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Anne Clarke: Ministers must lift financial burden from London’s cladding scandal leaseholders

The numbers of those affected has kept rising and so have the onerous costs they must bear
Anne Clarke

We live in a world full of deadlines. Some of those deadlines are small hurdles and easy to jump. Others are huge, looming over us and casting long shadows across our lives. For leaseholders caught up in the cladding scandal each approaching deadline – whether it’s a mortgage renewal, building insurance provision or service charges – represents a financial hurdle they are already struggling to be able to clear.

Last October, Ritu Saha, a leaseholder and one of the founders of the UK Cladding Action Group, explained to the London Assembly’s fire, resilience and emergency planning committee that, “We are being held both mentally and financially to ransom. If we do not pay these huge bills for waking watches, for insurance and then for remediation, we can lose our home via lease forfeiture. Bankruptcy and homelessness are the real prospects that are facing each and every Londoner who is living in one of these buildings every day.”

The numbers of those affected continues to rise. When Ritu addressed the committee, there were 430 buildings in London with waking watches in place. By December 2020, this had risen to 700 with Andy Roe, Commissioner of the London Fire Brigade (LFB) stating that it “is growing by the day and by the week, which is in itself a burden to service.” As of March 2021 there were 750 buildings in London where leaseholders have been put under this financial onus.

Waking watches are only the tip of the iceberg for London. Across the city there are 257 high rise buildings (above 18 metres) identified as being covered with ACM cladding, the type used on Grenfell Tower. These remain a fire risk, as the recent blaze at New Providence Wharf in Poplar illustrates.

In addition, there are 1,630 high rise buildings in the capital that are registered with the government’s Building Safety Fund for the remediation of other dangerous cladding. Alarmingly, there are an unknown number of buildings across the city less than 18 metres tall that pose a high risk of fire. Building safety effects every London borough and hundreds of thousands of Londoners are fighting to leap the hurdles and meet the deadlines which the cladding crisis has caused.

This impacts on us all. It causes anguish and hardship for leaseholders directly affected and their loved ones. It puts pressure on the LFB, which is now being expected to work harder to keep London’s built environment safe without additional government funding for the extra work this requires. It also puts financial pressure on boroughs councils, which are now providing support and collecting data on buildings in a way that was completely unforeseen just four years ago. And still there is no end in sight.

I know of a building that has paid out £30,000 just to have the right paperwork to register with the Building Safety Fund. This works out as an average of £1,500 per dwelling, with no assurance that there will be remediation of fire safety defects as a result. On top of this, leaseholders are expecting a 1000 per cent rise in buildings insurance premiums when they renew in September this year.

The government has failed to get to grips with the scale of these problems. The Fire Safety Bill has at last become law, though amendments that would have protected leaseholders from escalating costs were rejected. For the thousands of leaseholders across London affected, it offers no protection from bankruptcy and no end to the cladding scandal.

Leaseholders need support now – not piecemeal support which offers possible remediation here or mitigation there, but actual financial support which shoulders the burdens that they didn’t know they were signing up for when they purchased their properties. They need emancipation from waking watch charges, fees for applying for funding, the price of being a mortgage prisoner and extortionate insurance costs. Ministers need to start setting serious about ending these leaseholders’ suffering.

Anne Clarke is London Assembly Member for Barnet & Camden and a member of the Assembly’s fire, resilience and emergency planning committee. Follow Anne on Twitter. Photograph of Grenfell victim tributes by Max Curwen-Bingley.

On London is a small but influential website which strives to provide more of the kind of  journalism the capital city needs. It depends on financial help from readers and is able to offer them something in return. Please consider becoming a supporter. Details here.

Categories: Comment
Tags: Andy Roe, Grenfell Tower, housing, London Assembly, London Fire Brigade

Lewis Baston: London voting patterns 2021. Not so much a doughnut as a swirl

Analysis of how Londoners voted at ward level for Mayor and Assembly on 6 May produces a revealing picture of their concerns and political preferences
Lewis Baston

London elections are, in one way at least, like big Hollywood film productions. There is a lengthy publicity campaign, an all-star launch – although the ExCel centre is hardly a glamorous venue – and then the production is absorbed by the greater public. A few months later the average punter might remember the ending and the main stars and forget about the details.

