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Who is supporting the likely Tory London Mayor candidate Susan Hall?

The Harrow Conservative is largely aligned with right-populist attitudes in her party, which could be a problem for her in the capital
Dave Hill

Conservative party members in the capital are today starting to vote for a candidate to challenge Labour incumbent Sadiq Khan next May. It goes without saying that the Tory selection process has not gone smoothly: there was shock and consternation that Paul Scully, a London MP and, of all things, the minister for London was left off the shortlist of three; then came the withdrawal from the contest of former David Cameron Number 10 aide Daniel Korski in contested circumstances that can’t have enhanced the Tory brand.

With the barely-known criminal barrister Mozammel Hossain, mocked by some as “Mystery Moz”, her sole remaining rival, London Assembly member Susan Hall is the undisputed favourite now. At Conservative Home, pollster James Johnson has urged London Tories to pick Hossain, citing his company’s own research to argue that the Remain-voting outsider stands the better chance of beating Khan. It is, though, difficult to see that happening.

Hall, who is also a Harrow councillor, has a grassroots-pleasing media profile thanks to her strident Twitter output and frequent Khan-bashing appearances on right-wing television channels. She speaks the language of many Tory activists. Unlike Hossain, she also has considerable political and electoral experience, and has been telling the selectorate that Khan fears her. It is easy to imagine that assertion playing well with Tory members. But is it true?

Hall’s problem is and was always going to be that she can be easily depicted by political opponents as hostile to most Londoners’ values and as extreme. Pro-Brexit in a city where 60 per cent voted Remain and Labour’s domination in recent elections has increased, she advertised her loyalty to Boris Johnson throughout “partygate” and beyond, only removing a photo of herself standing with the disgraced now-former PM from her Twitter profile once she’d decided to make a pitch for City Hall.

Fellow journalists and others have already been having fun excavating her Twitter history, with its insults aimed at reality TV performers, encouragement for Donald Trump – who eagerly attacked Khan, the first Muslim mayor of a major western city, as a way to fire up his voter base at home – and approving retweets of the culture war provocations of such as Lawrence Fox, Suella Braverman and Lee Anderson. There are suspicions that Hall’s social media presence also takes other, less direct and still more outspoken forms.

Yesterday, she received the backing of her predecessor on the Assembly, cabinet minister Kemi Badenoch, Braverman’s fellow darling of the Tory outer-right. It is interesting to consider who might be the more pleased by Badenoch’s enthusiasm for Hall – Hall herself or Khan.

Other Hall supporters include Greg Smith MP, a former deputy leader of Hammersmith & Fulham Council when it was led by Johnson ally Stephen Greenhalgh. Smith was a co-founder of the Young Britons’ Foundation, an organisation with many admirers on the Tory right set up in 2003 to train potential Tory candidates. Chipping Barnet MP Theresa Villiers, who recently called for national government to take powers to veto mayoral transport policies, is also backing Hall.

London Labour will have long since furnished its election armoury with choice examples of Hall’s enthusiasm for attitudes and individuals aligned with the solidifying New Conservatives or National Conservatism strands of Tory sentiment, much of it hostile to an idea of London personified by Khan, a liberal concerned about air quality and climate change and a two-time mayoral election winner in his home city. Expect a loud opening barrage if and when Hall is named as her party’s candidate on 19 July.

Hall’s campaigning so far has has been squarely targeted at what she considers to be Khan’s weak spots, primarily policing and crime and his planned further expansion of the Ultra-Low Emission Zone (which is subject to a two-day judicial review, starting today). Those issues are conducive to clear and sustained messaging, and Hall’s conviction is not in question.

Being a suburban woman who claims to have a firm grasp of “common sense” would make Hall a different proposition for Khan than his previous two mayoral race opponents, but her ultra-orthodox, right-populist stance would make her straightforwardly vulnerable too. If she became the candidate, would she be able to make erstwhile Labour voters warm to her? Could the “Boris” fan emulate her hero and win against odds that look more ominous than he ever faced?

Dave Hill is On London’s publisher and editor. Twitter: Dave Hill and On London. If you value On London’s output, please become a supporter or a paid subscriber to Dave Hill’s Substack.

Categories: Analysis
Tags: Conservatives, London Mayor election 2024, Mozammel Hossain, Sadiq Khan, Susan Hall

One day, water began dripping from their ceiling. Six months later, it still is

A couple with a small child reported the leak just after Christmas, and since then not much has happened except damp and mould.
Dave Hill

Just after Christmas last year, a married couple who live in a flat in east London, not far from the Olympic Park, noticed water dripping from a light fitting in their kitchen ceiling. A puddle was forming on the floor.

They switched off the electricity supply to that part of the flat, placed a bucket under the leak and phoned the repairs service of the housing association that owns the building, where they have lived since October 2016, the year of its completion. They kept their four-year-old daughter well out of harm’s way.

It was 29 December 2022. The couple’s call to the repairs service was answered. They were told it sounded as if the water might be coming from the flat above them, in which case the occupants of that flat, not theirs, would have to be the ones to report the problem.

The upstairs neighbours were helpful. But if the water was indeed coming from their flat, its source was not obvious. The couple conveyed this information to the housing association by email, urging someone to quickly get in touch because, “the leak is dangerous as it is on the electrics”. They got no reply.

On 30 December the couple phoned the housing association again, wanting to know if anything was happening. They were told that someone had been to the flat above them but found no leak there and that a knock on their own door had gone unanswered. This last point puzzled them – they say they’d been in all day. They were informed that the case had been marked closed.

Dissatisfied, they phoned again on the same day. A different person took their call. They were told someone would be round to help them in the next 24 hours. No one came.

On 31 December they phoned again and were again told someone would be round in the next 24 hours, this time to look at both flats. No one came.

