Ring is a surprisingly recent addition to London’s signposted walks. It was officially launched in 2005 by the London Walking Forum and maintained in its early years by Transport for London. These days, its upkeep is the responsibility of the boroughs it passes through – 18 of them in total – but it’s the volunteers of the Inner London Ramblers we have to thank for an excellent guide to all 15 sections of the Capital Ring.

The group manages a website kept well up-to-date with any enforced changes to the route, such as when footpaths are closed or diverted, while regularly publishing new versions of the guide (the current one dates from the start of this year). Although the walk is well signposted, I made sure to download the relevant section of the guide before setting off each day. It shows you the best options along the route for toilet breaks and refreshments, and even includes accessible alternatives if you want or need to avoid steps.

Screenshot 2023 09 03 at 10.24.07

Like the London Loop, its older and bigger sibling, the Capital Ring takes a circular route around the capital. But while the former is confined to the very edge of Greater London and even crosses into the Home Counties, the latter follows a path I would describe (clumsily) as outer inner London, linking together many well-known green spaces. Even if you are a Londoner who’s seen most of the best of what the capital has to offer in terms of parks and waterways, I would recommend the Capital Ring for the added value it brings and the unexpected discoveries you’ll make along the way.

Starting, logically, with Section 1, I set off from Woolwich’s still-gleaming Elizabeth Line station on the first weekend in May. As well as pointing the way along the route itself, the ring’s waymarkers helpfully direct walkers to the nearest stations at the beginning and end of each section, which in the case of Section 1 is a short and pleasant walk through Woolwich Arsenal to the riverside.

The first major landmark on the route is one of my favourites – the Thames Barrier. It’s here that the path turns away from the river and heads south towards hilly Maryon Park, where I enjoyed the first of many incredible views over the city. Charlton Park and Woolwich Common follow, before the Capital Ring climbs into the ancient Oxleas Woods, where an unusual “castle” awaits.

Section 2 passes Eltham Palace, one of London’s many former royal residences dating back to the medieval period, but the section highlight for me comes shortly afterwards, with the view from King John’s Walk somehow combining a horse paddock, post-war suburbia and The Shard.

Section 3 is a mini-epic of its own. It begins with The Railway Children Walk in Grove Park, the inspiration for Edith Nesbit’s famous novel. After crossing the railway, I stroll through Downham Woodland Walk, a slither of ancient woodland sandwiched between residential areas. The Capital Ring then arrives at Beckenham Palace Park, a stunning green space that’s benefited from a number of improvements in recent years – not least the addition of a wild swimming lake. The section ends at Crystal Palace Park, home of the dinosaurs and one of my favourite railway stations in London.

Section 4 is a short but hilly route encompassing Upper Norwood Recreation Ground and Biggin Wood, a remnant of South London’s once-dominant Great North Wood, before ending at Streatham Common. More familiar commons follow in Section 5 through Tooting and Wandsworth, but a highlight for me is the awesome Art Deco masterpiece of Du Cane Court in Balham. At Earlsfield, the route passes a cultural landmark, Tara Theatre, the only UK venue to focus exclusively on South Asian artists and stories, before ending at Wimbledon Park Station.

Section 6 follows a path well-trodden – that which passes through both Wimbledon Common and Richmond Park, London’s largest open space. Aside from one busy road between these two famous parks to negotiate, this section is about as green as the Capital Ring gets. If you have time, I recommend a quick visit to the museum at Wimbledon Windmill.

It’s time to cross the River Thames in Section 7, utilising the Victorian-built Richmond Lock and Footbridge, whose height affords superb views. From there the path continues along the Thames through pretty Isleworth, before entering Syon Park, somewhere I knew absolutely nothing about prior to my Capital Ring challenge but which I can now confidently tell you is the London home of the Duke of Northumberland. The route then arrives in Brentford and follows the Grand Union Canal, passing underneath the Piccadilly line and M4 motorway in quick succession.

Section 8 continues along the canal, which at this point is contiguous with the River Brent. It is distinguished by another marvel of Victorian engineering in the form of Wharncliffe Viaduct, Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s first major structural design, which carries the Great Western Main Line over the Brent Valley.

Section 9 is a story of two hills, Horsenden and Harrow, that have little in common except for their stunning views over west London. The former is an open space bisected by woodland with links back to the Iron Age, the latter is known mostly for its boarding school and picturesque village. This also marks the Capital Ring’s furthest point from the centre of London – ten miles.