But the serious fan awaits the Blu-Ray release, with hours of added detail about the final cut and the deleted scenes, the themes and influences, the director’s shot-by-shot analysis. The equivalent of the London Mayor election collector’s edition disk is the data drop by London Elects Results 2021 | London Elects  a couple of weeks later, which has the voting numbers for each of London’s 632 wards plus the City.

For most people, a certain amount of this is interesting, but they would like to hear the short version. This, dear reader, is what I will try to do here, having lost myself in the intricacies for a few days.

The majority of London boroughs have fairly fixed political preferences – seven have voted on first preferences for a Conservative Mayor every time since 2004, while twelve have been consistently Labour. The only two which have consistently swung with the tide and voted for the winner each time have been Merton and Wandsworth.

The Conservatives won three otherwise Labour boroughs at their high point in 2008 – Greenwich, Hounslow and Redbridge – while Labour’s peak performances have had a more varied profile. Ken Livingstone carried Croydon, Harrow, Kingston and Richmond in 2004, and Sadiq Khan won Enfield in 2016 but not in 2021. In compensation, Khan won two boroughs in 2021 which had been Tory every time since 2004 – Hammersmith & Fulham and, more surprisingly, Westminster. He also “gained” the City of London relative to 2016, although it had also voted Labour in 2004.

 

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After second preferences, the leading candidate changed in three boroughs – in Enfield, Kingston and Richmond Khan overtook Tory candidate Shaun Bailey in the final count. The latter two results were a return to the strong Livingstone Labour results in 2004 which had been washed away by the “doughnut strategy” of the Conservative campaign in 2008 and Boris Johnson’s relative acceptability to the liberal suburbs. Khan’s strength was reflected both in the first preference vote – he gained the support of many people who support the Liberal Democrats for other contests – and in the second preferences, where he attracted Greens and Lib Dems.

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Khan’s victory was built on similar foundations to London’s majority for Remain in the 2016 EU referendum: it was no accident that his most impressive results were in boroughs like Hammersmith & Fulham, Wandsworth and Westminster which had voted Remain by significant margins but turned in Conservative majorities in the 2016 mayoral election that preceded it. The traditional patterns of voting have not been completely overturned: strongly Leave Barking & Dagenham is still Labour and pro-Remain Kensington & Chelsea still Conservative, although with dented majorities in both cases.

 

Screenshot 2021 05 29 at 12.59.23

Looking at the map in more fine-grained detail, in two boroughs – Havering and Sutton – the Conservatives won every ward, nearly all by comfortable margins. The boot was on the other foot in eight all-Labour boroughs – Hackney, Haringey, Islington, Lambeth, Newham, Southwark, Tower Hamlets and most surprisingly Camden- and in the City. The Conservatives only carried one ward in Wandsworth in the second round, but can point to their success in conquering old-style Labour outer areas such as New Addington and Harold Hill, and even picking off a lone ward in all-Labour Newham (Custom House) on the first preference count.

Screenshot 2021 05 29 at 13.03.02

The swing by ward since the 2016 mayoral contest was astonishingly variable. The biggest swing (on first preferences) to Conservative was in the Little Ilford ward of Newham (19.2 per cent), and the biggest to Labour was in South Richmond (17.1 per cent). When there is a spread this big between elections with a similar overall result, it is a sign that the tectonic plates have moved.

Swing is a simple measure that sums up some complex phenomena: the swing to Conservative in some wards is exaggerated by voters using their first preference for other candidates but returning to Khan on the second preference count. Another factor increasing the pro-Bailey swing is the lower turnout among young and ethnic minority voters than in 2016, which reduces the Labour lead without the Conservative vote having risen.

But it is undeniable that Bailey achieved some impressive results in previously barren territory. The best Conservative swings were in a band of territory from Stepney to Rainham and from Tottenham to Enfield Lock, and there were clear patches of pro-Tory swing in other working-class white and diverse areas in outer London, including many “council estate” areas – St Helier, Downham and Thamesmead, for instance.

Even in Inner London, the Tory counter-swing in Labour-swinging territory came in relatively deprived areas – Church Street and Queens Park in Westminster, Stonebridge in Brent, Latchmere and Roehampton in Wandsworth. Labour’s best swings were in a band of territory west and south of the City, out to Surbiton and Hampton, and in a few highly affluent suburban areas – Pinner, Beckenham and Cheam.

