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John Vane: Small change hustler in a red baseball cap

You get used to being touched for money on the street, but this guy had a more direct style than most
John Vane

He jumped aboard the Number 56 by the Pembury estate, starting exactly as he would go on.

“Off at the next stop, driver,” he said sweeping past the cab without paying. He was a tall man, good posture, light grey joggers, off-white Nike top, red baseball cap. Noticeable. Distinctive. Moving down the lower deck, he got directly to the point.

“Small change? Any small change?”

I kept looking straight forward, as you do. I thought I heard a purse rattle to my rear. He didn’t get off at the next stop, but neither did he stick around for long. He disembarked on Dalston Lane, shortly after Hackney Downs station. What was I supposed to do but follow him?

It was a Tuesday evening. The light was starting to fade. A bar across the road was pretty busy. Small Change Man strode across to it and leaned in to the al fresco drinkers’ faces.

“Small change, any small change?”

Nothing doing. Within seconds he’d moved on, walking fast. He spoke to a passer-by.

“Small change, any small change?”

It was the candour of it all that struck me. The utter absence of preliminaries. No rehearsed hard luck story, no self-abasing apology like the ones that assail you on the Overground. Also, the efficiency. He didn’t waste time pleading or wheedling. He heard the body language of rejection in an instant and moved on.

“Small change, any small change?”

I kept walking in parallel with him, wondering where he was heading, speculating about what he might spend any small change he gathered on. If he spotted me, he’d also rejected me, or else simply stuck to targets who were nearer.

“Small change, any small change?”

He was gone so fast from everyone who turned him down, it was like an insult – you have money for me or you don’t exist. A shop door stood open. There were people inside. He plunged in, red cap bobbing, plunged out again, hustled on towards a busy road junction, buttonholing, getting nothing, pacing on.

What had he made so far? If he had scored on the bus, it surely wasn’t more than a pound. I had seen no cash change hands since he’d got off. I was puzzled by his stature, his apparent health and vigour. He had presence: the pale clothing standing out, the red cap making a bright contrast on top. He gave the impression of a man going places, but what type of place? Not the type I’d want to go out, I don’t think.

I had to get on board another bus at Dalston Junction – a dinner date awaited me near Islington Green. He bore restlessly down Queensbridge Road. The last I saw of him, he’d ducked into another bar or restaurant. I couldn’t hear him, but I knew what he was saying.

John Vane is a pen name used by On London publisher and editor Dave Hill. Buy his London novel Frightgeist: A Tall Tale of Fearful Times. Follow him as John on X/Twitter.

Categories: Culture
Tags: buses, Dalston, Hackney

What to watch for next after the ULEZ expands to all of Greater London

There will be several ways of assessing the impacts of enlarging the anti-pollution scheme to cover the whole of the capital city
Dave Hill

London’s original central London Ultra-Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) was devised by Boris Johnson during his time as London Mayor and implemented by his successor Sadiq Khan on 8 April 2019, over a year earlier than Johnson had envisaged.

Prior to that, from 23 October 2017, Khan had imposed a £10 per day Toxicity Charge on pre-Euro 4 vehicles – typically those registered before 2006 – on top of the central London Congestion Charge during its operating hours of 7am-6pm.

The ULEZ operates round the clock and its daily charge for non-compliant vehicles is £12.50. ULEZ standards are Euro 4 for petrol vehicles, Euro 6 (introduced September 2015) for diesel, and Euro 3 for motorcycles and mopeds.

These have been set in order to reduce the amount of emissions released into the air by vehicle engines in the form of the Nitrogen Oxide (NOx) gases Nitric Oxide (NO) and in particular Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2), which has harmful effects on lungs, and of microscopic particles known as Particulate Matter (PM), which also damage the respiratory system.

Khan greatly expanded the ULEZ on 25 October 2021 following his re-election in May of that year, taking it out to the North and South Circular roads – an 18-fold increase in size. On 25 November 2022 he announced that the zone would go Londonwide from tomorrow, 29 August 2023, so that it covers all of Greater London’s 606 square miles.

The political and media furore leading up to the latest expansion has been loud and ubiquitous. How should we assess the actual impact of its implementation in the months to come? Here are five things to keep an eye on.