On 1 January 2023 – New Year’s Day – they again spoke to the housing association. Again, they were told someone would be round in the next 24 hours. This time someone did come. He went into both flats and deduced – contrary to what had apparently been concluded during the previous reported visit – that the source of the leak was indeed the flat upstairs, specifically a drainage pipe serving its terrace, which is directly above the couple’s kitchen ceiling. The couple say they were told an email would be sent to inform them about what would happen next. No email came.

On 4 January, they phoned the repairs team again. They were told that someone had looked at the upstairs flat and decided that the problem, in fact, began with the flat above that one.

On 5 January, they went in person to the housing association office on the development their flat forms part of to try to find out more. They were told that roofers would be coming to their block on 12 January and that an update about this would be sent to them. No update was received.

However, for the next few weeks the leaking stopped. Could it be that the problem had been fixed? It had not.

***

On 7 March, the couple reported that water had again been coming through the light fitting on their kitchen ceiling. This time they communicated through the website of the housing association in question – Southern Housing, one of the largest providers of affordable housing in London and, as such, a member of the prestigious G15 group.

They followed up with an email, asking for information about any work that had been done by roofers on 12 January and “what kind of job will be done about today”. They also asked to be shown Southern’s complaints policy with a view to putting their dissatisfaction on a formal footing.

On the same day, they also telephoned Southern. They were told they would be phoned back as soon as an email from the roofers about their situation had been received and that Southern would send them an email containing all the information they had asked for. No phone call or email ever came.

On 8 March they phoned the repairs team again. They say the person who answered this time hung up on them after being “rude and unhelpful”. Happily, a further call on the same day was taken by someone else who was “helpful and polite”. He said another person would phone them later in the day. No phone call came.

Screenshot 2023 07 03 at 18.28.49

On 9 March they spoke to the service centre and were told their case had been sent to the “head of surveying” and that an appointment would be made for a surveyor to come within a maximum of ten days. Meanwhile, water continued to leak through their kitchen ceiling.

On 10 March they emailed Southern again:

Good morning,

The leak unfortunately persists and we have now collected more than 5 litres of water coming down from our ceiling.

Can we have an update urgently today if the surveyor will be attending our property or solving this issue?

Kind regards.

A reply came later that day. It said an appointment had been booked for 31 March – three weeks away and more than three months since the ceiling leak had first appeared and been reported.

The couple told Southern they thought the wait for a surveyor far too long and that they would be consulting a solicitor.

Three days later, having spoken to the service centre, they got a call from the repairs team saying that on 20 March a surveyor and a roofing contractor would be going to the two flats directly above theirs and would visit them as well. But before that, losing patience, the couple contacted the government’s housing ombudsman for advice about making an official complaint.

On 19 March, they sent Southern a photograph of the black mould that had begun to form on their kitchen walls.

On 20 March, a repairs team came to their flat. During the visit, they were told that another flat on the same floor as theirs had reported having the same problem. And they were told that there might be something amiss with the drainage system in their block of flats as a whole. Getting to the root of this might entail cutting a section out of their kitchen wall in order to investigate more closely.

The next day, 21 March, the couple asked Southern when work on solving the problem would start, stressing that the mould was spreading and returned soon after being wiped away. And on 22 March they reported that a hole had appeared in one of their kitchen’s walls.

***

For more than six weeks, nothing happened – nothing except more leaking, more damp and more mould. Several emails were sent requesting action. On 24 April the housing block’s management team replied to say they had notified the surveyor, who would arrange for a member of Southern Maintenance Services to “contact you with an update”. Nothing happened.

On 3 May, the couple emailed the management team again, asking why nothing had happened. They received a prompt reply, saying their inquiry had been “escalated” and that someone from the services team would phone that afternoon.

The phone call came. It was explained that the building surveyor was on holiday but that a note had been left for him about their case. It was also explained that the problem seemed to be a symptom of a wider one within the block and that the situation was being monitored.

Then, on 5 May something did happen – but not the sort of thing the couple had hoped for. They emailed the management team again. They had discovered damp and mould in another part of their flat – beneath their bed. They also rang the customer service number they had been advised to use in future, but no one answered the phone. It was not, they say, the first time that had happened.

On the 9 May they sent another email, asking why they hadn’t had a reply to the one they had sent on 5 May. They composed and sent it to the management team and to property services complaints while waiting for someone to answer the phone. The email said:

“The mould and smell is very intense and we had to clean the carpet on Friday night even though this will only help for a little while. We made a cut on the carpet to see underneath, where we discovered that the concrete floor is very damp and therefore the carpet is damp too, creating a big patch of damp that  seems to be spreading. Mould can be seen in the concrete floor and the carpet.”

The emailed explained that they had had to buy a dehumidifier and waterproof bags to protect clothing stored underneath their bed. It concluded;

“We feel completely helpless as we are completely at the mercy of the housing association making the repairs that need to be done before we can do anything to sort out all the repairs that need to happen…”

And there was PS: “I have been on the phone now for 22 minutes.”

Eventually, the phone call was answered. And on 31 May, a surveyor came to look at the damp and mould under the bed. He thought it likely to be coming from the bathroom, right next door, but couldn’t be sure if the problem emanated from the water and heating system serving the whole block or from the bathroom itself.

The distinction matters, because the couple’s home is a shared ownership property. That means that if the original source of the damp under the bed was the communal plumbing arrangement, Southern would be responsible for fixing it – as they are for the leak in the kitchen – but if wasn’t, the couple would have to pay.

The one thing the surveyor said he was confident about was that nothing would happen very soon. The couple found their own plumber, who came round, took a good look at the bathroom shower and found something amiss. Touch wood, since his visit the damp under the bed hasn’t got any damper.

But today is 3 July, 2023 – more than six months since water began dripping through the light fitting in the kitchen ceiling was reported. And still that problem has not been solved.