Khan also improved his position in several wards with significant Jewish communities: Garden Suburb and Golders Green in Barnet, and neighbouring areas in Camden. This reflected his efforts at building relations with London’s Jews and the change in Labour’s national leadership. Khan was less successful with London’s Hindus, with a further adverse swing on top of bad results in 2016 in Harrow and Brent, particularly around Kenton.

Curiously, the swing map is pretty much the inverse of what happened between 2008 and 2012, when Johnson gained support in the south west and centre – running Labour close even in Camden – while Livingstone picked up particularly well along the Lea Valley and in working class outer London. Perhaps there are categories of people who grow to like or dislike mayors, whatever their party or personality, after one term of office?

For a little bit of fun, I thought I might try a different way of slicing up London politically – one I don’t think has been done before. I grouped all the wards in London by their TfL zone and worked out the Mayor and Assembly results, and the result is less the famous “doughnut” than a cinnamon swirl.

The battlegrounds are Zone 1 – containing plush central residential areas such as Knightsbridge but also some social housing in places such as King’s Cross and Southwark – and Zone 4, which includes many of the town centres that have long been absorbed into London, for example Ilford, Southall and Richmond. Zones 2 and 3, where the London identity is strongest, voted heavily for Khan while Zones 5 and 6 – which include suburbs that shade into Kent, Surrey and Essex – were strongly for Bailey.

Screenshot 2021 05 29 at 13.06.21

The “swirl” idea of London voting behaviour shows several significant patterns. The highly Conservative outer ring extends only part way into Zone 5, a relatively thin layer of Conservative dominance in the suburbs before one reaches competitive territory. These are the most car-oriented places, where the traditional Conservative campaigning points about motoring are best-received and worries about Bailey’s phantom “outer London tax” meant most.

These arguments seem to have extended inwards along some roads – the faster bits of the A13 and the A10 stand out. The swing to the Conservatives was actually highest in the halfway out areas of London – the diverse suburban territory between the car-driving outer ring and the metropolitan heart of Inner London where the Conservatives were very weak. The centre of the swirl at Zone 1, covering the wealthiest areas of Britain (and a few of the most deprived) but where relatively few voters live, voted more strongly Labour than in 2016. but it is still significantly more Tory than the layers just outside it on the Tube map.

Voters seem in a more experimental mood when they vote for Mayor than for the London Assembly. Sadiq Khan was a lightning-rod for groups that were disgruntled with Labour, such as Harrow Hindus and Dagenham working-class whites, polling well below Labour’s Assembly candidates. But he was also more attractive to Richmond liberals and Wandsworth bankers, who stuck with the Lib Dems or Tories at Assembly level. Khan polled double the Labour Londonwide list vote in Richmond, but only 78 per cent  of the Labour list vote in Barking & Dagenham.

Bailey’s best results relative to the Tory list – around half as many votes again – were in some deprived wards of Tower Hamlets and Southwark (although getting 1.5 times the baseline Tory vote in these areas is still not a lot of votes). There was nowhere Bailey fell hugely behind the Conservative list vote, and his vote had a more orthodox distribution than Khan’s.

These variations, and the overall comfortable but not overwhelming Labour lead across London, resulted in Labour Assembly candidates winning rather more wards than the Mayor. There were 14 Conservative-Khan wards, but 46 that voted Labour for Assembly constituency and Bailey for Mayor. Some of this reflects the greater fragmentation of the centre-left vote on the first round (Khan “gained” 30 wards on the second count), but also the wide variation of Khan’s vote either side of the Assembly baseline.

Screenshot 2021 05 29 at 13.09.50

Sian Berry of the Greens polled best in Dalston in Hackney, and Luisa Porritt of the Lib Dems had her relative stronghold in Berrylands, Kingston. You Tuber Niko Omilana, who finished fifth, polled over 5 per cent in 18 wards, mostly diverse and youthful areas, and Count Binface fared best in Crystal Palace (Bromley) and the City of London. Brian Rose’s frankly baffling campaign was best received in Forest Gate North (Newham).