The impacts on air pollution and health.

A report for City Hall published in February said that since 2019 the ULEZ had led to a reduction in NOx in the air within the zone of 26 per cent and one of 23 per cent across Greater London as whole compared with what the levels would have been without it.

The level of NO2 was said to be down by 46 per cent and 21 per cent in central and inner London respectively. Reductions at roadside locations were said to be still bigger.

The same report said fine particulate matter (PM2.5) in the air had reduced by 19 per cent within the ULEZ and by seven per cent across Greater London altogether since 2019.

Emissions of Carbon Dioxide (CO2), the “greenhouse gas” most responsible for global warming and climate change, were also said to have fallen, by four per cent with the ULEZ and by three per cent more widely.

However, previous research said the benefits of the first expansion had been only marginal during its first few weeks. This was disputed, and arguments about how effective the new enlargement has been can be expected to continue until at least mayoral election day next May.

Mayor Khan said in October 2021 he was confident that the first expansion of the ULEZ would result in “almost 300,000 new case of air quality-related disease” and “one million hospital admissions” being avoided, with particular benefits on streets and in areas where poorer Londoners live. Watch out for claims and counter claims about the latest expansion’s health impacts too.

Londoners’ opinions about the full expansion.

Opponents of the latest expansion claim that it is “hated” and that most Londoners are against it. However, prior opinion polls don’t entirely back that up.

A survey conduct in July 2022 (and published in October 2022) found that 51 per cent supported expanding the ULEZ to all of Greater London compared with just 27 per cent who opposed it.

More recently, in June this year, Redfield & Wilton found 47 per cent in support and 32 per cent opposed. However, when the survey sample was asked a different question, which gave a choice between the full expansion, scrapping the ULEZ entirely and keeping it to its North and South Circular, largely inner London, boundary, only 32 per cent favoured the full expansion.

The first polls after the full expansion will make for revealing reading. And so will the next ones and the ones after that.

Sadiq Khan’s next moves on road user charging in London.

The Mayor’s Conservative opponents and their media allies have already begun claiming he has a secret plan or “plot” to introduce road-user charging for all drivers on a pay-per-mile basis if re-elected, using the ULEZ expansion as a stepping stone to making the whole of Greater London a high tech Congestion Charge zone.

In fact, Khan announced long ago, on 18 January 2022, that he had asked Transport for London to “start exploring” how a more technologically sophisticated, pay-per-mile, “simple, fair road user charging system” could be developed to potentially replace all of London’s existing schemes, including the Congestion Charge and the ULEZ.

This was in response to a report he commissioned on how London could hit a “net zero” climate change target by 2030 and improve air quality concluding that car travel in the capital would have to reduce by 27 per cent compared with 2018 levels. But the Mayor also said: “However, it’s clear the technology to implement such a scheme is still years away from being ready.”

What the Mayor says about road user charging between now and election day should be very interesting indeed, especially with transport secretary Mark Harper stating yesterday that the government intends to change the law to reduce his powers in this policy area.

Conservative politicians’ next moves.

That statement by Harper could have implications for Conservative mayoral candidate Susan Hall.

She has promised to do away with the expansion “on day one” if she wins the election. One the face of it, Harper does not anticipate his proposed law change, which he says will be introduced by way of the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill, pre-empting her need to do that. In his words it would “ensure that future clean air schemes cannot be introduced in London whilst ignoring the mandate of elected local councillors in London boroughs”. Note Harper’s use of the word “future” and, intriguingly, his specifying “clean air schemes” rather than road user charging schemes as a whole.

It all seems a little vague. But if the government does use the law to curtail the power of London’s Mayors – whoever they may be – over road user charging at some point in the coming months, the scope for Hall and her media supporters for alleging secret plans and plots by Khan to bring in more of it will be curtailed to the same degree – Khan would not be in a position to use such powers if Hall’s fellow Tories in national government have stripped him of them.

The impacts on London’s economy, businesses and reputation.