***

I have been the flat in question many times and I know the couple who live there well. That is because they are one of my sons and his wife. Their four-year-old daughter is my granddaughter.

For some time, I’ve been berating myself for not writing more about the disrepair of too much rented and “affordable” housing in London and the struggles of those living in such homes to get anything done about it (there has been some excellent journalism elsewhere).

Getting to the bottom of what has happened in individual situations can take a great deal of time, and that is something I don’t often have. In this case, of course, I’ve had ready access to all the information I need.

For the most part my son and daughter-in-law have had no problems since moving in to their flat almost seven years ago. But now they have a big one and the worry and frustration is taking its toll. They are concerned that their daughter has been struggling to shake off coughs and colds. The area of their kitchen wall where mould keeps reappearing every time they clean it off is getting bigger.

They have now issued a formal complaint to Southern and are asking for everything to be repaired and for compensation. This, too, is taking longer than it is supposed to.

Southern’s “customer service promise”, as set out on its website, says people who live in its properties can expect them to “do what we say”, to “keep you informed” and to “listen and learn”. My son and daughter-in-law do not believe that promise has been kept. They are not alone.

On 29 June, coincidentally during the period in which I was in contact with Southern to tell them about this article and discuss how they might respond to the story it tells, the housing ombudsman announced that it has launched a “special investigation” into Southern Housing “after its maladministration rate in complaints about complaint handling jumped to 81%”. The increase was from 56 per cent maladministration rate a year ago. The ombudsman himself, Richard Blakeway, described the situation at Southern as being “of concern”.

Southern sent me a statement regarding the situation of my son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter. It said they are “keen to resolve the repair issues” in question and “need to gain entry to another property to complete this repair and have faced repeated access issues, which we’re working hard to resolve”.

Were my son and daughter-in-law not capable, determined people might well have given up by now. Others, less well-equipped to stick up for themselves, might well have. And that is one of the reasons why – with their blessing and help while, at this stage, preserving their anonymity – I have told their story here.

Of course, I hope by doing so I will help them and their fellow residents of the housing development where they live to get the problems with their homes sorted out. But I also want to augment the growing list of similar stories about far too many fellow Londoners and many others elsewhere of late.

***

At the same time, taking some large steps back, I recognise and, I hope, appreciate that these are very testing times for housing associations and, indeed, for local authority affordable housing providers in the capital and elsewhere.

I have numerous professional and personal acquaintances in the sector, ranging from housing association chiefs to senior figures in London government, including City Hall. These have left me in no doubt about the financial pressures on housing associations in recent years, beginning with cuts to their funding from the government from 2010 and escalating with the post-Grenfell cladding crisis, the resulting discovery of further building standard failures, the challenges of retrofitting, labour shortages and the cost implications of inflation. Many are in a perilous position.

On 16 December last year, 13 days before my son and daughter-in-law first spotted water coming through their ceiling, the current Southern Housing was formed through a merger between the Southern Housing Group housing association, which built the homes discussed in this article, and another housing association, Optivo.

Such mergers can be seen as solutions to difficulties housing associations face, although last autumn, with discussions about the merger taking place, the Southern Housing Group reported an increase in annual turnover to £252.3 million, up from £212 million the previous year.

With the two parties were joined, Southern Housing’s chief executive Paul Hackett, who had held the same position at Optivo, said:

“This merger isn’t about growing into a large national organisation; it’s about doing what we do better in the communities we already work in. Residents will be at the heart of our services and we’ll use our size to influence positive change in the areas where we operate.”

I’ve met Paul Hackett in the course of my work. I do not doubt he was sincere in what he said. I don’t doubt either that he and many of his colleagues can still hear the huge alarm bell set off by the death in 2020 of Awaab Ishak, a two-year-old who lived in a housing association flat in Rochdale, from a respiratory condition a coroner concluded had been caused by exposure to mould in his home.

The trouble is, the bell is still ringing.

Dave Hill is On London’s publisher and editor. Twitter: Dave Hill and On London. If you value On London’s output, please become a supporter or a paid subscriber to Dave Hill’s Substack.

Categories: News
Tags: affordable housing, housing, housing associations, Southern Housing

Dave Hill: To ‘level up’ Britain, love London and devolve

All regions need the right powers and investment, including the global capital city
Dave Hill

It is possible to reconcile regarding Boris Johnson as the biggest bullshitter on Earth with recognising that not everything about his “levelling up agenda” has been crap.

It is also possible, albeit with the exertion of considerable self-control, to give at least some elements of the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill a fair hearing while simultaneously spitting blood about the yawning chasm that divides the Conservatives’ 2019 general election manifesto commitment to “devolving power to people and places across England” and its sustained, spiteful attacks on the autonomy and powers of the Labour Mayor of London and, in particular, Transport for London throughout the pandemic and since.

Why my temperate tone? Credit is due to the Institute for Government (IfG) for its recent seminar asking what policies can “level up” economic performances between regions. That, let us recall, is actually what “levelling up” has been supposed to be about: not a drive for greater equality of wealth or income across the land, not a set of measures for narrowing economic disparities within localities, but an attempt to lift overall levels of productivity in English cities and regions outside Greater London and the wider south-east to something a closer to them.

The politics of “levelling up” have, of course, taken the form of crude anti-London populism, from the bent prospectus of the (Whitehall controlled) levelling up fund, to “Sir” Gavin Williamson’s simpleton cuts to higher education funding, to the “fairness” fibbing of Grant Shapps.

And it hasn’t just been the messaging. Actual, deliberate anti-London discrimination has taken place. But if we avert our gaze from such unseemly ploys for keeping the captured “red wall” from crumbling and concentrate on the policy detail, considered attempts to address ancient imbalances in the nation’s economic geography can be detected.

The IfG’s panel identified some. Thomas Pope, the institute’s deputy chief economist, said government “mission” policies have focussed on the right things, like schools, skills, transport, broadband and research and development.

