Blog

On London event report: Planning, Places and People

What is the best way to involve the capital's many communities in big decisions about their homes and neighbourhoods? A brilliant panel and a knowledgable audience pointed some ways forward
Dave Hill

It has taken me far too long to write up what was said at the recent On London event entitled London: Planning, Places & People, which took place on 15 June. Part of the problem has been that the four outstanding panelists and the highly knowledgable audience said so many interesting and insightful things I felt it would be wrong to rush compiling my account and risk failing to do justice the quality of the contributions.

Attendance was hit by a combination of superb summer weather – always an incentive for people to go to a park or a beer garden rather than be indoors – and A-Level related anxiety, which perhaps explains why most of the local sixth-formers who had registered didn’t come along. Even so, a wealth of wisdom was shared about the best ways to involve local Londoners in planning decisions that affect their lives and, collectively, the evolution of the city as a whole.

I am extremely grateful to the people who agreed to be members of the panel. They were:

Each of the quartet set out some initial thoughts about principles and good practices that should guide community engagement.

Mekor spoke first, drawing on his and the Newman Francis company’s long experience. They’ve worked on projects from Newham to Kensington & Chelsea, from Haringey to Croydon. “One of the key principles is getting communities prepared for the change discussion,” he said, “making sure they are aware of the scope of the engagement and the opportunities.”

A starting point is to “map the community”, identifying stakeholders and areas of interest. “Our aim is to really identify what we call community intelligence – issues, concerns, aspirations, what works, what doesn’t work.” Mekor stressed the value of finding common ground, identifying major concerns that can help to get more people interested.

He emphasised the need for “an engagement process that empowers people and incentivises them to be involved” and to “be part of a discussion”. He described how six months were spent setting up a community engagement process for residents of Tottenham’s Broadwater Farm estate, which meant residents, many of them initially sceptical about council refurbishment plans, were more willing to contribute, “knowing that they had a role to play in the decision-making process”.

On the Lancaster West estate, which the Grenfell Tower formed part of, an agreement was brokered between residents and the council to ensure that residents were briefed about all impending decisions that might affect them and offered the option of being included in the related consultation and engagement processes.

Newman Francis have also had input into the Carpenters estate at the edge of the Olympic Park. Mekor said one result of this was the council’s on-site office also becoming the location of “a nursery, a toy library and an IT centre linked to a college”. Other services were set up on the estate as a result of conversations about its future, Mekor said. “What I’m suggesting is every engagement opportunity, every change opportunity, can make a difference in those communities.”

In December 2021, residents of the Carpenters voted by a large majority in favour of Newham’s latest regeneration plans, following many years of proposals that did not reach fruition. Such ballots of estate residents about their landlords’ regeneration schemes are required by Sadiq Khan as a condition of receiving funds from City Hall, which will only be allocated if the vote is in favour.

A lot of enthusiasm was expressed at the meeting for this innovation by the Mayor of London, including by Sem, his fellow Labour politician who, prior to becoming an elected representative, had  worked in community engagement about housing, doing similar work to Mekor.

She was clear that “it’s a huge proposition to say to somebody, ‘I’m going to knock down your house that you’ve lived in for 30 years, please trust me’.” For her, this underlined the importance of working with residents to help them understand why such a course of action might be a good thing, “not just for them but for the community as a whole”. Yet she also observed that the very term “the community” doesn’t always adequately describe who is being spoken of.

She pointed out that London housing estate residents can range from people who have lived in their homes since not long after World War II to people who have been temporarily housed in them, albeit sometimes ending up staying for years. Such different groups of people might have very different ideas and fears about what a regeneration scheme might mean for them.

Karolina said she and Farrer Huxley, for which she has worked for ten years, firmly believe that the success of their work depends on “putting people at its heart”, with collaboration a key ingredient. This approach, she argued, brings benefits to all concerned.

“It’s a common misconception that public consultation, carried out effectively in the planning process, will slow down the programme,” she said. “This is not true. We know that good consultation will, if anything, speed it up because you will have the community’s back-up. They will be with you.”

Another frequent mistaken belief is that encouraging local input will lead to worse architecture. “But if anything, you’ll get better quality of design,” Karolina argued. “You’ll get exactly what is needed and also, if you gain the trust of the community, they will take ownership of the space and you will future proof the project.”

She gave an example of a scheme for a local authority, where much trust had been lost due to a five-year delay. However, demonstrating her point that the best consultations are “about listening as much as doing,” input from a local gardening group informed plans for planting the area, and the group ended up taking responsibility for maintaining the results.

But Karolina felt that not enough consultations are done in the best way. Sometimes her practice’s clients don’t appreciate their value. “They don’t allow enough time and budget for the consultation to be carried out successfully and it becomes meaningless – it becomes ticking boxes, an exercise which defeats the purpose,” she said. “We are often told by the client what to say or what not to say, so there’s no true dialogue.”

This is self-defeating, in Karolina’s view: “We need to work with people because we are creating spaces for them. We want them to be functional, we want them to be beautiful, we want them to be loved by them.”

For Denean, who is daily engaged with helping Londoners to navigate it, the planning system simply “isn’t designed to be accessible – it’s very difficult to get your head around”. She cited the formal Local Plans of councils in London, setting out their long-term visions for the whole of their boroughs – not only their housing, but also transport, environmental priorities, health considerations and so on – as “by far the best and easiest way to get involved with planning for your area”, but that the time available for doing so when those plans are in gestation – two junctures in the timeline, each of just six weeks – is not sufficient.

She recalled her time working for think tank Centre for London, when she would often encounter puzzlement at local level when she revealed that she had read their Local Plan. “Every time I was told, ‘Have you? Why? Really? That’s odd. Were you bored?’ Which, I suppose, is another sign of how inaccessible the system is.”