Given that the Conservatives have historically seen themselves as the party of business, it’s incongruous that leading London business organisations BusinessLDN and the London Chamber of Commerce & Industry have consistently backed the ULEZ expansion, albeit the latter had hoped for a little more flexibility on the Mayor’s part.

Why have they been in favour? They think cleaner London air is good for London business, because it’s good for public health and good for London’s reputation as a desirable place in which to work and invest.

The ULEZ has also marked London out as a trailblazer in terms of air quality and carbon reduction action worldwide. In the eyes of some, both at home and abroad, London is reasserting its status as a global city that sets a pace for others to follow. Reaction from elsewhere will be another useful measure of the London ULEZ expansion’s impacts.

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: Analysis
Tags: congestion charge, pollution, Sadiq Khan, Transport for London, ultra low emission zone

Census 2021: How crowded is London’s housing?

The latest data release shows how different the capital is from the rest of the country and how much pressure many of its households are under
Dave Hill

The latest batch of data from the 2021 Census confirms yet another way in which London is markedly different from the rest of England – the degree to which its housing stock is over-crowded, under-occupied and just about right. Figure 1 near the top of the Office for National Statistics (pictured below), where the figures are presented, demonstrates this, well, graphically.

Of all the nine English regions, London has by far the highest proportion of dwellings defined as overcrowded – 11.1 per cent, putting the capital far ahead of the West Midlands, which has the second highest at 4.3 per cent, with North East bringing up the rear on 2.0 per cent. A household’s accommodation is defined as overcrowded if it does not contain the number of bedrooms defined by the official Bedroom Standard.

London also has by far the lowest proportion of living accommodation defined by the same measure as under-occupied, meaning houses or flats with more bedrooms than the Bedroom Standard sets down. In London, 48.9 per cent of accommodation was found in the Census to be under-occupied. Again, the West Midlands led a distant chasing pack, with 70.3 per cent under-occupation tapering down to the North East with 75.4 per cent.

And London was also found to be the region with the highest proportion of dwellings where the occupancy level was just right (“occupied-to-standard”). At 40 per cent it was again strikingly different from the rest of England. The nearest region was the South East on 26.1 per cent and once again all the others were clustered together on a similar value, with the East Midlands having the smallest occupied-to-standard rate at 21.8 per cent.

Screenshot 2023 08 27 at 18.36.32

The London occupancy figures also reveal – as is often the case with demographic data about the capital – substantial variations within the overall picture. London has the most overcrowding in every accommodation type, ranging from 7.8 per cent in detached houses to 16.8 per cent in caravans and similar.

More than half of London households, 54 per cent, live in flats or maisonettes, of which 13.7 per cent were overcrowded at the time of the Census. Overcrowding in these types of homes was at its highest in Barking & Dagenham (22.7 per cent) and in Newham (21.8 per cent).

Londoners in rented accommodation are far more likely to be overcrowded than those who own their homes, especially in the social rented sector, where the overall figure was 19.4 per cent compared with 15 per cent for private renters.

At Figure 4 on the ONS page there is a menu from which you can look up the overcrowding figures for individual boroughs. This reveals, for example, that 26.8 per cent of social rented homes in Tower Hamlets are overcrowded, as are 20.9 per cent in Brent, 16.2 per cent in Kensington & Chelsea and 11.5 per cent in Richmond upon Thames.

Overcrowding is very prevalent among London’s lone parent households. Nearly 30 per cent of those with dependent children fall into that category as do 13 per cent of those in which all the children qualify as non-dependent. The greatest proportion of lone parent households with dependent children was found in Westminster, where the figure was an alarming 38.3 per cent. Newham (37.8 per cent) and Tower Hamlets (37.3 per cent) were next.

As for under-occupation, 72.5 per cent of London’s owner-occupied homes are in that group, even as it also has the highest rate of overcrowding in its owner-occupied properties. Richmond and Kensington & Chelsea come high up the lists.

Explore all the the housing occupancy Census data via 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: Analysis
Tags: 2021 Census, housing, overcrowding

Paul Wheeler: Sadiq Khan and London Labour have underestimated voters’ anger with their roads policies

ULEZ expansion and Low Traffic Neighbourhoods have cost the party more support in the capital than they appreciate
Paul Wheeler

Berlin is a paradise for progressives. Since the last days of the Berlin Wall it has attracted the liberal-minded of all nations. It is the only city in Europe that has a public holiday for International Women’s Day. When I lived there for a year there was a constant variety of protests and solidarity marches every weekend.