So far so good. But not far enough. Even if all the most important missions were accomplished, “you wouldn’t see a really noticeable change in the economic geography of the UK,” Pope said. London and the south-east, in terms of productivity, would remain way ahead. More specifically, even if the goal for skills attainment were achieved by 2030 as scheduled, “it would only get the number of technical qualifications being started each year even to 2014 levels”.

It’s sobering to think that so little difference might be made after so much noise. It is also an indication of just how huge and structurally embedded is the dominance of London’s economy and, like it or not, how dependent on it the rest of the country is. And this has been the way of things almost forever.

Not for the first time I refer you to Labour’s 1964 general election manifesto and its promise, years before the mass de-industrialisation of the north of England, south Wales and elsewhere, to correct what it called the “drift to the south”. Prime Ministers Harold Wilson and “Boris” were not much alike, but they had that aspiration in common – one probably even further from being attained now than it was 60 years ago.

What next? Effective policies to strengthen the economies of the rest of England can only be a good thing, and it looks as if the current government, for all its turbulence and disturbing failings, has got some. But they need to be bolder and maintained for the (very) long term.

Keir Starmer, take note. And there are two other things the likely next Prime Minister should jot down. One is to continue to devolve power to city regions where in a coherent and effective manner (the IfG can help with that as well). The other is to slam the Conservatives’ anti-London roadshow into reverse.

The day when the UK no longer badly needs its global city to keep it going is so far into a theoretical future it would be reckless not to assume that such a day will never come. And London government, too, needs wise investment and more powers. Centre for Cities has shown that the capital has not been growing as fast as it was. Charles Wright has documented London’s pressing need for more infrastructure money which, if supplied, would pay dividends across the nation, including in the form of tax revenues for projects elsewhere.

The message, long ignored, is that you can’t level up Britain by levelling down London. The next government should end all the pretending that you can.

Dave Hill is On London‘s publisher and editor. Twitter: Dave Hill and On London. If you value On London‘s output, please become a supporter or a paid subscriber to Dave Hill’s Substack.

Categories: Comment
Tags: "levelling up", Devolution, Institute for Government, Keir Starmer

Ways forward for London’s women in the post-Covid world of work

A new report from the Central District Alliance business improvement district sets out practical steps forward for the capital's employers
Dave Hill

A new “blueprint for change” for women working in London has been published. Drawing on an array of recent studies and, importantly, on conversations with women, interviews and questionnaires, it takes the form of a report, entitled Un_Biased, which makes recommendations for removing barriers to women finding employment in the first place and for helping them to prosper once they’ve done so. These, of course, are familiar issues. Why the fresh look at them and why now?

The research gathered in Un_Biased – research which is still very much ongoing – has been published by Central District Alliance (CDA), the business improvement district for Holborn, Clerkenwell, Bloomsbury, St Giles and Farringdon, in the context of London’s economy’s continuing struggles with inflation, national government dysfunction, the debilitations of Brexit and the enduring impacts of the pandemic.

CDA’s chief executive Debbie Akehurst (main picture, right), for whom Un_Biased is a passion project, stresses in particular that the impacts of Covid-19 and its still-unfolding aftermath “have really highlighted all those inequalities we all know are still there”.

Office for National Statistics, House of Commons Library and McKinsey studies among others reviewed in Un_Biased have shown that, as Akehurst puts it, “women, along with younger people, were the most affected by Covid” where work is concerned, with sectors where female employees predominate, notably hospitality, “the hardest hit”. As a result, “women’s redundancies and job losses outpaced men’s in 2020,” Akehurst says. The report tells us that, following “an unprecedented two years of being lower”, the female unemployment rate in London is again higher than that of men, and that in 2021 female employees in London were being paid 16 per cent per hour less than men.

All his has occurred in a context in which, as Akehurst writes in her Foreword to Un_Biased, “We know that inclusive workforces perform better”. Hence CDA’s mission to revisit the disadvantages women so often face at all levels as workers because of their sex, to re-assert the need and the value of removing those disadvantages, and to define practical steps for doing so – in particular for CDA’s membership in a part of London containing over 17,000 businesses, most of them small or “micro”.

The report notes that much previous research in this area has been directed towards what central and local government can do through policy interventions, but that Un_Biased is “uniquely focused on the role businesses can play” in the central London context.

Compiled over an eight-month period in partnership with consultancy PRD and with support from London Communications Agency, it centres on three broad categories of barriers to women getting the most out of their working lives: pathways to employment; progression in work; and concerns about public space of various kinds.

The findings in the first category relating to young women are very striking, with 48 per cent of those responding to a survey saying they had received poor careers advice, 42 per cent believing recruitment processes were tilted against them, and 30 per cent feeling that their job opportunities were limited.

The report highlights many fewer girls than boys considering embarking on careers in science, technology, engineering or maths, despite the “gender gap” between attainment of the relevant academic qualifications narrowing. The stubbornness of self-reinforcing factors, such as cultural expectations and lack of self-confidence among young females, are cited – a situation not helped by careers guidance that can perpetuate stereotypes. Female interns are significantly less likely to be paid in those roles than male counterparts are.

In terms of career progression, Un_Biased emphasises that both formal and informal factors are at play. More than half (55 per cent) of the women who responded to the survey said they believed a “lack of clear standards for promotion” had impeded them, and nearly half (46 per cent) felt that “social cloning” – people already in positions of power championing others much like themselves – had held them back. Exactly half also complained about a “lack of clear standards for pay”.

The report says procedures for assigning promotions are often “subjective”, especially in smaller organisations, “and can be unfairly informed by an ability to work long hours or connect and build personal relationships with senior management”. This feels a lot like the phenomenon of “presenteeism” at both the workplace itself and in the pub after hours being key to advancement, pushing women to the margins and down the pecking order – a situation often and typically exacerbated by women being more likely to want and need to combine and reconcile career and family responsibilities.