There are endless details to be mined out of these elections, and I may be playing with these tables for some time. Did you know, for instance, that the loudly anti-elitist Laurence Fox polled more than 5 per cent in only two wards – which happened to be the most elite enclaves anywhere in Britain, namely Royal Hospital in Chelsea and Knightsbridge & Belgravia in Westminster?

The results offer a few pointers to the borough council elections due less than a year from now. Labour must cast an anxious eye over Harrow, which some in the party worried would be lost in 2018 and looks difficult to defend in 2022 on these numbers. Voting in Croydon suggests a potential challenge – Labour lead in enough wards to retain control, but need to avoid leaking votes to the Greens. Hammersmith & Fulham should be less of a worry than Enfield.

The Lib Dems are in good shape in Kingston and Richmond. The Conservatives should be approaching the election in Barnet with renewed confidence and would need to slip back further to worry about Westminster because of advantageous ward boundaries and the concentration of the Labour vote in the north west of the borough.

The most imperilled Tory council is undoubtedly Wandsworth, where Labour dominated in the 2021 elections and now has all three MPs. It would be big news if this fortress fell after 44 years of continuous Conservative control. Take your seats, please, for the London elections of May 2022.

On London is a small but influential website which strives to provide more of the kind of  journalism the capital city needs. It depends on financial help from readers and is able to offer them something in return. Please consider becoming a supporter. Details here.

Categories: Analysis
Tags: Conservative, Count Binface, Green Party, Hindus, Jews, Labour, Laurence Fox, Liberal Democrats, London Assembly, London Mayor Election 2021, Luisa Porritt, Niko Omilana, Sadiq Khan, Shaun Bailey, Sian Berry, Wandsworth

Vic Keegan’s Lost London 197: Grimaldi, the clown’s clown

He was the most popular theatrical performer of his time and is honoured by a park in Islington
Victor Keegan

Not many clowns have parks named after them or have their lives written up by famous authors. Joseph Grimaldi, a master of his craft, had both. Charles Dickens edited his biography and Grimaldi himself is buried in Joseph Grimaldi Park, a former churchyard, not far from King’s Cross station (see photo).

Grimaldi was a clown’s clown. The most popular entertainer of the Regency era, he was reckoned to be the “funniest and best loved” man in the theatre. He knew riches but, like so many of his kind, there was unhappiness behind the mask. He died a pauper, depressed and alcoholic.

Grimaldi spawned thousands of imitators, who adopted his pioneering antics. As with all comedians he had a catchphrase, “Here we are!”, which became nationally famous.  Dickens apparently shouted it as he bounded into the foyer of the Tremont hotel in New York on one of his literary tours.

Clowns have been around in one form or another since Egyptian and Greek times. They appeared in England with medieval minstrels or as jesters in the court, in Italy as Harlequins, and in France as Pierrots. Shakespeare used the comic actors William Kempe and Robert Armin as clowns, who often improvised.

Some trace British clowns back to the buffoons of the medieval mystery plays planting the seeds for the likes of Grimaldi, who was the template of the modern circus clown with his whitewashed face, red nose and slapstick comedy, even though he didn’t actually do circuses. His lasting influence has been recognised for decades through a memorial service held each year at the Holy Trinity church in Hackney, which attracts hundreds of costumed clowns from around the world.

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Sadly, Grimaldi’s life echoed the joy and sadness of a typical clown’s routine. He was born in 1778 in Clare Market, a very poor area of London, where the London School of Economics campus now stands. His father was an entertainer and a serial philanderer with at least ten children from various mistresses. He brought young Joseph into his shows at an early stage until he became a star in his own right, notably at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane and the Sadler’s Wells and Covent Garden theatres.

Grimaldi had his failures – Puss in Boots was booed off the stage in 1818 and closed after one night – but in general he was so extraordinarily successful that clowns became known as “Joeys”. His most successful show was the highly profitable Mother Goose in 1806, which made a record £20,000 in profit in the currency of the day and ran for 111 performances over two years at the Covent Garden Theatre. Grimaldi himself was dissatisfied with his performance. Others thought it a work of genius.

He eagerly took up provincial gigs as they paid better. He played Scaramouche in a revival of Don Juan in Cheltenham based on Byron’s original poem, after which he met the famous poet in nearby Gloucester. Instead of Grimaldi being impressed by Lord Byron it was the other way round. Byron said he felt “great and unbounded satisfaction in becoming acquainted with a man of such rare and profound talents”.