And yet in April 2023 the city elected a conservative Mayor – Kai Wegner of the Christian Democrats – for the first time in more than two decades. As with any election, there were many reasons for change, but it is significant that Wegner campaigned strongly on a promise to stand up for car drivers incensed by cyclists taking up road space. One of his first policy acts was to suspend plans for nearly 1,500 miles of cycle lanes to be added across the city by 2030. The city is now in uproar about it. But will Berlin 2023 be a forerunner of London 2024?

Discuss, as they say. The Labour Party is enjoying historic poll leads in the UK capital, but these relate to voting intentions in the next general election. Where the next election for Mayor of London is concerned, the picture is less clear cut, as was the outcome of the last one, in 2021. Against a distinctly lacklustre Tory candidate, these days known as Lord Bailey of Paddington, Sadiq Khan received 40 per cent of first preference votes compared to 35 per cent for his main opponent. His lead stretched to 10 points after second preferences were added, but such a transfer of votes will be not take place in 2024 due to the national government abolished the Supplementary Vote system and imposing First Past The Post (FPTP).

The potential consequences of this change were evident in the contest to be Mayor of Bedford held earlier this year, with the Tory candidate winning by 145 votes from the Liberal Democrat runner-up with just 33.1 per percent of the total vote. Could something similar happen in London next year? An opinion poll by Redfield and Wilton in June found support for Khan on 41 per cent and for an at that time unknown Conservative on 33 per cent – a good lead for Khan but not a huge one. And the poll came before the Uxbridge & South Ruislip by-election, when a surprise Conservative hold on a night of Labour triumph elsewhere put the forthcoming expansion of the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ ) to outer London centre stage.

The tragedy for London Labour is that what should have been the key piece of an ambitious public health strategy for the capital, on a par with the clean air legislation of the 1950s, has instead become the focus of bitter in-fighting with national Labour politicians and embedded in a wider debate about the cost of living. It has also provided a life line for London Tories.

London Labour would be unwise to think disquiet about roads policy in general is confined to the outer boroughs. The party’s surprising loss of Tower Hamlets Council at last year’s local elections can be partly attributed to many working-class drivers’ simmering resentment of restrictions and fines incurred due to Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTN) imposed without consultation during the pandemic, when their incomes were already under pressure.

Labour-run councils Merton and Wandsworth have created the own ULEZ vehicle scrappage schemes to augment the Mayor’s, and Labour Ealing has revised contentious LTNs. But, sadly, too many Labour councils and councillors across the city seem to have little understanding of the struggles of self-employed drivers, a shortcoming summed up by a Labour member in Greenwich pondering publicly why plumbers couldn’t use the bus service to do their jobs.

If the general and mayoral elections are held on the same date next year, 2 May, such considerations will be less helpful to the London’s and their mayoral candidate, Susan Hall. But if they are held on separate dates, things could be different.

The first worry for London Labour will be turnout, which fell from a record high 46 per cent in 2016, when Khan was first elected to 42 per cent in 2021. The lower the turnout, the worse it usually is for Labour and the danger could be greater if the ULEZ expansion gives a significant proportion of Londoners a big reason to vote against Khan. Another worry for Labour is that the Redfield & Wilton poll put the Green Party on seven per cent. Green supporters might be reluctant to “lend” their votes to Khan given environmentalists’ opposition to the Silvertown Tunnel.

The previous expansion of the ULEZ out to the North and South Circulars seemed to pass without controversy, so it can be hard to understand the depth of feeling stirred by its coming enlargement to the rest of Greater London. Poor public transport infrastructure is certainly part of the problem, and the prospect of a daily charge of £12.50 for using a car sits badly with cost of living concerns.

Of course, the charge won’t apply to the vast majority, but Tory campaigning has convinced many that they or their families will be impacted, even if their cars are ULEZ compliant. In comparison, the Mayor’s and TfL’s publicity campaigns have seemed tin eared and, as with the recent extension to the scrappage scheme, the result of panic rather than policy.