The arguments of Un_Biased are reinforced by telling anecdotes, such as one woman’s story of working for a much-admired female boss who “made it clear not to talk about your home life at work; not to risk being pidgeonholed as a wife or mum”. In hindsight, the advice felt wrong – “You can’t switch off from who you are. The values I have as a mother are reflected in the values I have at work” – but, the world being as it is, there was no denying a certain logic behind it.

The costs and complexities of childcare in particular, along with the demands of other forms of care-giving, are explored as a major concern. Childcare’s high costs in London have long been an under-publicised component of the capital’s overall high cost of living. “If you’re ending up paying out 75 per cent of your salary in childcare, is it actually worth you going to work?’ Akehurst asks.

The measures announced by Chancellor Jeremy Hunt in his spring budget have been criticised by some as too little and much too slow. Akehurst says that, at present, “the provision isn’t there” either. CDA is starting to speak to businesses within its footprint about the possibility of providing childcare on site.

Accelerated by Covid, working from home and hybrid working have become larger factors in the work-life balance equation, though Un_Biased stresses that this is but one dimension of many women’s wish for greater flexibility about how they fulfil their work commitments.

Going part-time, job-sharing or simply having more elasticity to the shifts they work are also options they would like more of. The lack of these can be galling, especially if an employer is embracing other, perhaps more far-reaching forms, of organisational change. “Our firm is now outsourcing secretarial work to South Africa,” observed one woman who took part in a CDA coffee shop drop-in session. “Yet I’m not allowed to work from home occasionally.”

Opinion in the business world still seems divided or in flux about encouraging a return to the office, although three or four days in and two or one at home is pretty typical at the moment. The decision by HSBC to relocate within London to smaller premises – from Canary Wharf to the City, adjacent to St Paul’s – has been taken as reflecting an acceptance by the banking giant that greater amounts of working from home are here to stay.

The bottom line is about maximising productivity. The debate is about now best to achieve that. The latest Transport for London figures confirm the evidence of Debbie Akehurst’s own eyes that a gradual return to the office seems underway. Yet she adds that on her now usual one day per week working from home “I get so much done – and I’m not doing a four-hour commute”.

The Un_Biased report also contains important findings and recommendations about public spaces, be they streets, parks and squares or public transport modes, being made safe and inclusive for women. These cover everything from street security patrols and lighting to the provision of retail and leisure amenities that accommodate women’s particular needs. A list of four major reasons why change is needed includes an insufficient appreciation of the impact of menopause symptoms, the stigma that still surrounds them, and the value of large employers producing action plans to help women adjust to them, in line with recent research by the Fawcett Society.

CDA hopes its blueprint for change will make the area whose businesses it represents a beacon for “a fairer and more productive economy that can be adopted across London and potentially further afield”. And it’s putting its weight behind other organisations working towards the same goals.

For example, it has found a new client services base for the charity Dress for Success, which helps women to prepare for engaging with the job market, from interview training to attire. The formal opening of the space, conducted by Mayor of Camden Nazma Rahman (pictured with Debbie Akehurst), was also attended by executive director Fionnuala Shannon and some impressive volunteers with deep experience of helping both young adult and older women find their feet and stand their ground in work environments they might otherwise feel out of their depths in.

“I’m passionate about employment and local people having access to it,” Akehurst says. “Un-Biased is not a report that’s going to sit on a shelf. It is on our desks, its priorities are our foremost, and we will be delivering on them”.

Read more about the Un_Biased report HERE. If you value On London‘s work, why not become a supporter of the website and its writers? Twitter: On London and Dave Hill.

Categories: Analysis
Tags: Bloomsbury, Central District Alliance, Clerkenwell, COVID-19 London, Debbie Akehurst, Farringdon, Holborn, women

Lewis Baston: Borough by-election wins show solidity of Labour vote

Contests in Southwark and Haringey saw the Lib Dems gain ground but not dramatically
Lewis Baston

The borough boundary between Lambeth and Southwark does not make much sense around Newington and Kennington. It runs down the middle of Kennington Park Road then zigzags around Kennington Park. The Newington ward is the area of Southwark to the east of this line, stopping short of Elephant and Castle before following the Thameslink rail viaduct behind Walworth Road down to John Ruskin Street.

Kennington station is probably the best-known landmark in the ward, although many south Londoners only experienced it under ground. It was opened in 1890 as a stop on the City and South London Railway and was the second deep-level tube railway in the world after the 1886 Mersey Railway between Liverpool and Birkenhead. The surface building is charmingly modest, but with a distinctive dome where the hydraulic machinery for the original lifts was housed.

Newington is a surprisingly old-fashioned corner of inner London for somewhere so geographically central and accessible. There is no recent expensive glass and steel development, making a stark contrast with the other side of the Elephant. The ward’s housing is predominantly council (45 per cent) and ex-council (30 per cent), though built at various times over the last century.

The population is of working age and mostly either white (45 per cent, of which two thirds are white British) or black (28 per cent), rather than being heterogeneously diverse like most of inner London. If the 2021 Census is reliable – it was affected by the pandemic – the population is working-class but with a surprising number of professionals renting ex-council flats from private landlords.

Politically, Newington has usually been solidly Labour. The party held on even at their 1968 nadir, though it suddenly lost the seat to the Liberal Democrats on a large swing in 1998. One of the Lib Dem winners on that occasion was Caroline Pidgeon, who went on to be elected to the London Assembly in 2008 and will step down next year.

Newington is part of the variously-named constituency in the north of Southwark represented by Simon Hughes from 1983 to 2015, but the Lib Dem hold there was never as secure as it was in Bermondsey, and Labour regained two of the three seats in the ward in 2010.