There’s more climbing needed in Section 10 on the way through Fryent Country Park, with an unlikely lake at the top of Barn Hill and views of Wembley Stadium. A steep descent then follows, towards Brent Reservoir – also known as Welsh Harp Open Space – where I’ve previously enjoyed the pleasure of a paddle boat. Sadly, there was no time for such frivolities on this occasion, but the reservoir makes for a fine walk nonetheless.

Picking up Section 11 in Hendon Park, it was on this part of the route that I found myself photographing the little egret, so unperturbed by the the North Circular. The road’s noise accompanies you for much of this section, but such is the joy of Dollis Valley Green Walk, which forms part of this piece of the Capital Ring, that it falls into the background of an otherwise peaceful stroll. Finally getting away from the dual carriageway, I pass through one of London’s best-known suburbs – Hampstead Garden – before ducking underneath East Finchley Station, a Charles Holden masterpiece, and entering the magnificent ancient landscapes of Highgate and Queen’s woods.

Screenshot 2023 09 03 at 10.25.15

Section 12 follows Parkland Walk, a north London nature reserve created in the 1980s, along the route of a former railway line between Muswell Hill and Finsbury Park. It’s a path I’ve walked many times, but never tire of. From Finsbury Park, the Capital Ring joins the New River Path. Here it skirts Woodberry Wetlands, another London nature reserve that wouldn’t exist without a piece of man-made infrastructure. It’s also one of the city’s newest, having been opened in 2016 by Sir David Attenborough (thanks to my previous employment with London Wildlife Trust, I can even say I was there).

Section 13 starts in Stoke Newington, passes through Clapton, and enters the Lea Valley at Springfield Park, which boasts excellent views across East London. While many sections of the Capital Ring require careful directions from the Inner London Ramblers, this one could not be simpler, as it follows the River Lee Navigation for two-and-a-half miles before ending adjacent to the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

With the new football season fast approaching, I decided to complete the final two sections of the Capital Ring – numbers 14 and 15 – on the same day in early August. The ten-mile trek begins with The Greenway, a lovely footpath if you can ignore the whiff from the sewer pipe the embankment sits above. From there the route turns south, towards the Royal Docks, passing through East London University, where a shop offers discounted snacks to anyone who looks vaguely young enough to pass for a student (I passed).

Enjoying my Dairylea Dunkers, I watched planes landing and taking off from London City Airport before reviving my sore feet just enough to walk through the modern (and still under construction) housing estate at Gallions Reach and arrive back at the  Thames. From there, looking up, I pointed my camera lens at an unusual flock of birds perched atop a residential tower. Zooming in, I finally realised they were house martins taking turns to dive down for another mouthful of insects.

The Capital Ring ends back at the Woolwich Foot Tunnel, completing its circuit of London, and providing me with a deeper knowledge and respect for this fine city than I could have ever had without it.

Screenshot 2023 09 03 at 10.24.45

James Cracknell is editor of the Enfield Dispatch. He took all the photographs accompanying this article. Follow James on X/Twitter. If you value On London and its writers, become a supporter or a paid subscriber to publisher and editor Dave Hill’s Substack. Thanks.

Categories: Culture
Tags: Capital Ring, Maryon Park, River Thames, walking

Charles Wright: Sadiq Khan policies estimated to have produced 300,000 London jobs

An assessment by City Hall economists examines link between mayoral policies and employment, recognising that it is an imperfect science
Charles Wright

What’s the point of the Mayor of London? One of the less well-known positive arguments for the mayoralty might be job creation. New research from City Hall’s GLA Economics team estimates that Sadiq Khan’s efforts have produced more than 300,000 jobs in the capital since his election in 2016.

The grand total includes 273,200 created or supported by mayoral programmes and policies, plus 1,700 safeguarded, 9,500 apprenticeships put in place, and 47,600 Londoners helped into work through skills and training programmes. The estimate amounts to more than half the jobs added to the capital’s overall workforce in the six and a half years between May 2016 and the end of last year.

City Hall’s affordable housing programme, with a spend of some £4.8 billion between 2016 and 2023, is the biggest contributor, accounting for more than 140,000 jobs, the researchers estimate. Support for cultural and creative industries has seen 48,200 “employment opportunities” created, while the Mayor’s inward investment and tourism agency London & Partners has delivered 46,000. European Union cash, supplied through the European Social Fund and the European Regional Development Fund, added 35,400, and wider skills and employment programmes another 23,900.