With eight months still to go to the mayoral election, a lot could change both regionally and nationally. Hall could prove as gaffe prone and incompetent as her predecessor, but it would be unwise for her opponents to rely on that. There is an urgent need for Khan and Labour in London to repair the relationship with the national party and to give Londoners reasons to vote for them rather than against them. It won’t be enough to turn it into a referendum on the record of the 13 years of a Tory national government when it could also be one on Sadiq’s eight years as Mayor.

Paul Wheeler writes about local politics. X/Twitter @paulw56. 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: Comment
Tags: Labour, Sadiq Khan, Susan Hall, ultra low emission zone

Josiah Mortimer: The Elondi – Westfield Stratford City’s dining oasis

It's pretty quiet in there, but that comes as a sweet relief from the shopping mall experience - and the drinks are really good
Josiah Mortimer

Westfield Stratford City is a polarising place. It’s always busy and filled with fairly happy people, so it must be doing something right. But that also means it can be a nightmare finding somewhere to eat amid the packed food court. That’s why an invitation to dine on the third floor of the Hyatt Stratford hotel piqued my interest. I generally loathe shopping centres – get me in and out of there in five minutes before I lose all sense of direction and fall on the floor in despair – so a bit of lunch doesn’t go amiss when there are errands to be run.

The Elondi Restaurant, Bar and Terrace is part of the hotel, which is located right outside Westfield. That doesn’t make it any less of a pain to find, of course. My dining partner and I were ten minutes late as we swerved between latte booths and crowds carrying ice cream. But the contrast with the food court was remarkable. At lunchtime on a Sunday, it was completely empty. Respite.

The restaurant has a bit of an Art Deco vibe. Bold colours on the comfy seats are set off by a backdrop of ultramarine blue. The lunch spot – if it can be called that – has a cracking array of cocktails, including alcohol-free ones. Their English spritz, made with Gusbourne English sparkling wine, is a winner. Take a deep sip and you forget you’re basically sitting in Westfield. I had a lychee martini – one for sweet-tooths like me.

For starters, the aubergine salad was super-tangy and fresh with a healthy dose of pomegranate and pistachio. Not boring, to say the least. I was still feeling the impact of a birthday party in Camberwell the night before. There are two ways to deal with a hangover: go worthy, or go debauched. I tried to go worthy, choosing salad. My dining partner tucked into a scotch egg, which was probably a wiser choice – a decadent interior and a very crispy, crunchy exterior. Just what the doctor ordered – probably one about to be struck off.

I’m experiencing a trend with these recent London restaurant trips: spot-on starters but disappointing mains. The Elondi’s rigatoni, complete with burrata, was on the bland side, in contrast to the zingy salad that came before it. I found myself reaching for the pepper mill and grinding furiously to add some flavour. The steak though, was simple but well-cooked.

This isn’t a particularly bargainous lunch on a shopping day – the sirloin was £28 while my rigatoni was £16 – even though you get rather posh cutlery, if that’s your thing. So if you go you might skip the main and jump to the lemon posset, presented in a jar with crumbly shortbread biscuits. It’s a hard dish to get wrong, but these example was excellent nonetheless. Tart and creamy. There are few better combinations.

The Elondi’s terrace overlooks a rather large shed, but also offers a view of Anish Kapoor’s ArcelorMittal Orbit in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. We caught the only five minutes of sun that day with coffee and homemade iced tea. To find the restaurant, don’t go through the shopping centre and ignore Google Maps, which is useless. Instead, approach via the main street around Transport for London’s 5 Endeavour Square head office.

The slightly empty Elondi deserves to be fuller. The food is good, the drinks even better. Stop for a cocktail on the terrace and see if you fancy their lunch menu while you’re there. Afterwards, If you don’t want to return to the retail chaos, there is to the park to wander. And for now, enjoy the calm of this yet-to-be discovered dining oasis.

Screenshot 2023 08 26 at 20.17.30

Josiah Mortimer is chief reporter for Byline Times and writes occasional food and drink reviews for On London on the side. Follow him on X/Twitter. If you value On London‘s output, become a supporter or a paid subscriber to editor and publisher Dave Hill’s Substack. Thanks.