Denean also underlined the importance of boroughs providing residents with good communications about planning issues and decisions. A resident of Vauxhall, she has seen some of London’s biggest redevelopment projects unfolding very close to home. These have attracted a lot of criticism, yet they have also produced benefits for adjoining neighbourhoods in Lambeth and Wandsworth. That connection, Denean explained, is not widely recognised.

“The reason why we have the Northern line extension is pay off for a lot of the developments that have gone on in the area, and a lot of the new low-cost public facilities that we have,” she said. “I know that because I worked at a think tank, but if I hadn’t there was no way I would have. My mum would not have known that. I think that is a big issue – local government is not great at celebrating the wins or at explaining why some things aren’t possible.”

Acknowledging the pervasiveness of populist narratives about regeneration programmes, such as allegations of premeditated “social cleansing”, Denean regretted a deficit of explanations for people about why things happen that they aren’t happy with or “why we can’t please everyone”.

Panelists were asked to elaborate on why they felt estate ballots had been a big step forward and also what they thought about citizens’ assemblies – forums for residents to air ideas about the places where they live that have been eagerly taken up by some boroughs, notably Camden and Newham.

Mekor said the estate ballot requirement, which Newman Francis encouraged Mayor Khan to adopt, has made it imperative for social landlords to “put money and energy into making it happen” and “almost doubled” the level of participation from residents.

Sem observed that anti-estate regeneration campaigning has often insisted, incorrectly in her view, that “the thinking behind it is to gentrify, which it is not”. Even with ballots, a mix of anti-politics politics and Nimbyism can work to undermine trust, making it difficult to have a conversation with people about addressing problems with damp and mould that can literally permeate every part of a building. “Trying to win the trust of people and convincing them there isn’t an ulterior motive is half the battle,” she said. “I think the same applies to citizens’ assemblies”.

She added that she is “really a big fan of YIMBYs [people who Yes In My Back Yard],” and, in line with that, approved of the straightforwardness required by the ballot proposition: “The whole point of a ballot is that somebody, your landowner, says, ‘I want to knock down your house and this is what I want to do next’. The assumption is that they will get it, but they will only get it if they can, first of all, convince tenants. And in order to convince tenants and leaseholders, they need to promise, written in blood, the things they are going to deliver for that.”

One audience member, a community activist and resident of Soho, said he has been encouraged by the progress of the Labour administration elected to run Westminster City Council last year, the first time in its history it had been taken out of Conservative control. It had shown that it understands “estates other than Belgravia” he said, and has not responded to pushbacks against decisions it has taken by “just churning out propaganda. They give reasons and explanations for what they’ve done”.

We also heard from a woman from a major property development firm, who strongly endorsed points made by panelists that some in her business “tend to think of communities as not being very intelligent and therefore not really able to understand the nuance, the complexities of viability and so on”. By avoiding having conversations with residents about such matters, “we tend to remove ourselves,” she said. “Yet doing it well can be absolutely in the interests of developers too. When you have open and transparent and meaningful conversations with people, you find that they are able to understand and appreciate.”

Challenged to come up with examples of estate residents’ input and landlord flexibility producing tangible changes, Denean offered the example of the Bell’s Garden estate in Southwark, where initial plans to increase the housing density through in-fill – an approach often championed as an alternative to demolition and re-build – had been opposed by residents. This had resulted in a higher degree of affordability in the new homes (83 for social rent) and lower building heights, along with the re-provision of a play area for children and a community centre.

Other contributions from the audience, most of them supporters of On London, included an expression of confidence that the planning system overall as it stands “can and does work” as long as councils get to grips with the hard maths of viability and take seriously their responsibility to represent the concerns of electors.

A woman from a prominent public affairs company said she and colleagues “are increasingly working with developers who take a real interest in social value and in genuine community engagement”. She also sought opinions about how best to connect with “people who aren’t engaged” such as private sector tenants who might not have lived in an area for long and can’t be sure they will live there for much longer. They might not feel they have much of a stake in a neighbourhood’s future, yet potentially they could have.

There was considerable praise for good borough councillors who know the people of their wards well and can provide important insights to facilitators, landlords, council officers and developers alike. There were several questions about what constitutes a community and the most effective ways to hear a full and wide range of views, not simply those with the loudest voices and, perhaps, Nimby-ish or ideological agendas. Where did schools fit in, for example? What about places of worship and their congregations? Such institutions were held up as providing important contexts, both as politically-neutral venues and as amenable social settings, for finding out what local people want and why.

An activist and organiser from Kingston, speaking of the “hard-to-reach”, said they are often intimidated by others who “self-define as the community”. Also, she said, the very word “planning” is narrowly-defined, making people think of Town Hall bureaucrats and unprepossessing laminated leaflets attached to lamp posts. “The reality is that planning affects all of our lives – our environment, our health and our education,” she argued. The way to get people to care about it is to ask them about the provision they’d like to see in those areas, or about trees, or the arts or sport.

There was so much more I could report, but 2,500 words is probably enough to be going on with. All of the above, plus a lot of what I’ve left out have given me, and I hope readers, an enormous amount of food for thought.

With a mayoral election coming, London still recovering from the pandemic, and much rethinking going on about the types of homes, offices, streets and public spaces the city needs in the post-Covid, the wealth of ideas and issues aired and discussed in the first floor event space above my local corner shop should be at the very heart of the debate about our city’s future.

Let’s try to put them there, starting today.

Photograph: The panel and the chair prepare to start. Left to right: Mekor Newman, Denean Rowe, Sem Moema, Karolina Moch, Dave Hill.

Follow On London on Twitter. If you are not already a supporter of the website and its writers, please become one by donating £5 a month or £50 a year using any of the “donate” buttons. Alternatively, email davehillonlondon@gmail.com and ask for bank account details. Thanks.