Good news for the Mayor then, who, as the report points out, stated on his re-election in 2021 that “protecting, preserving and helping to create jobs will be my economic priority”. But as veterans of employment and regeneration programmes will know well, counting the numbers of jobs created is not an exact science. Estimates of this kind come with caveats – and this research is no exception.

Definitions of jobs created or safeguarded vary, across programmes and sectors, and perhaps most significantly, the figures reported are “gross” rather than representing net additional jobs, meaning they cannot – as the researchers acknowledge – be “solely attributed to the Mayor’s policies and programmes”. Some of these jobs might have been newly created in any event, without City Hall intervention. Others might have been displaced from elsewhere. More data, and more detailed economic analysis, is needed to establish “additionality”.

However, the figures could also be an under-estimate, particularly for housing and transport investment, the report says. Those for housing jobs are based on National Housing Federation calculations that each new home built is associated with the creation of at least 1.2 direct jobs. But the government’s own housing strategy estimates up to two jobs per new house, and analysis by the Home Builder Federation puts the figure at between 2.4 and 3.1 “direct, indirect and induced jobs”.

Employment supported through Transport for London’s investment on the Underground, calculated by TfL to be around 43,000, and supply chain and construction jobs involved in building the Elizabeth line have not been included either – 55,000 full-time jobs across the country, plus jobs being created in areas opened up by the new route.

Nor has the jobs impact of the Mayor’s London Plan policies been calculated, including in the plan’s “opportunity areas”, which are judged to have capacity for at least 2,500 new homes or 5,000 new jobs, or a combination of the two. City Hall’s Royal Docks regeneration project alone is forecast to deliver 41,500 jobs over the coming two decades, the report notes.

The raw numbers do not reflect the quality of the jobs created, it adds. That could be a focus for future monitoring, along with more work on the “employment impacts of TfL’s investment in the transport network, which are currently underrepresented”. This would include jobs created outside the capital and by more recent initiatives, such as Mayor Khan’s free school meals programme.

Finally, the report cautions that a “narrow” focus on the employment impacts of mayoral programmes provides only a “partial view” of their success. “Ideally they should be judged on their full environmental, social and economic benefits”.

X/Twitter: Charles Wright and On London. Photo: Newly-built council housing in Brent part-funded by the Mayor. If you value On London and its writers, become a supporter or a paid subscriber to publisher and editor Dave Hill’s Substack. Thanks.

Categories: Analysis
Tags: affordable housing, employment, Greater London Authority, Sadiq Khan

Dave Hill: ULEZ-hate is the new vehicle for hard Right pollution

In its outraged opposition, a desperate Conservative Party is once again prepared to share common ground with fantasists and extremists
Dave Hill

Earlier this year, Conservative politicians were displeased by Sadiq Khan telling an audience in Ealing that people outside protesting against his plan to expand the Ultra-Low Emission Zone to the whole of Greater London included individuals who were “part of the far Right”. He also said some were “Covid-deniers” opposed to the use of vaccines. “And some are Tories,” added the Mayor.

A misrepresentation of Khan’s remarks was as swiftly-fashioned as it was predictable. At the same People’s Question Time event, a Conservative member of the London Assembly indignantly proclaimed, “If you disagree with the Mayor, he’s going to paint you as far Right”.

Of course, the Mayor had not done that. Rather, he had, albeit pointedly, observed that opposition to the further expansion of the ULEZ was something London Tories, far Right extremists and Covid conspiracists had in common.

It does not follow from his remark that Khan believes every Londoner with concerns about the next stage of his ULEZ policy has far Right opinions. Neither would it be accurate or fair for anyone to say that all Conservatives objecting to the ULEZ expansion hold such views, or that they are all oddball anti-vaxxers.

Yet Covid denial and far Right ideologies have areas of overlap. These cross over with less crude but more visible manifestations of what we might call the nationalist hard Right, such as the Reform UK Party and and television channels GB News and Talk TV, with their routine apologism for Brexit and Donald Trump. And some recent Tory responses to the ULEZ expansion have shown a degree of alignment with the above-ground Right fringe of the political spectrum, one that goes beyond a shared dislike of a particular approach to improving air quality.