Categories: Culture
Tags: Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, restaurants, Stratford, Westfield

Major London developers publish proposals for unlocking urban regeneration

The ideas have been produced amid concerns about a slump in housing supply in the capital and elsewhere
Dave Hill

Two of the county’s largest property development and investment companies have produced proposals for reforming the planning system to facilitate “brownfield urban regeneration”, describing the current situation as a brake on “economic growth, housing delivery and addressing inequalities”.

Landsec and British Land, both of which are very active in London, argue for the streamlining and simplification of the process for obtaining planning permissions, and recommend creating the right for developers to by-pass local authorities with larger applications and instead submit them directly to the relevant “strategic or combined authority” for the area, a definition that covers the Greater London Authority.

Published last month, the initiative has come amid a fall in the rate of completion of new homes in London and across the UK to levels far below the government’s 300,000 annual target amid high interest and mortgage rates, uncertainty about the direction of national planning policy and a shortage of land being made available for development, and with an escalating housing crisis in the capital.

The Landsec and British Land document says there are three principal reasons for the failures it identifies in the planning system as it presently functions:

  • “Multiple layers of complexity and uncertainty” which have the effect of creating a “default mode” of preventing or slowing progress.
  • Too little attention being given to the particular challenges presented by “sustainable and beneficial mixed-use development in urban areas” with initiatives such as design codes and the proposed new infrastructure levy limiting scope for developers to address them.
  • A reduction in the resources of planning authorities at the same time as the demands on them have become more complex.

Stressing the value of community engagement that responds to local priorities, the two developers underline that “development is more widely accepted in urban areas” where demand for homes, employment and improved quality of life tends to be greatest.

“The thoughtful redevelopment of our cities through good design, heritage preservation and low carbon development” is described as providing the country’s best opportunity to increase economic growth.

Recommendations made include the piloting of “new ways of working in progressive authorities” to speed up stages of the planning process, “creating tax incentives to invest in urban regeneration”, and the abandonment of national government’s proposed “gentle densification” approach, which Landsec and British Land say “will make brownfield development more challenging” and limit its potential.

The document calls for the harmonisation of devolution settlements across UK city regions so that they all have similar planning oversight powers, and suggests developers should be able to exercise the option of applying directly to the relevant regional authority if their scheme proposes more than 500 homes or 50,000 square metres of commercial space.

“Where this route is engaged, the applicant must commit to delivering a community consultation method statement,” the document continues. “Widening involvement in planning is critical to building public trust and securing more representative public participation. This can be achieved by creating real, measurable opportunities for people and communities to engage in the planning and design process.”

Read the Landsec and British Land proposals in full via here.

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Categories: News
Tags: British Land, Greater London Authority, housing, Landsec, regeneration

London Councils renews call for emergency housing help following Crisis charity homelessness report

The most acute forms of homelessness have been rising in the capital and are projected to get much worse
Dave Hill

London Councils, the cross-party body representing London’s local authorities, has repeated its call for “an emergency response” to the capital’s homelessness crisis, as new research published by the charity Crisis underlines that London has seen a sharp rise in the worst manifestations of it.

Responding to Crisis describing councils across England as “running out of options” for meeting demand from people with no proper place to live, Darren Rodwell, executive member for regeneration, housing and planning with London Councils, said “urgent action from the government at national level” is required to help deal with “increasingly unmanageable pressures” in a situation “fast-becoming disastrous”.

The research, an annual monitor of homelessness in England funded by Crisis and Heriot-Watt University, records that “core homelessness” – meaning people who sleep rough or in cars or sheds, in hostels, refuges, shelters or unsuitable bed and breakfast accommodation, or who “sofa surf” in other people’s houses – rose sharply in England last year compared with 2020 and is expected keep rising for the long term “particularly in London” where the number affected is projected to exceed 300,000 by 2041 – 37 per cent up compared with 2020.

Recent research by London Councils itself estimated that almost 170,000 Londoners are currently housed in temporary accommodation – nearly half of them children – a number that exceeds the population of Oxford and equates to one London in 50 and one child in every London classroom.