Categories: Analysis
Tags: Denean Rowe, housing, Karolina Moch, Mekor Newman, planning, Sem Moema

Philip Glanville: Tory Daniel Korski doesn’t know much about housing in Hackney

The tech entrepreneur hoping to displace Sadiq Khan says the east London borough resists housebuilding, but Hackney's Mayor begs to differ
Philip Glanville

If Conservative London mayoral hopeful Daniel Korski thinks Hackney Council has been “really reluctant to do any kind of development”, as he said during the first Tory candidate hustings, at least we now know that his understanding of Hackney is just as flawed as his ideas for addressing London’s housing crisis.

Over the last decade, Hackney Council and innovative London boroughs like it have been tackling the acute housing shortage head on during a period of government-imposed austerity which has seen affordable housing grants cut, rent levels rocket and the gap between welfare support and real housing costs widen almost every year since 2010.

In that time Hackney’s pioneering housebuilding programme has transformed council land in dozens of locations throughout the borough into genuinely affordable, often award-winning council homes, self-funded and delivered without private developers or government support.

In that time we have directly delivered over 1,500 homes, half of which were genuinely affordable, alongside two new schools and a multi-award winning leisure centre. With support now in place from the Mayor of London, this approach will help us deliver 1,000 new social rent homes in Hackney by 2026.

Turning to regeneration and Korski’s reference to low rise council housing, in Hackney we are fearless in our defence of social housing and the communities who live in it in our borough. We are proud that, according to the last Census, we have the highest number of households living in social housing in the country – over 40 per cent.

There is a real risk Korski’s remarks seek to take us back to a “sink estates” or crude demolition narrative that sees our estates as “brownfield” land for exploitation rather than places with flourishing communities.

That doesn’t mean we don’t think regeneration can be a solution. Our Woodberry Down partnership is seeing the number of new homes at one of the UK’s largest regeneration projects more than double, with every council tenant getting a high-quality new social rent home in place of properties that no longer meet modern standards. By the end of the programme it will see over 5,500 new homes and high-quality community infrastructure and transformed public spaces.

And work alongside the London Legacy Development Corporation is seeing thousands of new homes built in Hackney in and around the Olympic Park – the heart of what Korski called the “docklands arc” – with our own influence maximising the proportion of genuinely affordable homes and protecting what is most valued locally, such as Hackney Wick’s creative community.

It is also disappointing to see Korski attempting to drive a wedge between inner and outer London when we need all parts of the capital to deliver the homes that London and Londoners need.

I wonder if it is partly an attempt to deflect attention from the dreadful housing delivery record of outer London Conservative boroughs and disgraceful recent Tory campaigns to defend car parks near Tube stations to prevent new affordable housing being built on them. It can’t be right that boroughs like Hackney, which deliver on our housing targets, are asked to do even more when so many others fail and lack our ambition.

Let’s not forget that a major factor driving the housing crisis is that housing benefit simply does not meet the true cost of housing in Hackney and London more widely. This is why many people cannot afford to live in the capital and are being pushed out of it.

In Hackney, the maximum housing benefit payment for a two-bed flat is £1,585 per month, yet the average rent for such a property is £2,600 per month – a shortfall of over £1000.

If the Tory hopeful was serious about affordable housing, he’d be calling for his own party in government to invest more in social housing, get rid of the benefit cap and increase Local Housing Allowance to reflect reality. he would also be echoing our own and Sadiq Khan’s call for private sector rent controls.

It is true that – with the right support – we and our partners could do so much more. But if the housing crisis in Hackney and the capital as a whole is worse than ever, it is caused not by the reluctance of councils to build, but the ongoing lack of funding, flexibility and political will from central government.

Philip Glanville is the directly-elected Mayor of Hackney. Follow him on Twitter. Photograph: Hackney Council-built homes in Kings Crescent, N4.

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: Comment
Tags: affordable housing, Conservatives, council housing, Daniel Korski, Hackney Council, regeneration, social housing

Sadiq Khan hints at possible further ULEZ help for Londoners

The Mayor told the London Assembly he will continue to address concerns, but remained adamant that the latest expansion plan will go ahead
Charles Wright

Mayor Khan doubled down today on the need to take urgent “life-saving” action to tackle air pollution in the capital, while agreeing there was “more to do” to address concerns about his controversial extension of London’s Ultra-Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) to cover the whole of the city.

The ULEZ expansion is due to come into force on 29 August, with a £12.50 a day charge for vehicles driving within the city which fail to comply with its pollutant emissions standards, prompting what long-time city watcher and London School of Economics professor Tony Travers described this week as a “political battle like few others”.

Khan was in combative mood as he faced interrogation from London Assembly members (AMs) at City Hall’s regular Mayor’s Question Time session. “This is urgent, right now,” he said. “There is no safe level of exposure. The current and long-term threat to public health from toxic air pollution is significant, and I can’t sit idly by when it is in my power to act. The cost of inaction is too great a price to pay.”

The Mayor argued that the existing inner London ULEZ had proved to be “hugely effective”, with nitrogen dioxide levels down by more than 50 per cent between 2017 and October 2022, and child asthma admissions reduced by a third since the introduction of the scheme.

“I do not accept that the five million people in outer London should not be able to benefit from the same life-saving benefits that the ULEZ has brought to the rest of our city,” he added.

Residents with genuine worries about the new charge had in some cases been “latched on to” by “science deniers”, he said, citing recent “important” interventions from doctors and scientists accusing ULEZ opponents of ignoring “proven links between poor air quality and ill health”, with harmful effects “not limited to high exposures”.

He was more conciliatory, though, in the face of cross-party concerns about the impact of the scheme on lower-income Londoners, small businesses and charities, and those not currently eligible for City Hall’s £110 million scrappage scheme to help with the costs of changing or “retrofitting” non-compliant vehicles.

“We are all hearing of circumstances where people are falling through the cracks,” said Labour AM Elly Baker, while Liberal Democrat AM Caroline Pidgeon called for Khan to use City Hall reserves to double the size of the scrappage fund, and allow a “grace” period with warning letters instead of fines for initial offenders.