Let’s go back to Khan’s Ealing comment. It was correct. There is no question that groups and individuals who fit any definition of “far Right” have advertised their opposition to the ULEZ (and other policies for further regulating private car use). That menacing mindset was also very evident from the abuse aimed at Khan when he launched his book, Breathe, at the Royal Festival Hall in May, an event I attended.

Nor is there any doubt that conspiracy theorists who claim the dangers posed by Covid were made-up or deliberately exaggerated with vaccines all part of the same plot to impose totalitarianism, or who insist that the mild-mannered idea of the 15-minute city is a “communist” stepping stone to wall-to-wall state control, have been part of the anti-ULEZ fray.

These latter causes have had very public Conservative adherents too, ranging from MPs to councillors, along with numerous like-minded media commentators who are very far from “silenced” as they loudly and frequently allege. The ULEZ expansion has been recruited as a new vehicle – allusion intended – for expressing nationalist hard Right sentiment, including in some of its more nefarious and sinister forms.

On the day the expansion came into effect, the Daily Mail reported former Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith, MP for the marginal outer London seat of Chingford & Woodford Green, saying he was “happy” for his constituents to put bags over ULEZ enforcement cameras or block them with cement – a view that prompted former Tory London MP Gavin Barwell to recall when his party styled itself the upholder of law and order.

Duncan Smith has now told the Evening Standard, “I don’t condone law breaking of any kind” but he does “understand the frustrations” of people in his constituency who will be liable for the daily charge. Not exactly a condemnation.

The Mail, which in 2016 described judges who ruled that Brexit could not be triggered without a Commons vote as “enemies of the people”, has been excitedly documenting examples of the vandalism. A new YouGov poll, which found that more Londoners support the ULEZ expansion than oppose it, also found that more than half of those opposed support Transport for London’s enforcement cameras being vandalised.

The Standard reported last week that some London Tories, including Steve Tucknell, the new MP for Uxbridge & South Ruislip, have helped run social media groups whose members include people who have celebrated damaging TfL cameras and shared advice about how to do it.

Where does Tory mayoral candidate Susan Hall, plainly on the nationalist hard Right of her party, stand amid all this? Yesterday on X, formerly Twitter, she thanked the author of an article in the Spectator in which she was praised as “an authentic Conservative” with a “lock’ em up” attitude to crime. In her grateful response, Hall called for the backing of those who want “a return to robust law and order”. She has, however, yet to express any robust disapproval of those trashing TfL property.

In recent years Conservatives have become habituated to law-breaking in their own ranks and to excusing it, notably during the ascendancy of Boris Johnson. Many members and supporters have persuaded themselves that ignoring rules everyone else has to abide by is OK if it means what they decree “the will of the people” is implemented. When the law or the criminal justice system gets in the way, it is accused of being part of some shadowy liberal “establishment” bent on thwarting the wishes of the masses.

This is territory a desperate Conservative Party – and its many, increasingly zealous media allies – now seems content to share with fantasists and fanatics if it thinks it can get a populist ball rolling in the name of “freedom”. In the case of the ULEZ, the road rage is all the uglier for being fuelled by people who detest Khan simply for being an Asian Londoner and a Muslim.

Opposition to the ULEZ can be and often is perfectly reasonable. But ULEZ-hate of the type we now see being stoked is about much more than disliking a measure chosen by the Mayor for cleaning up tailpipe dirt and fumes. It is a way of expressing a whole range of noxious, misled and polluting sentiments. For the good of London and the whole country they must not prevail.

X/Twitter: On London and Dave Hill. Photograph: Man the Met is trying to contact in connection with offences in north west London. If you value On London and its writers, become a supporter or a paid subscriber to Dave Hill’s Substack for just £5 a month or £50 a year.

Categories: Comment
Tags: Iain Duncan Smith, pollution, Sadiq Khan, transport, ultra low

Charles Wright: Enfield Council dares to propose building on Green Belt as housing shortages grow

The outer London borough's Labour administration argues that some parts of the protected land are now suitable for development
Charles Wright

With Labour leader Keir Starmer and Prime Pinister Rishi Sunak already clashing over house-building, the future of the Green Belt will be firmly on the agenda at the coming general election – meaning that Enfield, where the metropolis abuts the remaining open spaces of the Enfield Chase hunting ground, could be a key battleground.

Like the city as a whole, Enfield is seeing its population growing – it is estimated to reach 390,000 by 2036 – and homelessness soaring, costing the council a reported £500,000 a month in hotel bills, while it continues to fall behind on its house-building targets.