But Grimaldi’s steadily declined later in his life. From 1828 until 1836 he had to rely on charity payments. He was almost crippled and his wife Mary suffered a stroke shortly before the death of their son. He could still make light of his condition: “I make you laugh at night but am Grim-all-day” he quipped, but the end was near. The pair made a suicide pact but the poisons only produced stomach aches and the plan was abandoned. After Mary died in 1834, Grimaldi moved to 33 Southampton Street, Islington (now Calshot Street) where he ended his years.

On May 31 1837, despite feeling chest pains, he had his final night at his local pub, The Marquis of Cornwallis (now defunct), where he apparently spent a convivial evening entertaining fellow customers and drinking to excess. He was found dead in bed by his housekeeper the following morning. The coroner concluded that he had “died by the visitation of God” which probably wouldn’t have surprised the Prince of Clowns.

He was buried on 5 June 5 1837i n St. James’s Churchyard, Pentonville, which was later renamed in his honour.

Many of Vic Keegan’s Lost London columns are now available in book form. Buy a copy HERE.

Categories: Culture, Lost London
Tags: Calshot Street, Charles Dickens, Drury Lane, King's Cross station, Sadler's Wells

Sadiq Khan warns that government planning reforms threaten London local democracy and high streets

The Mayor's concerns are in line with those of a new think tank report, among others
Charles Wright

House-hunters shouldn’t expect to be looking for a home on Oxford Street any time soon, Sadiq Khan has told London Assembly members.

Speaking yesterday at his first Mayor’s Question Time session since his convincing election victory earlier this month, the Mayor expressed concern about new “permitted development” proposals allowing shops to be converted to housing without requiring planning permission, as well as wider possible changes in response to the coronavirus emergency.

“We’ve got to be careful we don’t make permanent physical changes based on a temporary pandemic,” he said. “There is a place for residential in the centre of London but I’m not in favour of some of the buildings on Oxford Street, for example, being converted from retail to housing.” 

Permitted development rules could be used as “a way of getting round the safeguards on design quality, type of housing, community gain and so forth”, the Mayor warned, while the government’s new Planning Bill proposals to effectively greenlight new housing in areas designated for development could amount to what some were already calling a “developers’ charter”.

“I’m not saying all developers are bad, or that all developments are bad,” Khan said. But if you take out the local input it could lead to developments that are not good for the local community and don’t respect local heritage.” He added: “We’ve got to be careful about developers or civil servants in Whitehall taking the decisions out of local politicians’ hands.”

Khan’s concerns came in the wake of warnings this week from the Centre for London think tank that successful high streets were reliant on a range of different uses, including community space, to sustain footfall, and that “inappropriate” residential development could “hasten the decline of the high street even further, affecting the viability of other commercial uses beyond retail.”

The Centre’s Community Town Centres report argues that powers to prevent “excessive commercial-to-residential conversion” in high streets and town centres is essential and calls for the extension of permitted development rights to be reconsidered. 

The report was backed by newly-elected assembly member Sakina Sheikh, planning lead for the Assembly’s Labour group, who described the extension of permitted development rights as “riding roughshod over democracy”.

Underlining his confidence in economic recovery, Khan reminded the Assembly that his “first act” on starting his second term had been to launch the £6 million “Let’s Do London” campaign, billed as the capital’s largest ever domestic tourism drive, to “encourage visitors and Londoners back into the heart of our city”.

But answering questions on City Hall housing priorities, the Mayor also confirmed that the supply of new housing in the capital is lagging behind demand, with government funding also well short of the estimated £4.9 billion a year required over the current decade to provide enough affordable homes. Current funding for London amounts to £4 billion in total to 2026.

Watch the 27 May 2021 Mayor’s Question Time in full here.

On London is a small but influential website which strives to provide more of the kind of  journalism the capital city needs. It depends on financial help from readers and is able to offer them something in return. Please consider becoming a supporter. Details here.