The scheme, with some £25 million already paid out, was currently meeting demand, Khan said. Eligibility had been expanded to child benefit recipients and businesses with fewer than 50 employees, with charities now able to scrap three vans rather than one and “retrofit” upgrades to older vehicles now also supported. And Transport for London figures showed nine out of 10 cars and eight out of ten vans seen driving in outer London are already compliant, he repeated.

But his support package could change, he hinted: “I accept expanding the ULEZ is not universally popular, and I accept we’ve got to keep this under review. We will continue to address the concerns people have.”

For the Conservatives, though, that would mean not tinkering with scrappage schemes, but scrapping altogether a plan they say loads cost-of-living woe onto outer Londoners while having only a “negligible” effect on air quality.

The expansion was not just unpopular, said Tory AM and mayoral candidacy contender Susan Hall, but in outer London Uxbridge ahead of next month’s parliamentary by-election, which the Conservative candidate there is seeking to bill as a referendum on ULEZ, it was the “only thing people are talking about”.

Were the Conservatives really saying that at the next mayoral election, eight months after the ULEZ had been introduced, that they would “rip it out and make our air dirtier and more toxic?” pondered Labour AM Joanne McCartney.

The now former MP for Uxbridge, Boris Johnson, scrapped his predecessor Ken Livingstone’s western extension of the original central London congestion charge zone – introduced in February 2007 – from the start of 2011, acting on a pledge he’d made prior to being elected Mayor in May 2008 to re-consult about the issue and pay heed to its findings.

But will the ULEZ, opponents’ efforts notwithstanding, be as salient an issue today? It’s a different time, but, as Professor Travers says, “few things are more personal-political than cars”.

The full Mayor’s Question Time 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: air quality, Conservatives, London Assembly, pollution, Sadiq Khan, Susan Hall, ultra low emission zone

Mayor warns Tories they will ‘regret’ silence over Shaun Bailey campaign ‘partygate’ video ‘in the long run’

Sadiq Khan rebuked potential Conservative challengers for failing to criticise the London Assembly member, who was absent from City Hall today
Dave Hill

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has said he was “shocked” by the emergence of video footage of members of the campaign team of the then Conservative mayoral candidate Shaun Bailey “dancing and mixing in close proximity with others at a pre-arranged Christmas party at a time in December 2020 when socialising indoors was banned in London” during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Responding to a request for a verbal update about what was termed “lawbreaking during the pandemic” during this morning’s Mayor’s Question Time session (MQT), the Mayor said the footage “will have been deeply upsetting to many Londoners” and criticised Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, the London Assembly Conservative group and those seeking to become Tory candidate for next year’s mayoral election for saying nothing about the video.

Bailey, who is a member of the Assembly Conservative group, was not present at MQT and his fellow Assembly members (AMs) were told by Assembly chair Andrew Boff that this was because “he is suffering a bereavement at the moment”. Bailey is among the seven people awarded a life peerage as part of former Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s resignation honours list and is reportedly set to be confirmed as a member of the House of Lords within weeks.

“The actions of Assembly Member Shaun Bailey and his team are simply indefensible and yet they are being rewarded,” Khan said, and went on to refer to Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley saying earlier this week that although historical allegations of Covid rule breaches are not routinely followed up, officers would be looking at the footage of Bailey campaign members to see if it provides a basis for further investigations.

Rowley told The New Agents that, in his view, it was “very obvious a video tells a much richer, clearer story than a photo” and that the footage in question “tells a story way beyond the original photo”. After stating that he needed to let the relevant Met team “work through that” Rowley concluded: “I think we can all guess which way it’ll go.”

Bailey does not appear in the video footage of the party, which was pre-advertised to invitees as a “jingle and mingle” event and held at Conservative campaign headquarters at a time when the race to be elected Mayor in May 2021 was well underway. However, Bailey appeared prominently in a photograph taken at the same event which emerged in late 2021.

Following that revelation, Bailey resigned as chair of the Assembly’s police and crime committee and was rebuked by the then leader of the Conservative group, Susan Hall, who said she and colleagues had been “deeply disappointed” to see the photograph and that “to have a party last year was wrong”. The Met investigated the incident following the emergence of the photograph but decided to take no further action.

Hall, who has been a strong defender of Johnson, is still a member of the Assembly and is also one of the Tory trio vying to be selected as her party’s mayoral candidate for next year, when Khan will be seeking a record third term at City Hall. Both she and Bailey are current members of the Assembly police and crime committee, and Bailey also chairs the housing committee.

Labour AM Leonie Cooper (pictured) asked the Mayor if he thought it appropriate for an AM under police investigation to be a police and crime committee member, or the chair of an Assembly committee, or to accept or be offered a peerage, and put it to him that such a situation brings “all of us in public life into disrepute”.

Khan agreed with her that “this is a plague on all our houses” because of “law-makers being law-breakers” and the “perception that there is one law for one group of people and one rule for another”. He warned of public concern about someone being rewarded for “supporting the disgraced Prime Minister [Johnson] of the time, who was also a law-breaker” and that those acquiescent by their silence over Bailey’s promotion to the Lords “will regret that in the long term”.

Johnson was forced to step down as Prime Minister following a string of revelations about social events that took place at 10 Downing Street, one of which resulted in him being fined by the police. Earlier this month Johnson resigned as an MP after the Commons privileges committee concluded that he had deliberately misled parliament about his knowledge of Covid rules being breached at the time.

Bailey has apologised for the scenes shown in the video, though one Conservative MP has said he should consider rejecting his peerage following the emergence of the footage.

One of those seen in the video, Ben Mallet, was in charge of the Bailey campaign, whose tactics included distributing leaflets disguised as a Council Tax demand from Khan, a website purporting to provide “facts” about Transport for London’s finances and the false claim that Khan would charge “anyone driving into Greater London” £5.50 if re-elected.