There has also been a massive of increase in the number of London households stuck in bed and breakfast accommodation beyond the legal six-week limit – close to 1,300 as of April 2023 compared with just 146 in the same month of 2022.

The Crisis and Heriot-Watt monitor says the number of people seen rough sleeping in England grew particularly rapidly in London in 2022, with around half of them non-UK nationals, of whom many will have no recourse to public funds. The upwards trend is described as having been “recently renewed” following a reduction during the Covid-19 pandemic as extra funds were made available under the “everyone in” initiative.

London Councils estimates that the capital’s 32 boroughs are between them spending at least £60 million a month on temporary accommodation costs. It continues to urge the national government to raise levels of Local Housing Allowance, the housing benefit paid to households who rent from private landlords in order to make more dwellings in the capital affordable for them.

The group is also asking for councils to be given financial help with buying homes listed for sale in London by private landlords who are leaving the market, and for assisting households with avoiding homelessness in the first place.

A “cross-departmental strategy” for reducing homelessness is also requested. “Ministers must work with councils and other partners across the housing and homelessness sectors to reverse these trends,” Rodwell said. “There are at least 143,000 potential new homes we could begin building immediately in London if the government addressed the barriers to delivery, including by providing additional infrastructure and affordable housing grant funding.”

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. X/Twitter: On London and Dave Hill.

Categories: News
Tags: Crisis, Darren Rodwell, homelessness, housing, London Councils, rough sleeping

Charles Wright: Yes, Sadiq Khan’s ULEZ expansion really is in line with government policy

The Conservatives are running scared their own clean air strategy, and in London they have been leading the way
Charles Wright

“We must take action now to tackle NO2 pollution. Air pollution predominantly affects those living in our major towns and cities due to the concentration of vehicles and other sources of pollution. This continues to have an unnecessary and avoidable impact on people’s health, particularly amongst the elderly, people with pre-existing lung and heart conditions, the young, and those on lower incomes.”

Not the words of Sadiq Khan but of a long-standing government policy document, which also says “Clean Air Zones that include charging” are the best way for transport authorities to meet their obligations under law to comply with statutory NO2 limits in “the shortest possible time”. The Conservative administration has even helpfully set up a payment system for drivers on the government website.

It’s one of the ironies of the current Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) debacle that Mayor Khan, while not literally instructed to implement his new charging system as a condition of Covid period funding from the government as many have tried to argue, is nevertheless acting entirely in line with established government policy – policy the government now seems to be disavowing and which the Mayor’s own party seems happy to thrown him under a bus over (presumably not zero-emission).

Despite being forced by a series of court cases brought over the past decade by campaign group ClientEarth to get it to step up action on air quality, the Conservatives in power are still dragging their feet. Existing policy measures were found “not…sufficient to achieve most of government’s 2030 emissions ceilings”, the National Audit Office said only last year, while Parliament’s environment committee concluded in 2021 that ministers had “failed to address the scale” of the air pollution challenge.

Some 64 local authorities are subject to Whitehall directives to take action on in their areas and 31 sections of the government-controlled strategic road network are non-compliant. But “progress has been slower than expected”, the NAO found. A proposed charging scheme in Greater Manchester, covering 10 separate local authorities, is now under review after the Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, inundated by protests, successfully persuaded the government to hold off.

Significantly, the NAO found that information on air pollution was generally “inaccessible to members of the public not already familiar with the details of air quality legislation”, with the finger pointed at a familiar national government tactic of shifting responsibility to town and city halls.

The NAO particularly noted government deciding that local authorities should take the lead on communicating with people and businesses about proposed clean air charging schemes, leaving them vulnerable to accusations of revenue-raising and the sort of heavy-duty campaigning seen in London, where poll results have suggested almost half of residents in the four boroughs which earlier this year, along with Surrey County Council, took unsuccessful legal action against the ULEZ were sceptical that poor air quality has a bad impact on health.

As recently as June, the government straightfacedly reiterated in Parliament that local authorities are under a duty to tackle air pollution that exceeds legal levels, and that clean air zones, as an “effective means of delivering compliant levels…in the shortest time possible”, must be considered as part of their plans.

