Stand back and on tiptoe and you can see a layer of crystalline silicon slabs clamped to the roof of the Westway Sports Centre, near Latimer Road, north Kensington. Nearby is the shell of Grenfell. Motor vehicles roar by above. But amid this realm of catastrophe and fumes, green new life has taken root. The […]
“Gentrification” is always front and centre of debates about the impact on east London of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Legacy sceptics claim the “regeneration” of the Lower Lea Valley has resulted only in long-established working-class communities being driven out of their own neighbourhoods by more affluent incomers. Its champions take a different […]
In the early hours of International Women’s Day Labour’s Brenda Dacres was declared elected as the new Mayor of Lewisham. Dacres is the first black woman to become an executive mayor in London and the third directly elected Lewisham Mayor, following Sir Steve Bullock (2002-18) and Damien Egan (2018-2024). The mayoral by-election was caused by […]
Back in December, housing secretary Michael Gove was threatening urgent action against City Hall to get more housebuilding underway in London. Announcing a quickfire probe of possible changes to Sadiq Khan’s London Plan – which was allegedly preventing “thousands of homes” coming forward on brownfield sites in the “heart of our capital” – the minister […]
A veteran local politician who has previously been both a Labour and a Liberal Democrat councillor in his home borough has won a clear victory for the Conservatives in Hackney’s Cazenove ward at Labour’s expense. Ian Sharer, who represented Cazenove as a Lib Dem from 2002 until Labour gained all three seats in 2018, received […]
Politics in Hackney have a history of turbulence as rich and varied as its population. A council by-election to take place on Thursday is forming the latest chapter, with sex, war, religion, apathy, scandal and low traffic neighbourhoods all making appearances. Also, bins. The contest is required because the directly-elected Mayor of Hackney, Caroline Woodley, […]
No matter if they have never visited Banglatown on Brick Lane, British Bangladeshis, along with many in Bangladesh itself, take great pride in its nomenclature. The street, which is mostly located within the Spitalfields & Banglatown ward, holds a special place in people’s hearts. The sense of pride has its roots in the background and […]
Over the last couple of weeks, this column on London’s borough council by-elections has taken the reader from Newham’s densely built-up Plaistow North to the metropolitan village of Highgate in Camden. This week it goes far out into the rural fringe of Greater London in deepest Bromley for a contest in the Hayes & Coney […]