One of the winners that year was Neil Coyle, who defeated Hughes in the 2015 general election. The coalition government also enabled Labour to regain wards in local elections across the former Lib Dem fortress, but they were not completely wiped out. The Bermondsey Lib Dems are still formidable campaigners in the right circumstances.

Thursday’s by-election arose because Labour’s Alice Macdonald resigned from the council having been nominated to contest the marginal parliamentary seat of Norwich North. Labour’s candidate Youcef Hassaine was rapidly selected, prompting some complaints that corners were being cut and that left wing candidates were excluded from consideration. Hassaine has worked in human resources for major companies and is Birmingham-born: he tweets as Brummie Youcef.

Southwark Labour, despite its emphatic win in the 2022 borough elections, has not been an entirely happy ship in recent years.

Coyle was an outspoken critic of Jeremy Corbyn during his time as Labour leader, both in public and in private during that difficult period for the party. He later came to prominence again for the rather different reason of being suspended from the Parliamentary Labour Party from February 2022 until May 2023 and from the House of Commons for five days for, among other things, Sinophobic remarks to a British-Chinese reporter.

The Bermondsey & Old Southwark MP has since spoken of his shame about that incident and his attempts to do better in future, which has involved giving up alcohol. But his misconduct created an unhelpful situation for the local party and an unfortunate impression with the electors of the Newington ward.

The main challenge to Labour came from the Lib Dems, whose candidate Vikas Aggarwal is a former diplomat and a volunteer magistrate. The Bermondsey machine, and the support of the London Lib Dem tribe who enjoy by-elections and can easily get to Kennington or Elephant & Castle, created some doorstep momentum, but they were starting a long way behind.

The local environment and the council’s housing management were the main issues. The Greens, whose candidate Reuben Buendia was standing in his first election, did not challenge strongly and this area was never going to be good territory for the Conservatives, whose candidate was Lewis Jones. The ward has several low traffic neighbourhoods, but the issue did not stir much opposition.

Labour’s Hassaine (pictured) won easily with 1,524 votes (57.5 per cent). Lib Dem Aggarwal was the runner-up with 738 votes (27.9 per cent), Buendia was third (237 votes) and Jones fourth (149 votes). The swing was 10 per cent to the Lib Dems – Labour’s share dropped by five points but the Lib Dems’ rose by 15 having squeezed the Greens and Tories. Turnout was 26.5 per cent, a fall of only five percentage points since the full borough elections last May.

The comfortable margin by which Labour held the seat reflects not only its demographic solidity, but also the local Labour party having done well in locating and getting out the vote. Both they and the Lib Dems can take some satisfaction from the result.

***

On the same day there was also a by-election in the Haringey ward of Hermitage & Gardens, caused by the death of Labour’s Julie Davies who had been on the council since 2018.

Hermitage & Gardens was newly-created by the 2022 boundary changes. It is in the south west of Tottenham, just across the New River from Hackney’s Woodberry Down on one side and across the road from the northern tip of Finsbury Park. It has one station, the somewhat obscure Harringay Green Lanes on the Goblin line of the Overground.

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It is harder to generalise about this ward than it is about Newington, as it comprises several distinct small areas. One of them is the so-called Harringay Warehouse District with its alternative living vibe. There are also more orthodox households in this area around Eade Road and Hermitage Road, living mostly in rented flats in subdivided small houses. It is a far from well-off part of north London. The “Gardens” section is an area just across Green Lanes from the Harringay Ladder and rather similar in nature.

The four main London parties were joined in the election  by the Christian People’s Alliance, whose candidate Amelia Allao polled 16 votes for her trouble. The Conservatives’ Chris Brosnan was next with 100 votes, then Lib Dem Paul Dennison with 217 (15.7 per cent), and Green Alfred Jahn on 224 (16.3 per cent). The comfortable winner was Labour’s Anna Lawton (pictured above, centre) with 822 votes (59.7 per cent). Turnout was 22.9 per cent.

Labour’s share was down a little on May 2022, but the Greens were down more and the Lib Dems were up. Lawton joins the Labour group having stood in Fortis Green in 2018. She has an interesting life as a maternity adviser and as one of the leading volunteers of the British Jewish Limmud Festival.

***

Taking the two elections together, what can one conclude about the political temperature of London? There were few lessons for the forthcoming Uxbridge & South Ruislip parliamentary by-election, as the two wards were in territory that does not bear much resemblance to suburban Hillingdon.

The Lib Dems are clearly able to mount decent local by-election campaigns, but they are a long way from the months in summer 2019 when they were winning. Labour can hold safe wards with only small vote slippage in boroughs it has controlled for a long time, even if the turnout is low, which is perhaps the most significant thing in these elections. It feels as if the Labour vote is solidifying, as it is in the national polls.

Photos from the Twitter feeds of Southwark Labour and Haringey leader Peray Ahmet. Follow Lewis Baston on Twitter.

On London and its writers need your backing. Give £5 a month or £50 a year and receive in return the weekly newsletter On London Extra and (at no additional charge) invitations to events featuring eminent Londoners. Pay using any of the “donate” buttons on the site, by becoming a paid subscriber to my Substack, or directly into the company bank account. Email davehillonlondon@gmail.com for details. Thanks, Dave Hill.

Categories: Analysis
Tags: Conservatives, Green Party, Haringey Council, Labour, Liberal Democrats, Southwark Council

Charles Wright: Government knows value of transport infrastructure investment in London, but withholds it anyway

It has recognised that the Elizabeth line is benefiting the whole country, but a list of TfL projects remains unfunded
Charles Wright

Two weeks ago Transport for London unveiled its latest ambitious contribution to the capital’s infrastructure – a two-station addition to the Docklands Light Railway (DLR) from Gallions Reach via Beckton Riverside to Thamesmead, supporting up to 30,000 new homes and up to 10,000 jobs.