Mallet, who was also involved in Zac Goldsmith‘s widely-criticised and also unsuccessful 2016 campaign against Khan, was awarded an OBE in Johnson’s resignation honours and is currently working on the mayoral bid of Moz Hossain, one of Hall’s rivals to become the Tory candidate for 2024.

The public inquiry into the government’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic began a week ago.

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: London Assembly, Mayor's Question Time, Sadiq Khan, Shaun Bailey, Susan Hall

How do Londoners really feel about Sadiq Khan’s ULEZ expansion plan?

Polling about the issue has produced largely - but not entirely - consistent responses
Dave Hill

Calculating how many cars and vans registered to London households and businesses do not comply with the standards of the Ultra-Low Emission Zone (ULEZ), which Sadiq Khan intends to expand to cover the whole of greater London from 29 August, is quite complicated.

Even the best figures available need to be handled with some caution. They are for 2022 and not every vehicle registered to a London address in that year is necessarily based or driven within London. Moreover, the same dataset for 2021 suggests a significant downward trend in the number of non-compliant vehicles. The number seems likely to have dropped further by now, halfway through 2023.

The related but separate matters of how much opposition there is to the planned expansion and to the ULEZ altogether, and the possible implications of that opposition for next year’s mayoral election, is also hard to get a clear fix on.

London’s Conservatives don’t hide their belief that the ULEZ expansion is very unpopular with large numbers of Londoners or their hope that it will significantly weaken Labour Mayor Khan’s chances of winning a historic third term at City Hall next May.

That is why all three on the shortlist to become the Tories’ mayoral candidate have vowed to do away with the latest expansion, should it go ahead – the outcome of a legal challenge is set to be known on 4 July – and the Tory candidate in the Uxbridge & South Ruislip parliamentary by-election, to be held on 20 July, is characterising the contest as “a referendum” on the plan.

You can see why the Conservatives are seizing on the issue. A very rough adding-up of the number of outer Londoners who might be newly-affected by having to pay a daily charge of £12.50 or else finding the cash to buy a cleaner car, plus other Londoners who might still be fed up with Khan about the previous expansion – from central London to the North and South circular roads in October 2021 – and others who just think it’s a bad idea can produce a figure of half a million or more.

They might also point to the recent Redfield & Wilton poll which, at the same time as showing Sadiq Khan to be comfortably ahead of his as yet unknown Tory challenger, found that 10 per cent of those who voted for him in 2021 are undecided about doing so again and that seven per cent currently say they will be voting Conservative instead.

Can that switch of loyalties be attributed to the ULEZ? Maybe, or maybe some of it. Then again, actual recent elections in which Conservatives have campaigned against the expansion haven’t clearly demonstrated a huge backlash against it.

Neither the outcomes of last month’s local elections in areas just outside Greater London, where some residents will be affected, nor those of outer London borough by-elections this year have produced clear evidence of any major anti-ULEZ factor eroding support for Labour candidates – though, of course, none of those candidates were Sadiq Khan, with whom the policy is specifically identified.

Then there are the opinion polls about the issue to consider. Redfield & Wilton asked two questions about the ULEZ expansion in their wide-ranging recent survey, to which On London contributed ideas for questions on various topics. The picture formed by the responses is paradoxical.

Asked if they supported or opposed the planned expansion from 29 August, a total of 47 per cent said they supported it (including 18 per cent who said they supported it “strongly”) and only 32 per cent said they opposed it (20 per cent “strongly”). Another 19 per cent said they neither supported not opposed it.

But when offered a choice between the ULEZ being “expanded to include the entirety of London”, being completely scrapped, or being “kept to its current inner London boundaries”, the largest number, 37 per cent, said they preferred the latter option – that is, sticking with the status quo.

Add to them the 22 per cent who said they want the ULEZ “scrapped entirely” and you can argue that 59 per cent in all are opposed to Khan’s planned further expansion compared with the 32 per cent who answered this second ULEZ question by saying they are in in favour of it.

Screenshot 2023 06 22 at 08.28.10

Which is the more accurate measure, the 32 per cent opposed to the expansion suggested by responses to the first question or the 59 per cent against suggested by those to the second one?

There have been other polls about this issue. Last October, a YouGov survey commissioned by City Hall and conducted last July, found that 51 per cent of Londoners backed the planned expansion compared to 27 per cent who opposed it – a pretty similar response to the first question in the much more recent Redfield & Wilton poll. And of the 51 per cent in favour, 22 per cent said the expansion should be implemented sooner than August this year compared with eight per cent who thought it should be delayed.

As if in retaliation, the Conservative London Assembly group commissioning its own YouGov poll, which, in line with its own convictions, framed the ULEZ as a scheme for raising money for Transport for London rather than for improving air quality. Published last November, this, perhaps unsurprisingly, produced a 51 per cent “against” majority.

But the more recent Redfield & Wilton survey also asked Londoners what they think the purpose of Ultra-Low Emission Zones is. A 58 per cent majority said it is “to reduce air pollution” compared with 26 per cent who said they believe its purpose is to raise revenue, suggesting the Conservatives might be losing that part of the ULEZ argument.

Going back to the number of vehicles – specifically cars and vans registered in London that aren’t ULEZ- compliant, it’s worth remembering that they are a shrinking minority: TfL’s analysis of Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders figures for London in 2022, which were largely derived from government data, concludes that 86 per cent of cars and 53 per cent of vans registered in the capital were ULEZ-compliant last year – up from their 2021 figures of 77 per cent and 44 per cent respectively.

As discussed above, those numbers do not directly equate to opposition or support for the planned expansion or to any electoral implications of Mayor Khan’s policy, but they do help with keeping a sense of proportion about an issue which, though undoubtedly significant for many Londoners and raising quite a row, might not be quite as huge as it appears. But we shall see.