That’s the context in which the Labour-controlled council set out draft Local Plan proposals to redesignate part of its Green Belt, which covers 37 per cent of the borough. Two neighbourhoods, the Crews Hill garden centres cluster and Chase Park farmland, were identified as “rural placemaking areas” capable of accommodating some 8,000 new homes by 2039.

Predictably, it is not a popular move with either local Labour MPs and Sadiq Khan or as opposition councillors and community organisations. It would “significantly erode the character of the borough” and bring about the “destruction” of some of its “most precious countryside,” said the Enfield Society.

The plan’s opponents aren’t alone. The Green Belt, which, around London, is actually three times the size of the city itself, has a particular place in the public imagination, as recent polling for the Economist magazine confirms. Six out of ten respondents would keep current Green Belt restrictions, even if that hampered efforts to ease housing shortages. And just one-fifth supported sacrificing at least some Green Belt land. Respondents were also dramatically wide of the mark when asked how much of England’s land was already developed, on average estimating 47 per cent. The actual figure is nine per cent.

The popular cry is to focus on “brownfield” not greenfield sites for new development, but the council argues that, even with plans such as its flagship 10,000-home Meridian Water regeneration scheme in Edmonton, that cannot be the whole answer.

Pressure on land is a London-wide issue. The inspectors scrutinising Mayor Khan’s 2019 London Plan target of 65,000 new homes a year set out the dilemma: “Supply is based on capacity…it is difficult to see how the number of deliverable housing units could be increased [above 52,000 a year] without consideration being given to a review of the Green Belt or further exploration of potential with local authorities within the wider South East.” Put simply, there isn’t enough “brownfield” to go round (and not just in London either).

Nor is getting brownfield development underway an easy task in the suburbs, as Enfield has already found. Recent schemes for 162 rental homes at Arnos Grove station and 216 homes in Southgate both went to appeal before winning approval after councillors acceded to protesters bemoaning the loss of car parking spaces and the Southgate scheme’s impact on local character. The government itself is still blocking 351 homes in Cockfosters because the scheme would encroach on the station car park. And complex schemes such as Meridian Water can take decades to complete.

Hence Enfield’s turn towards the potential of at least part of its Green Belt, which has been welcomed by at least one group – the housebuilders who have been eyeing up Crews Hill in particular, according to responses to the council’s consultation, recently helpfully indexed by the Enfield Society.

Just below the M25, Crews Hill was a noted centre of glasshouse horticulture until cheaper imports took their toll. Then it was garden centres, themselves now feeling the squeeze from online shopping. More disparate recent uses have given it an “urbanised character” according to Berkeley Homes – Green Belt yet brownfield.

Landowners such as the Wolden garden centre make a similar point: the area has “undergone an economic transition in recent years” and is no longer “representative of typical ‘green belt’ land”. More an “exciting opportunity”, a “sustainable location” for much-needed housing and associated infrastructure, all handily situated around Crews Hill Station, some 40 minutes from Moorgate. What’s more, they argue, Crews Hill could see much-needed new homes in six to 10 years.

The undeveloped fields at Chase Farm, further south, offer similar potential, according to developers Comer Homes. The site, already surrounded on three sides by development and within walking distance of three stations, could support a “sensitively designed, landscape-led development promoting sustainable living in a green setting”, with between 3,000 and 5,000 new homes.

The council is now preparing the next version of its Local Plan, currently scheduled for further consultation in the winter, a public examination before a planning inspector at some point in 2024, and adoption in 2025.

Faced with an immediate need for new housing in the borough, councillors have to date been prepared to contemplate what many experts now agree is a necessary measure, seeking a small green belt contribution towards meeting that need. Will they be buoyed by Starmer’s pledges, or more mindful of a potential electoral backlash?

X/Twitter: Charles Wright and On London. Image: John Norden’s 1593 map of Enfield Chase, as reproduced by the Enfield Society. If you value On London and its writers, become a supporter or a paid subscriber to publisher and editor Dave Hill’s Substack. Thanks.

Categories: Analysis
Tags: Cockfosters, Enfield Council, Green Belt, housing, Meridian Water, planning, Sadiq Khan, Southgate

Poll: More Londoners support ULEZ expansion than oppose it

Conducted just before the enlarged anti-pollution scheme came into effect, it also reveals a difference of opinion between inner and outer Londoners
Dave Hill

More Londoners support the expansion of the Ultra-Low Emission Zone to the whole of Greater London than oppose it, according to the first opinion poll of the issue published since the measure came into effect yesterday.