Categories: News
Tags: Centre For London, coronavirus, COVID-19 London, housing, London Assembly, Mayor's Question Time, Oxford Street, planning, Sadiq Khan, Sakina Sheikh

Government has offered no response to Transport for London funding proposals, Sadiq Khan confirms

There has been no engagement with the capital's transport authority's 115-pages of proposals, despite a requirement to supply them
Dave Hill

Transport for London has received no response from the government to a detailed plan it submitted in January for placing its finances on a stable footing post-pandemic, Sadiq Khan confirmed today, despite the deadline for reaching a new funding settlement being due to expire tomorrow.

The terms of the government’s second emergency funding package, which came into effect last autumn, stated that “TfL will, by 11 Jan 2021, produce a single, comprehensive management plan with options as to how a trajectory to financial sustainability could be achieved” as soon as possible.

However, the Mayor said at this morning’s Mayor’s Question Time (MQT) session, the first since his re-election on 6 May, that the government has not engaged with the TfL plan at all, with communication limited to an acknowledgement that the document had been received.

“So far we’ve received no formal response or any response to the plan we submitted by the deadline,” Khan said, answering a question from Green Party London Assembly Member Sian Berry, who had heard heard TfL commissioner Andy Byford disclose the information at a TfL committee meeting last Friday.

The 115-page plan acknowledged that many of its proposals would “take time to develop and implement” and require “significant collaboration” between the government, the Mayor and TfL if they were to be brought in successfully.

Key proposals including devolving to TfL Vehicle Excise Duty (VED) collected in the capital but almost entirely spent elsewhere in the country or introducing, by October 2023 at the earliest, a daily Greater London Boundary Charge on motor vehicles registered outside the capital each time they entered it of £3.50, or £5.50 for the most polluting ones.

However, transport secretary Grant Shapps appeared to dismiss the VED suggestion soon after it was submitted and in early February went on to publicly rubbish the boundary charge idea.

These interventions did not prevent Conservative London Mayor candidate Shaun Bailey repeatedly falsely claiming throughout his recent unsuccessful election campaign that such a boundary charge – which he chose to call an “outer London tax” – would be introduced if Khan won, even pretending to voters four days before the election that it “would mean anyone driving into Greater London would have to pay £5.50”.

In further exchanges with Berry, Khan said that without more financial help “you’ve either got to massively reduce expenditure or find other ways to raise revenues.” He added that it will be some time before pre-pandemic levels of public transport use return, with the Underground at 40 per cent of normal levels yesterday and buses at around 60 per cent. Khan stressed that “we need to keep running a full service because otherwise people aren’t going to come back.”

Khan also told Berry that when meeting with his nine fellow English city Mayors earier this week discussions had included “conversations around the CRS [government comprehensive spending review] and what bids we put in as a group as well as what we put in as individual mayors.” He said he hoped the next review “creates an opportunity to put us all in the same place” as opposed to the different arrangements presently in place.

Later, the Mayor declined to be drawn by Tory AM Tony Devenish, who represents the West Central constituency, on when the temporary increases in the price and operating hours of the central London congestion charge would end, saying it would not be appropriate to engage in a “running commentary” on the continuing discussions with the government.

Khan reiterated that the current charge level of £15, which is in effect seven days a week from 7.00 a.m. until 10.00 pm which came about as part of the first emergency funding settlement last May, was imposed on TfL by the government. On London understands from someone who was close to those negotiations that the change was strongly approved of by Boris Johnson’s special adviser on transport Andrew Gilligan, a former media supporter of the Prime Minister.

“I want us to be back in charge of what the congestion charge should be,” Khan told Devenish. “That autonomy means we can decide what works for our city rather than either the secretary of state, a Number 10 adviser, or civil servants in Whitehall or the DfT.”

On London is a small but influential website which strives to provide more of the kind of  journalism the capital city needs. It depends on financial help from readers and is able to offer them something in return. Please consider becoming a supporter. Details here.

 

Categories: News
Tags: Andrew Gilligan, Green Party, Sadiq Khan, Sian Berry, Tony Devenish, Transport for London

More than one million Londoners are claiming Universal Credit

The number has risen steadily throughout the duration of the pandemic and is now the highest in Britain
Dave Hill

Over one million Londoners, close to one in nine, have been claiming Universal Credit in recent months as the financial impacts of the pandemic intensify.

A new briefing from City Hall’s intelligence unit using Department for Work and Pensions figures confirms that the one million barrier was broken earlier this year, continuing a steady rise from just over 400,000 in March 2020 when the first lockdown began.