“Extending the DLR would unlock huge opportunities for London,” said Sadiq Khan. “The breadth of opportunity and economic potential that this scheme offers is enormous,” added Bek Seeley of developers Lendlease, speaking on behalf of the Thamesmead Waterfront Partnership.

Working with Greenwich and Newham councils and major developers both sides of the river, TfL envisages sign-off on the scheme next year, construction starting in 2028 and the first passengers on their way in the early 2030s.

There’s a sting in the tail of TfL’s enthusiastic press release, though, in a plaintiff “note to editors”: “Construction for the DLR extension to Thamesmead is currently unfunded”. In simple terms, it won’t be happening any time soon.

It’s not the only major infrastructure project in the capital sitting on the shelf as a result of funding uncertainty. TfL last month confirmed that Crossrail 2 had been shunted even further into the future, alongside the Bakerloo line extension, also on hold after a decade or more of detailed discussion. And the HS2 Euston terminus has been “paused” by the government until at least 2025.

None of these are vanity projects, any more than the Elizabeth line was. Indeed they are all included in a new shopping list of 67 key projects in the capital needed to secure a “more prosperous, inclusive and sustainable” future for the city, put together by London Councils, the umbrella group for the capital’s 33 local authorities.

In a sign of the private and public sectors speaking increasingly with one voice on the city’s needs, an analysis from the private sector group Business LDN’s Place Commission, also published last month, covers similar ground. Its blueprint for the capital covers transport, housing, sustainability and digitalisation, with calls to boost affordable housing budgets and ramp  up action to meet the city’s 2030 “net zero” carbon-cutting target.

Work is needed too on full-fibre broadband connectivity and upgrading electricity infrastructure, while threatened hikes in water charges have underlined the requirement for significant extra investment in sewage and supply arrangements in the city.

These calls aren’t new. Back in 2019, a detailed analysis for City Hall catalogued London’s “huge” investment needs: “The city’s transport system is the most congested in the UK and struggles to meet increasing demand. Severe housing shortages affect living standards and constrain the economy. Digital infrastructure networks fail to meet the needs of many businesses. And a transformation in the capital’s energy networks is needed to reduce carbon emissions and combat climate change.”

There was a price tag too – public and private investment of some £968 billion of capital and operating expenditure costs up to 2041. As we all know though, there’s no real sign of that level of necessary investment being provided, particularly from Whitehall, despite the widespread acceptance that, for large transport schemes like the DLR extension especially, it’s the government that needs to put its hand in its pocket.

Transport Secretary Mark Harper actually did recognise the value of public investment when he heralded the success of the Elizabeth line after six months of operation in “driving growth not only within London but across the wider region” and forecast to “generate £42 billion for the entire UK economy”. It was “a shining example of what we can do when working together,” he added.

But just six months later his junior minister Huw Merriman was deferring the Euston HS2 terminus scheme, announcing the Treasury’s conclusion that the government did not have the “financial headroom to proceed” and leaving a hole in the ground in Camden until 2025.

It’s all getting urgent. The capital’s productivity growth is stalling, according to a stark Centre for Cities analysis, unemployment remains higher than in other English regions, and there’s an escalating housing crisis. If tech entrepreneurs are leaving for Lisbon, the poorest Londoners may be being forced out by high rents, according to some analysts.

Warnings are coming apace. BusinessLDN commission chair Francis Salway has warned that “London’s place in the hierarchy of world cities cannot be taken for granted” and deputy mayor Jules Pipe has said that ​“investment in transport, affordable housing and decarbonisation are key to London delivering economic growth and remaining a global leader for business and talent”.

Meanwhile, TfL is still awaiting a Whitehall decision on the £475 million capital funding it needs next year simply to honour existing contracts. And it has even less long-term funding certainty and income-raising flexibility than Manchester and the West Midlands, thanks to their recently-agreed five-year devolved funding deals.

It’s those sorts of deals, particularly when they are not just about cash but about more power to raise and allocate revenue, which all concerned see as the way forward. London Councils is now plotting out a “gainshare” proposal, keeping more of the proceeds of locally-driven growth in return for London generating higher growth nationally.

That would be a “win-win”, according to the group’s vice-chair Elizabeth Campbell, Tory leader of Kensington & Chelsea Council, bringing benefits “not only to Londoners but the UK economy as a whole”. Will ministers listen, hunkered down in the tail end of their administration and subject to Treasury restraint and the last flickerings of the anti-London “levelling-up” agenda?

For Pipe, the London Councils’ report is “a really useful document for slamming down on the table in front of ministers in the future and saying, ‘you have got to support this’” – the emphasis being very much on “in the future”, I suspect. Perhaps that future is Londoners’ best hope.

Twitter: Charles Wright and On London.

On London and its writers need your backing. Give £5 a month or £50 a year and receive in return the weekly newsletter On London Extra and (at no additional charge) invitations to events featuring eminent Londoners. Pay using any of the “donate” buttons on the site, by becoming a paid subscriber to my Substack, or directly into the company bank account. Email davehillonlondon@gmail.com for details. Thanks, Dave Hill.

Categories: Analysis
Tags: BusinessLDN, Docklands Light Railway, Elizabeth Campbell, Elizabeth Line, Jules Pipe, London Councils, Transport for London

Mayor’s affordable homes programme slowed by economic factors, London Assembly hears

Sadiq Khan's deputy Tom Copley also told the housing committee about family-sized dwellings and completions
Charles Wright

Economic pressures including the escalating cost of house-building in the capital are set to take their toll on City Hall’s government-funded £4 billion 2021-2026 housing programme – meaning the 35,000 new affordable homes target originally agreed with Whitehall will not be met, Sadiq Khan’s housing deputy Tom Copley has confirmed to the London Assembly.

Factors “outside our control”, including an initial government delay in agreeing the programme, had been followed by soaring inflation and borrowing costs hitting housing scheme costings, Copley told today’s meeting of the Assembly housing committee. “The world changed,” he said. “The programme was no longer deliverable.”