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: Analysis
Tags: air quality, Conservatives, Labour, pollution, Sadiq Khan, ultra low emission zone

City Corporation considers new curbs on proliferation of tall buildings

Guildhall planners say new skyscrapers should be restricted to two areas within the Square Mile, though scope remains for them to flourish
Charles Wright

The City of London Corporation looks set to put the lid on the proliferation of skyscrapers across the Square Mile, judging by new proposals, prompted by Sadiq Khan’s London Plan requirements, which were unveiled by a Guildhall sub-committee yesterday.

New policy for the Corporation’s Local Plan, its blueprint for future development in the City, would restrict the building of new towers to just two areas deemed to be “less sensitive” to tall building development than the rest of the Square Mile – the existing City Cluster, already home to some of the tallest buildings in the capital, and the Holborn and Fleet Valley neighbourhood east and west of Farringdon Road.

The proposals follow detailed assessments plotting the likely impact of more towers on the historic area’s character and heritage, including the setting and protected views of St Paul’s Cathedral and the Tower of London. This is in line with City Hall’s directions to boroughs to designate areas suitable for tall buildings and set out appropriate heights for new developments.

However, those hoping for an approach similar to that taken recently by councillors in Paris, who have imposed a 37-metre or 12-storey limit on new buildings in the city, or even the adoption of Mayor Khan’s prescription of 18 metres, or six storeys, as the starting point for defining a building as “tall”, may be disappointed.

The Guildhall planners’ report says that only “small pockets” of the City as it is have building heights at or around six storeys, while much of the Square Mile already stands at 50 to 75 metres or 15 to 21 storeys.

It states that its own existing tall building definition of greater than 75 metres should be retained, being the level, given prevailing heights, “where buildings may have significant visual implications and could result in a significant change to the skyline” and makes clear that 75 metres is “not a maximum”.

Individual developments should still be subject to detailed scrutiny, the report says, and even within the City Cluster and Holborn and Fleet Valley areas “the policy will recognise that tall buildings may not be suitable on all sites and that further analysis would need to be undertaken to consider local and strategic impacts of any proposed tall buildings,” the report says. But with Guildhall planners recently reporting they “could not be busier”, these two area are likely to see continuing high-rise development.

1953017 cityclusters 508693

Alongside six consents granted for buildings of between 75 and 309 metres – the latter just one metre shorter than the Shard – in the past two years, two applications are pending and a further four are expected later this year, reflecting continuing demand for high-quality Grade A office space, according to the latest tall buildings survey from New London Architecture. Potential new sites have been identified by the Guildhall, but are currently being kept confidential.

A separate new policy would offer more protection from “unacceptable impact”, including on daylight levels, to the Grade I listed Bevis Marks synagogue in the heart of the City Cluster behind the Gherkin tower. Opened in 1701, Bevis Marks is the oldest synagogue in the UK in continuous use.

The committee also took a first look at proposals to tackle the risk of older office space of poorer quality becoming increasingly difficult to let due to new sustainability requirements to be introduced from 2027 and a continuing demand for “Grade A+” space – the so-called “flight to quality”.

Analysis for the Guildhall by consultants Arup and Knight Frank predicted continued overall growth in demand for office space in the Square Mile up to 2042, but also some “softening” as firms “right-sized” over the coming five years or so, alongside the growing challenge of “stranded assets”.

“It’s very much a mixed picture,” Arup director Matthew Dillon told the committee. “We wouldn’t want anyone to take away from this that we are saying everything is going to be great. Intervention is needed to allow for fewer obstacles for that older stock to be updated.”

That would mean relaxing requirements for changing the use of poorer quality offices for which upgrading was too expensive, including what planners described as the “onerous viability assessment process required to show it isn’t financially feasible to retain a building in office use”. Alternative uses could include hotels, education and cultural facilities, they suggested.

Yesterday also saw the launch of a new “brand and website” designed to showcase the Square Mile’s consumer and leisure offer, another sign of the Corporation’s efforts to move beyond the nine-to-five and redefine itself as a “thriving, seven-day-a-week destination”, according to Guildhall policy chair Chris Hayward.

A public consultation about the City’s full Local Plan proposals will take place early next year.

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: City of London Corporation, planning, tall buildings, The London Plan

Muniya Barua: London needs more talent from abroad and control over skills training at home if UK is to stay ahead in tech

Unless things change, no Prime Minister will be able to boast of leading an 'island of innovation'
Muniya Barua

Last week, Prime Minster Rishi Sunak opened London Tech Week by declaring Britain to be an “island of innovation“. This came hot on the heels of new figures from London & Partners showing that the capital has attracted more tech investment than any other global city over the last decade.

But despite being ahead of major competitors such as Paris, New York and even San Francisco, many businesses across this sector, and others in the capital, are grappling with acute digital skills shortages. If the UK is serious about maintaining its position as a global tech leader, we desperately need to close our skills gap in order to seize new opportunities in areas such as advanced coding and artificial intelligence.

A recent BusinessLDN survey of over 1,000 London business leaders and human resources managers, carried out by Survation, found that digital skills are expected to be those most in demand in the next two to five years, with more than half of respondents reporting a need for more staff possessing advanced skills and one third for people with basic competence.

It is important to define what we mean by digital skills, as technology is increasingly used across all parts of businesses. The category covers everything from being able to use rudimentary software, such as email, to having role-specific specialisms such as web design and digital marketing, right up to state-of-the-art coding and robotics.

In London, a key cross-cutting challenge that also needs to be addressed is digital poverty and inclusion. Data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) shows that only 51 per cent of the poorest households in the capital had internet at home in March 2020, impacting their ability to access online training and career opportunities.

A further challenge for businesses is navigating the complex and fragmented skills training system, particularly for smaller firms with less time and resources for doing their homework about the plethora of schemes available.

Although many businesses are stepping up by delivering innovative approaches to tackling the skills gap, for example by delivering laptops to disadvantaged schools or by running digital skills boot camps to build up sector-specific expertise such as coding, it is clear that the private sector has a key emerging role to play in skilling and upskilling at a time when the public finances are stretched. With technology moving so quickly, businesses should work with educational providers, as well as the government, to ensure training keeps pace with changing demands.