Of the current one million-plus claimants 467,000 are categorised as searching for work while a further 180,000 are in some form of employment but are “expected to look for more or better work”, the briefing says.

Another 186,000 Londoners are finding their incomes insufficient and claiming Universal Credit to top-up their limited earnings. In some cases, these are people supported by the government’s furlough scheme, which covers most of but not all of their usual wage.

Close to 200,000 Londoners claiming the benefit are not expected to be working for reasons of poor health or because they have to care for others. This is the group whose numbers have increased the least since March 2020.

The total number of Universal Credit claimants in Britain has doubled since Covid-19 struck but the briefing says it “has increased further and more rapidly in London than in any other region”.

A previously “relatively low” proportion of the capital’s working age residents has risen to around 17.5 per cent and now matches that of the North East of England, which had the highest proportion in the country pre-Covid.

The overall London claimant increase of 140 per cent has not be evenly spread, with Newham and Brent seeing the largest increases both as a proportion of their working age residents and in absolute numbers. Each borough now contains over 30,000 more Universal Credit claimants than they did pre-pandemic. The number in Brent is “nearly three times as high as in March 2020”, the briefing says.

There are now nine boroughs where more than one in five residents are claimants, including Barking & Dagenham, Croydon and Hounslow.

New research by think tank the Institute for Public Policy Research has shown that the proportion of “working poor” households in London is much higher than in the rest of the UK.

On London is a small but influential website which strives to provide more of the kind of  journalism the capital city needs. It depends on financial help from its readers and is able to offer them something in return. Please consider becoming a supporter. Details here.

Categories: News
Tags: Barking & Dagenham, Brent, coronavirus, COVID-19 London, Croydon, employment, Hounslow, Newham, Universal Credit

What is really happening to the size of London’s population?

A new assessment of some uncertain data draws a cautious conclusion or two
Dave Hill

There is a populist addiction to “London exodus” stories. They excite media catastrophism and fuel ideologue narratives ranging from “white flight” to “social cleansing” to the “London-is-a-fallen-hellhole” strand of contemporary anti-London sentiment.

This helps explain why an estimate made in January that as many as 700,000 overseas-born Londoners might have left the city since the start of the pandemic has attained the status of a fixed and proven truth. But was it an accurate gauge of the size of the capital’s population and is it now?

The first thing to note is that Michael O’Connor and Jonathan Portes, the number crunchers who arrived at the 700,000 figure for the Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence, advised at the time that “much of this may be temporary, if non-UK born people return to London after the pandemic”. The second thing to note is that others believe different conclusions about London’s Covid-period population size can be drawn from the same data.

Madeleine Sumption at Oxford University’s Migration Observatory argued that changes in the way the Office for National Statistics (ONS) Labour Force Survey (LFS) – the key statistical source – has been compiled under lockdown conditions might have skewed its findings. She wrote: “When the pandemic hit, ONS switched to a socially distanced method of recruiting people into statistical surveys, and this appears to have disproportionately affected migrants’ participation.”

The socially-distanced method was recruiting survey respondents by telephone rather than through face-to-face interaction. In line with Sumption, Ian Gordon of the London School of Economics thinks this has seriously discouraged participation by the quarter or so of people in Britain born overseas – many of them Londoners – who lack confidence when speaking English. “This would substantially reduce the overall representation within the LFS (after the lockdown) of those born overseas, relative to those born in the UK – even if their actual numbers had not changed,” Gordon writes.

What, then, is actually going on with London’s population size? The GLA’s City Intelligence department has produced a report which looks at all the available evidence and decided it is still “too early to reliably quantify population change since the start of the pandemic” but, even so, “it is hard not to conclude that the population of London is likely to have fallen”. That said: “The scale of such a fall is likely to be far short of the more dramatic figures reported in the press in recent months.”

The report’s view is that uncertainty about this issue is likely to continue for some time to come, though it does have “good evidence” about some of the factors at work.

One concerns what is called “natural change”, which means the difference between the number of births and the number of deaths. In London, the birth rate has long been higher than the death rate and this has been a big driver behind our 30-year population boom. But that difference has been “lower over the past year than at any point since the 2000s,” says the report, “the result of a continued decline in the number of births and some 20,000 deaths as a direct result of the pandemic.”