The details of the Whitehall funding package are now being revised, with new targets taking into account higher costs per unit set to be announced after government sign-off, Copley added.

There was better news though in the shape of Mayor Khan’s “record-breaking” hitting of his target to start 116,000 new affordable homes under the previous £4.8 billion funding programme, which ran from 2016 to 2023.

The grand total of 116,782 “starts” by March this year included delivering a 23,000-home “golden era of council housing”, fuelled by improved relationships with levelling up secretary Michael Gove, Copley reported. “He wanted to focus on homes for social rent in a way his predecessors did not.”

A total of 25,658 new affordable homes had been started in 2022/23 alone, the most recorded since 2002, Copley added. Across the programme just under 59,000 new homes had been completed at the end of March. The bulk of the remainder, substantially in large, “multi-phased” schemes including estate regeneration projects, would be finished by 2029, and the final 2,700 homes by 2032.

Between 2016 and 2023, 14 per cent of the affordable total were homes bought up by councils or other providers on the open market, including some acquired on estates subject to redevelopment, former council homes bought by local authorities under the mayor’s “Right to Buy Back” scheme and homes “flipped” from sale in private developments to social rent, the meeting heard.

Quizzed about the numbers of family-sized homes included in the total, Copley reported that a quarter of the 116,000 starts were three-bed homes or larger, with a key restraint being the fixed amount of grant per home regardless of size set by Whitehall for the 2016-23 programme.

New arrangements agreed with the government for more flexible grant rates would make providing larger homes easier in the 2021-2026 programme, he said, adding that boroughs were required to set targets for the mix of housing sizes they required in their Local Plans. “But if we want to get more family homes we’ve got to get more funding out of the government,” he said.

City Hall was now funding new housing schemes in every one of the 32 London boroughs, Copley said, answering questions about individual borough performance. He acknowledged delivery would vary, depending on individual borough characteristics, political pressures and developers’ and residents’ “appetite” for new schemes, but he had a message too for town halls.

“I want to see all boroughs fulfilling their housing targets and we will push them very hard,” he said. “We don’t want boroughs to be dragging their feet when the whole of London has a housing crisis.”

Copley also highlighted the outcome of Mayor Khan’s London Plan policies seeking 35 per cent affordable housing on private development and 50 per cent on public land. They had resulted in overall affordable percentages on housing schemes “referable” to City Hall for final decision, generally those for 150 homes or more, rising from 22 per cent in 2016 to 45 per cent last year.

The full housing committee session can be viewed here.

Twitter: Charles Wright and On London.

On London and its writers need your backing. Give £5 a month or £50 a year and receive in return the weekly newsletter On London Extra and (at no additional charge) invitations to events featuring eminent Londoners. Pay using any of the “donate” buttons on the site, by becoming a paid subscriber to my Substack, or directly into the company bank account. Email davehillonlondon@gmail.com for details. Thanks, Dave Hill.

Categories: News
Tags: affordable housing, council housing, housing, London Assembly, Sadiq Khan, Tom Copley

Daniel Korski denies groping allegation to WhatsApp group supporters

The potential Tory challenger to Sadiq Khan says the claim is "disheartening" but gives no indication he intends to drop out of the candidate selection process
Dave Hill

Daniel Korski, the Conservative mayoral hopeful accused of groping a woman at 10 Downing when he was an adviser to the then Prime Minister David Cameron, has assured supporters that the allegation is “baseless” but accepted that his denial might not be accepted.

In a message to a WhatsApp group backing his campaign to become the Tories’ challenger to Sadiq Khan, seen by On London, Korski assured the group’s members “I categorically deny any wrong-doing” and “any claim if inappropriate behaviour” and described it as “disheartening” to again be connected to the alleged incident which was first brought to public attention in 2017.

“I know that simply denying such allegations may not be enough to alleviate the concerns and doubts that might arise in your minds,” Korski wrote.

He did not, however, indicate he is considering withdrawing from the contest to become the Tory candidate as a result of his accuser, the novelist and television producer Daisy Goodwin, claiming in an article for the Times that Korski took hold of one of her breasts at the end of a meeting to discuss a potential TV show.

“I firmly believe in the importance of empathy, respect, and the well-being of every individual within society,” Korski assured the WhatsApp group. He added: “To those who have been affected by any form of misconduct or harassment, let me assure you that I stand firmly against such behaviour. I am committed to fostering an environment where everyone feels valued, heard, and supported.”

In her Times article Goodwin says her meeting with Korski took place ten years ago in Number 10’s Thatcher drawing room and that she had found his behaviour “awkwardly flirtatious” and “odd” before he “suddenly put his hand on my breast” after she had got up to leave.

In 2017 Goodwin wrote an article about the alleged incident for the Radio Times. She did not name Korski in it, but ensuing rumours led to him publicly deny any wrongdoing, describing such claims as “not only totally false but also totally bizarre”.

In his message to the WhatsApp group, Korksi wrote: “Politics can be a rough and challenging business. Unfortunately, in the midst of this demanding environment, this baseless allegation from the past has resurfaced.” He closed by thanking “every one of you, for your continued support”.

A spokesperson for Korski has told media outlets that “In the strongest possible terms, Dan categorically denies any allegation of inappropriate behaviour whatsoever.”

Twitter: Dave Hill and On London.

On London and its writers need your backing. Give £5 a month or £50 a year and receive in return the weekly newsletter On London Extra and (at no additional charge) invitations to events featuring eminent Londoners. Pay using any of the “donate” buttons on the site, by becoming a paid subscriber to my Substack, or directly into the company bank account. Email davehillonlondon@gmail.com for details. Thanks, Dave Hill.

Categories: News
Tags: Conservatives, Daisy Goodwin, Daniel Korski, Susan Hall