That’s why BusinessLDN – in partnership with the Federation of Small Businesses London (FSB London), the London Chamber of Commerce & Industry (LCCI), and CBI London – has spent the last seven months consulting extensively with employers, educators and other stakeholders to create a blueprint to address digital and wider skills gaps across the capital’s labour market.

The report will be published in full in the coming months, but it is already clear from our discussions that some common themes are emerging. Three vital areas are the need for better communication about existing schemes, businesses working with providers to co-create course content, and greater devolution of the skills budget to London so it can be targeted where it is needed, such as on digital skills.

As well as being able to upskill homegrown talent, businesses also need access to talent from abroad. Between 2019 and 2022, the Global Visa Talent scheme accounted for 74 per cent of visas successfully granted to foreign tech workers, enabling routes for fintech, gaming, cyber security and AI employees to come to the UK for up to five years.

The rhetoric following the publication of recent net migration figures, particularly around “small boats” and international students, risks damaging the UK’s attractiveness to international talent. Immigration could turn into a political football in the run-up to the next general election, so the value of overseas workers to high-growth sectors such as tech must be underlined.

As more and more of our economy embraces digital technology, businesses have a pivotal role to play in addressing the skills gap together with the government. Unless we fix the digital skills divide, the UK will never fulfil its true potential as an island of innovation.

Muniya Barua is Deputy Chief Executive at BusinessLDN. Follow Muniya 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: Comment
Tags: BusinessLDN, London & Partners, migration, skills

First Tory mayoral hustings reveals strengths and weaknesses of would-be candidates

Susan Hall, Mozammel Hossain and Daniel Korski made their opening pitches to Tory activists on Friday evening
Dave Hill

The first hustings event for the three Conservatives hoping to be their party’s candidate to challenge Labour’s Sadiq Khan as he runs for a third term as London’s Mayor took place on Friday evening.

A gathering of the Tory members in the capital, whose votes will decide the winner of the selection campaign in a month’s time, got their first chance to see Mozammel Hossain, Daniel Korski and Susan Hall in person in the same room at the same time.

They did not, however, see them engage in debate and there was no opportunity to ask them questions. Perhaps those things will happen in other hustings to be held between now and 19 July, the date the result is expected to be be announced.

These continue to be difficult days for Conservatives in London. Theirs has been a story of electoral decline for ten years or more. And although they took control of two councils from Labour at last May’s borough elections, they lost the three London flagships of Barnet, Wandsworth and Westminster and won only 404 of the capital’s 1,817 seats, a net loss of 107 compared to 2018.

Hustings chair Nickie Aiken, a party vice chairman closely involved in drawing up the shortlist, will soon face her own difficult electoral challenge, probably in the second half of next year when Prime Minister Rishi Sunak goes to the country, hoping it will not reject his government in favour of a Labour one. A former leader of Westminster, Aiken is MP for the Cities of London & Westminster constituency, which Labour hopes to remove her from.

For all of that, Aiken and the three mayoral candidates seemed buoyed by a shared disdain for Mayor Khan and the seed of a belief that, against the odds, he can be beaten.

London Tories’ confidence that Khan’s plan to further enlarge London’s Ultra-Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) to encompass the whole of Greater London is hugely unpopular, especially in outer London, has been demonstrated by their candidate for the Uxbridge & South Ruislip parliamentary by-election saying he intends to make that contest a “referendum” on the ULEZ.

In addition, since the hustings party members might have been cheered by the voting intention figures from Redfield & Wilton’s London poll, released yesterday lunchtime, which gave Khan a clear but not enormous eight-point lead over a theoretical Tory candidate as of this time last week.

That margin might be narrowed once the Conservatives have picked their candidate and he or she has become better known to London’s voters. But if that candidate fails to endear, we could see the opposite effect. Which of the trio will the Tory membership opt for? And will their choice be the most likely of the three to remove Sadiq Khan from City Hall?

***

Mozammel Hossain, known as “Moz”, was the first of the contestants to take the stage at the Queen Elizabeth II conference centre. The inclusion of the Bangladesh-born criminal barrister and King’s Counsel on the shortlist had been a complete surprise – especially as minister for London and London MP Paul Scully was left off it.

Hossain’s demeanour might have surprised the audience. Gestural and flamboyant with a staccato speaking style and a strong Bangladeshi accent, he was described by one of those present as “camp and showy”. His calling card to that point had been his village upbringing in his country of birth and subsequent rise to the upper end of the legal profession in London. He now lives in Mile End, which he confidingly characterised as “quite rough” before adding “I can’t say that – it’s very charming”. Hossain described himself as “a passionate Remainer” but added, “we can’t debate that anymore”.

Invited by Aiken to make his case to members and to set out his position on policy areas where Mayors have significant powers, Hossain claimed to be the only candidate able to “reach every part of London including those who’ve never voted for us” and declared that Khan would be “petrified” of him. He said that on his first day in office he would call every borough leader and senior police officer in to see him about tackling “neighbourhood crimes” and would cancel Khan’s ULEZ. He also said he would freeze the Mayor’s share of council tax.

Hossain told Aiken he would make housing more affordable by building homes on land owned by Transport for London, retaining the freehold. This is a policy Khan has being pursuing throughout his seven years at City Hall, adapting an initiative he inherited from Boris Johnson. However, Hossain appeared to propose additional building above Tube stations. “Most of the Underground, it’s not underground, it’s overground,” he said. “So we’ll build over, we’ll cut and cover“.

Daniel Korski, (pictured) a businessman who has previously been a journalist and was a Number 10 policy adviser to David Cameron, came across as confident and energetic with a well-organised, upbeat pitch for reviving what he called “the London dream” of a city that provides opportunities for people to fulfil their ambitions. Danish-born to Jewish refugees from Poland, Korski described coming to London “with a great desire to learn what was at the time the Queen’s English,” self-deprecatingly suggesting that his accent suggested he had failed.