A survey by YouGov, which was conducted between 9-14 August, just prior to the change, found that 47 per cent of Londoners supported the then impending enlargement beyond the North and South Circular roads, compared to 42 per cent who opposed it and 11 per cent who didn’t know.

There were different balances of opinion between inner and outer Londoners however, with far stronger support in inner London at 62 per cent against 26 per cent opposed, than in outer Londoner where those opposed outnumbered those in favour by the narrower margin of 51 per cent to 38 per cent.

The overall lead among those supporting the expansion is smaller than in two previous polls asking essentially the same question, the most recent of which, conducted by Redfield & Wilton in June, put Londoners in favour ahead by 47 per cent to 32 per cent. An earlier YouGov poll, carried out in July 2022, found that 51 per cent supported the expansion while 27 per cent were against it.

The new poll was carried out following weeks of aggressive attacks on the expansion plan and criticism of Sadiq Khan by right-wing media and politicians.

More than half of those who said they were opposed to the expansion (51 per cent) told YouGov they supported the vandalism of Transport for London cameras needed for the scheme that had taken place.

The Conservative MP for Chingford & Woodford Green, Iain Duncan Smith, a former leader of his party, was quoted in a newspaper today saying that a lot of people in his constituency had been “cementing up the cameras or putting plastic bags over them” and that he was “happy for them to do it”.

However, a majority of Londoners – 51 per cent – said they were against such vandalism, compared with 32 per cent who said they supported it and 17 per cent who said they didn’t know.

The poll also asked what Londoners thought about the level of support the Mayor was providing for those with non-compliant vehicles. Surveyed a week or so after Khan announced that all such Londoners would be eligible for up to £2,000 from his scrappage scheme, with larger sums than previously available to groups who already qualified, 50 per cent said he “should be doing more”, with 26 per cent saying he was doing “everything he reasonably can” and 24 per cent saying they didn’t know.

More detail about the YouGov poll here. X/Twitter: On London and Dave Hill. If you value On London and its writers, become a supporter or a paid subscriber to Dave Hill’s Substack for just £5 a month or £50 a year.

Categories: News
Tags: Iain Duncan Smith, pollution, Sadiq Khan, ultra low emission zone

Fall in London private landlords providing temporary accommodation

Cross-party local authorities body renews appeal to government for help with growing emergency
Dave Hill

Over 3,500 properties that had been available for Londoners needing a temporary place to live were withdrawn by landlords between last September and April 2023 according to new figures – more than double the number lost during the equivalent period of 2021-22.

London Councils, the body representing the capital’s 33 local authorities, which compiled the figures from a survey of its members, says the shrinkage represents a loss of six per cent of London’s temporary accommodation stock at a time when it estimates almost 170,000 Londoners are already officially homeless and temporarily housed – roughly one Londoner in 50 – with the number on the rise.

“Turbulence in the private rented sector,” is the cause of the growing problem, said Darren Rodwell, London Councils Executive Member for Regeneration, Housing and Planning. “The combination of fast-rising private rents and a dramatic fall in the availability of rental properties is driving housing pressures in the capital to new extremes.”

The upshot for borough council is increasing difficulty finding dwellings for families and individuals entitled to their help, leading to greater numbers being placed in bed and breakfast accommodation, Rodwell added.

London Councils calculates that nearly 1,300 London families were living in what it calls “unsuitable B&B accommodation in April 2023, compared to just 146 during the same month last year. It also believes the number of households in the capital entitled to boroughs’ help rose by 15.2 per cent during the year to April 2023.

Escalating homelessness responsibilities add to the financial strain faced by the boroughs, with total spending on temporary accommodation running close to £60 million a month and going up, London Councils says.

The cross-party body has renewed its call for the Conservative national government to increase the level of Local Housing Allowance, the benefit support for private sector tenants which has been frozen since 2020 despite rents rising since then, which would bring more homes within the range of homeless people.

It has also again asked for boroughs to be given help to buy homes put up for sale by private landlords, along with more financial help to prevent people falling into homelessness in the first place.

“The homelessness situation in London is becoming unmanageable,” Rodwell said. “We need the government to treat this as the emergency it is and work with us on reversing the numbers relying on temporary accommodation”.