In addition, migration to London from the rest of the UK and overseas will have fallen substantially from its pre-pandemic level as a result of job losses, office closures and travel restrictions. Any fall in flows out of London will have been to a lesser degree, the report finds. In summary, it says:

“More important than the absolute size of any immediate drop in population will be the extent to which changes persist as restrictions are eased and the city begins to recover. Some impacts, notably net outflows of those that worked in the hospitality and tourism sectors, are likely to be readily reversed by economic recovery and a return of jobs to London. Others, such as the likely additional net loss of families to the wider region, are likely to take more time to undo.”

Read the report in full via here.

On London is a small but influential website which strives to provide more of the kind of  journalism the city needs. It depends heavily on financial support from its readers and is able to offer them something in return. Details here.

Categories: Analysis
Tags: coronavirus, COVID-19 London, population

Haringey: New council leader and new cabinet but will the faction fighting end?

Joseph Ejiofor has been replaced after three years at the helm but the job might be no easier for his successor Peray Ahmet
Charles Wright

Haringey Council’s ruling cabinet will have a very new look after Thursday’s annual meeting of the authority, following the recent one-vote ousting of Labour group leader Joseph Ejiofor by Peray Ahmet.

Born and raised in the borough, Ahmet, who will be the council’s first Muslim leader, will replace eight of the nine-person cabinet, including high-profile activist Emine Ibrahim, London Labour and Momentum board member and a Londonwide list candidate in the recent London Assembly election, who had overseen the council’s “1,000 homes at council rent” drive.

Also out are councillors Matt White, who was leading on the borough’s first Low Traffic Neighbourhoods, Kirsten Hearn, who recently trumpeted the “great Corbyn Council project”, Kaushika Amin, Mark Blake, Sarah James, and veteran councillors Charles Adje and Gideon Bull.

Ahmet had herself previously been sacked from Ejiofor’s cabinet at the end of 2018, along with Zena Brabazon, with Ejiofor saying he wanted to eradicate “a number of persistent personal conflicts”.

Brabazon, who had been local party members’ choice as leader in an “indicative” vote held after the 2018 elections before the Labour group backed Ejiofor instead, is now back in the cabinet for the third time. She had returned in 2019 but was sacked for a second time last year, with Ejiofor saying she had failed to keep him informed about a child protection case. 

Into the cabinet too come long-standing councillors John Bevan and Isidoros Diakides, who will take over the finance brief, plus Julie Davies, Ruth Gordon, Lucia Das Neves and Mike Hakata, who will serve as deputy council leader. The one survivor from the Ejiofor regime is Seema Chandwani, firmly on the left, and widely held to have been an effective overseer of customer services, parking, waste and “streetscene”.

Will the change bring some stability after what has been a turbulent time for the “Corbyn council”? Factionalism hasn’t gone away, according to one person close to the process, and the bloc which came together to oust Ejiofor is a “pretty broad coalition”, with members as concerned about being kept informed and Ejiofor’s decision to cancel last year’s group AGM, as they are about political direction.

There was a strong pro-Ejiofor lobby among party members beyond the council chamber – even apparently including former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn ringing round councillors ahead of the meeting – suggesting that those predicting an outbreak of harmony may be optimistic. Leading the group with just a one vote majority won’t be easy. 

In Twitter messages after her election, Ahmet said she was “so proud to have the chance to move our community forward with fairness, decency and respect at the core of all we do.” She thanked Ejiofor for his “contribution to our Borough”, adding: “I look forward to working with all Councillors in the interests of all those who live, learn and work here in Haringey.” Ejiofor, writing in the local Ham and High newspaper, was less fulsome about Ahmet: “I know she has coveted the role for a number of years, and I wish her well”.

An early challenge for the new leader will be the council’s controversial plans to demolish the Love Lane estate in Tottenham, with 500 new “council-rent” homes on offer as part of the proposed High Road West partnership scheme with developers Lendlease. A long-awaited decision to stage a resident ballot on the plans, with £91 million from City Hall to boost affordable housing numbers at stake , was put on hold the day after Ahmet’s election.

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Categories: News
Tags: Emine Ibrahim, Haringey Council, Jeremy Corbyn, Joseph Ejiofor, Labour, Momentum, Peray Ahmet, Seema Chandwani, Tottenham