In his campaign video he says: “I may not sound like a traditional Conservative. I may not look like one. I look like what I am. A digital native. An entrepreneur, an immigrant, a 21st Century Londoner. A Conservative who can win in London.” Eager to assure his audience of his Tory credentials, he said he had a “business plan” to make London “faster, smarter, safer, greener, the kind of city where everybody can afford a home and where everybody can walk home safely at night”.

Like Hossain, Korski said he would immediately cancel the ULEZ extension and specified Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley as the senior officer he would call in one his first day. As Mayor, Korski said he would want “more police officers on the street” under a “community-based approach” and “recruit people from adjacent disciplines” such as the military or the NHS under a “direct entry” approach.

On housing, Korski said increasing supply was the answer to increasing affordability but, significantly, stated that this should be concentrated in “inner and central London where young people would like to live, where higher density is more acceptable”. He spoke of an area he called “the Docklands arc” stretching “from Hackney to Canary Wharf”, describing it as comprising “largely low rise social housing and where the council, the Hackney Council, has been really reluctant to do any kind of development. I think we could probably build something like 100,000 homes just in that area.”

The third candidate to appear was Susan Hall, a long-serving Harrow councillor and a member of the London Assembly since 2017, succeeding Kemi Badenoch after she became an MP. In her campaign video Hall makes much of the fact that she is the only candidate with electoral and City Hall experience and claims to have got the measure of Khan in their scrutiny exchanges.

When speaking to Aiken, she referred frequently to years of door-knocking and leafletting and made direct overtures to fellow activists in the audience. “It wouldn’t be I who would beat Khan, it would be we who would beat Khan,” she told them. She also described Margaret Thatcher as a “great role model”.

Like the other candidates she pledged to immediately undo the planned latest ULEZ expansion, but “wouldn’t cut the inner London one”. Better, she argued, to concentrate on air pollution “hot spots” in outer London. “It could be that there are several buses that could be electrified,” she said. “I know it’s expensive but there are budgets there to do it.”

On policing, Hall criticised Rowley, saying “he doesn’t know where all the police officers are…no wonder we’re in such a state”, and promised that if she became Mayor she would “put in a special unit in each of the BCUs [basic command units] to specifically look at burglaries and theft etcetera”. She also said she would invest in metal-detecting wands to make stop-and-search “less intrusive”.

On housing affordability, Hall said, “It’s a simply case of demand and supply – if there’s not enough supply, prices are going to rise, and that’s what’s happened”. She said she opposes “these wretched high rise one and two bedroom flats” and called them “just awful”. She continued: “I’m a supporter of high density housing, but low rise. If someone can have a front door and a little postage stamp of a garden, then that’s fine, they can bring their family up there.”

***

Perhaps inevitably, given the nature of the occasion and the political character of the audience, the massive social and economic shocks London and its economy have been struggling with were barely mentioned during the event.

Hossain made the only explicit mention of Brexit, though Korski, who has said elsewhere he voted Remain, might have had it in mind when noting in passing that increasing housebuilding would have to take place “in a context where a lot of labour has withdrawn”. The Covid pandemic wasn’t even alluded to. The unstated golden rule of this initial beauty contest was that blame for all the city’s current ills should be heaped on the current Mayor.

It was hard to know what to make of Hossain, and perhaps the Tory audience felt the same way. Maybe his novelty will be an asset in the short-term, enabling him to get more attention for any more fully-formed and distinctive ideas he might offer before voting gets underway. But it is difficult to imagine him winning.

Korski was the most original of the three. He was the only candidate who offered a hint of criticism of the London Conservative mindset and the prospect of a refreshment of the Tory brand in a city whose voters have been turning against it. He didn’t mention his interest in “smart” road-user pricing, which was arguably just as well given the visceral opposition of many Tories to any form of it, even though the ULEZ originated with the former Mayor Johnson.

It would be useful to have more detail about his “Docklands arc” housing vision.  London’s boroughs, including Tory ones, might give short shrift to his suggestion that his City Hall would be a “good practice” financial efficiency model for them to follow, having endured a 13-year government funding squeeze since Korski’s old boss David Cameron became Prime Minister in 2010.

As for Hall, there are good reasons for thinking she is the frontrunner. She told activists things they wanted to hear, pointing out that the Met has more “frontline” officers than ever before, but not that Khan has boosted Met funding through council tax hikes she has opposed. She claimed Khan has “been having trouble spending” the money he has secured from the government to help fund affordable housing, yet only last month he announced that he has hit the target the government set for him.

Hall also said Khan is “very unpopular at the moment”, an assertion that looks optimistic given that Redfield & Wilton’s London poll, conducted a week ago, found that 51 per cent of Londoners regard him as having been a good Mayor and that 41 per cent of them intend to vote for him next year, compared to 33 per cent who say they will vote Tory.

Her crowd-pleasing assertions will do Hall no harm as she seeks the candidacy, but it isn’t clear how she would appeal beyond the Tory core, except to however many Labour supporters prepared to abandon Khan over the ULEZ there actually are. Her months of conspicuous loyalty to Boris Johnson – who wrote two books during his time as London’s Mayor, neither of them related to the responsibilities of his office, and also engaged in an extra-marital affair on the side – and her enthusiasm for Brexit would be tempting targets for the Khan campaign.

Tory activists should, perhaps, reflect that grassroots enthusiasm for Johnson, and then for Liz Truss, has led to disgrace, economic mayhem and the prospect of electoral doom for the Tories nationally. Those drawn to backing Hall might enjoy her contempt for Khan, but could do worse than ask themselves if she is the would-be candidate most likely to defeat him.

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: Analysis
Tags: Conservatives, Daniel Korski, Mozammel Hossain, Nickie Aiken, Susan Hall