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Categories: News
Tags: Darren Rodwell, homelessness, housing, local housing allowance, London Councils

London’s world-leading Ultra-Low Emission Zone expands to cover whole of city

In the face of furious Conservative and right wing media opposition, the capital's Labour Mayor has implemented the biggest clean air scheme on the planet
Dave Hill

London’s Ultra-Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) expands to cover the whole of the Greater London area today, completing its enlargement from its original eight square miles of Central London in April 2019 to encompass the full 606 square mile English region.

A flagship policy of Labour Mayor Sadiq Khan since he was first elected to City Hall in 2106, the ULEZ, now the largest scheme of its kind in the world, has been hailed by him as the centrepiece of his programme for improving air quality in the capital, benefiting public health and helping to combat climate change, but has been furiously attacked by Conservative and other political opponents and their media allies.

Khan inherited the plan for the initial ULEZ from his predecessor Boris Johnson, and introduced the anti-pollution scheme more than a year sooner than Johnson had scheduled, preceding it with a surcharge – called the Toxicity Charge – to the Congestion Charge from 2017. The ULEZ, which operates for 24 hours, was first expanded in October 2021, soon after Khan’s re-election that year.

Today’s further expansion required the London Assembly approving in November last year a revision to the Mayor’s 2018 statutory transport strategy, enabling the Mayor to apply the ULEZ Londonwide.

Critics, including some Labour politicians in outer London boroughs, have warned that the scheme is being introduced too quickly to allow owners of vehicles that don’t comply with ULEZ standards to buy replacement vehicles or get their current ones upgraded in order to avoid a £12.50 daily charge.

However, the Mayor has described himself as “a doer, not a delayer” over pollution and climate change and has sought to soften the impact of what he has been characterising as a difficult but necessary decision by widening the range of Londoners eligible for help from his scrappage scheme so that all with non-compliant vehicles can apply for financial help, and by increasing the size of the fund available from £110 million to £160 million.

City Hall says nearly £60 million has been allocated from the fund so far to more than 14,000 applicants with “tens of thousands more” being processed. Grants range from £2,000 for scrapping a non-compliant car and £1,000 for a motorcycle to £10,000 for a wheelchair accessible vehicle and up to £11,500 for small businesses and charities, which can scrap up to three vehicles.

More than 15,000 applications have been received since 21 August, when the scheme was opened to all, according to City Hall – up more than 1,000 per cent on the previous week. Applicants do not have to purchase a replacement vehicle in order to qualify for an allocation from the scrappage fund, as the main aim of the scheme is to remove the most polluting vehicles from London’s road network. It also hopes to have some further beneficial impact on climate change and road traffic congestion.

Over 40 per cent of London households do not own a motor vehicle at all, and of those that do the upward trend in ULEZ compliance shown in figures for cars and vans registered in London compiled by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders suggests that more than 90 per cent are already up to scratch. Transport for London says that 90 per cent of vehicles seen by its cameras in outer London areas – which will include some not registered in London – meet the ULEZ standards.

Even so, estimates suggest there could recently have been 300,000 or more non-complaint vehicles registered in London, though they could include fleets of commercial vehicles not actually driven in the capital.

Arguments continue about the likely effectiveness of the new expansion in reducing air pollution, with City Hall insisting it will build meaningfully on reported large reductions in the levels of harmful nitrogen dioxide and microscopic “particulate matter” particles released into the air by the most polluting motor vehicles, and opponents pointing to an impact assessment concluding that its effects would be minimal.

Public supporters of the latest expansion include Professor Kevin Fenton, London Regional Director for Public Health, who said it “marks a key moment in London’s fight to tackle air pollution” and will help the approximately five million residents brought within the zone where “the highest number of premature deaths due to toxic air” occurs.

John Dickie, Chief Executive of BusinessLDN, which represents many of the capital’s largest employers, said the ULEZ expansion will “play an important role in saving lives across the capital” and “make the city a more attractive place to live, work and visit”.

The government is seeking to weaken the power of London’s Mayors to introduce road user charging schemes in future, with transport secretary Mark Harper saying the administration is supporting an amendment to the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill tabled by Tory peer Daniel Moylan – formerly deputy chair of the Transport for London board under Boris Johnson – which would, in Moylan’s words, “allow boroughs to say NO to any future ULEZ schemes”. Moylan added that his amendment also “covers road pricing“.

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Categories: News
Tags: pollution, transport, ultra low emission zone