Yet London’s Tories had been stirring the anti-ULEZ pot for months before that and based a formidable one-issue campaign effort on it for the Uxbridge & South Ruislip by-election, which they narrowly won despite a significant swing against them. In the aftermath, Khan, already hamstrung by the government’s refusal to help him with scrappage funding or with cash to accelerate moving his 9,000-strong bus fleet to zero emission-  despite effectively implementing Whitehall recommendations – found his own party lukewarm towards him at best.

Labour’s softly-softly approach was apparent on the doorstep in Uxbridge. “ULEZ. quickly emerged as an issue,” said one Labour veteran who was regularly out knocking on doors. “Much of this was because of relentless Tory campaigning.” Tory leaflets referred extensively to “Sadiq Khan’s car tax”.

Canvassers were briefed only belatedly that their candidate Danny Beales was calling for changes to the ULEZ before it went ahead. “But we were never briefed about scrappage or the Boris Johnson and [transport secretary] Grant Shapps origins of it. It’s fair to say there wasn’t any fight in favour of ULEZ locally or for increased government scrappage and so on. It was a full-blown culture war, populist Tory campaign with very little to counter it.”

Since the by-election, Labour seems to be doubling down, removing support for clean air zones from policy documents and calling for so far unspecified alternatives to charging drivers. Keir Starmer, although he has used almost identical words to those of Khan  – “I don’t think anybody in this country should be breathing dirty air, any more than I think they should be drinking dirty water” – continues to distance himself from the Labour Mayor, whose view remains that “we can’t kick the can down the road when it comes to addressing a public health emergency”.

Starmer may want different measures, but the government’s own policy position remains valid – that alternative actions, such as improving junctions, changing signalling, restricting parking, retrofitting buses, installing low traffic neighbourhoods and lowering speed limits, simply may not bring about fast enough change in the cit. A wholesale rowing back from legal commitments, which all polling suggests would be significantly out of line with public opinion, might neutralising the “war on motorists” attack line but at the expense of effective action on air pollution.

For Khan, this is personal. He revealed in his first mayoral manifesto that he suffered from adult-onset asthma, attributed to poor air quality, and he’s been both moved and motivated by the fate of Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debra, who died aged nine in 2013 and was the first person in the UK to have air pollution cited as a cause of death. But the Mayor is an evidence-based politician too, as anyone watching City Hall’s regular Mayor’s Question Time sessions will know. And there is no shortage of evidence of the “proven links between poor air quality and ill health” at all levels of exposure.

Perhaps it’s now time for politicians to start using that evidence to make the case for action. Recent polling backs up Khan’s claim that the ULEZ expansion actually has a large measure of support – 88 per cent of Londoners overall are worried about the impact of air pollution, according to figures from the Centre for London think tank – although pollsters Redfield and Wilton have identified a need for what they called “careful and nuanced framing” to win support for specific measures.

Boroughs are beginning to act, with Merton and Wandsworth bringing forward their own scrappage support schemes for those with non-compliant vehicles. And more could be done. Hillingdon Friends of the Earth co-ordinator Phil Page suggested in the Evening Standard: “Instead of opposing the extension, Hillingdon Council should negotiate with Transport for London for more bus routes and all-electric buses to be introduced on all bus routes through Hillingdon that are under TfL’s control. They should also invest more in active travel.”

Centre for London concluded after the Uxbridge result: “Government and London’s leaders need to work together on a strategy to give people more practical choices for transport that works. Ahead of next year’s mayoral election, London’s leaders must think about how to remain at the forefront of climate action and transport innovation in a way that works for all Londoners.”

Alternatively, as Labour London Assembly member Joanne McCartney put it during a recent City Hall debate, are the Conservatives really saying that, should they win the mayoralty next year, eight months after the latest ULEZ expansion had been introduced, they would “rip it out and make our air dirtier and more toxic?” And is Labour nationally effectively saying the same?

X/Twitter: Charles Wright and On London. 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: Keir Starmer, pollution, Sadiq Khan, ultra low emission zone, Uxbridge & South Ruislip