LDN Weekly – Issue 313 – 25 April 2024 – Home Straight

Dear Reader,

The race for City Hall is now in the home straight, with just over a week to go until polls open. In the past week, we’ve seen the two frontrunners publish their manifestos. Cue lots of frantic CTRL+F searches of both manifestos by journalists, civil society and campaign groups (and, no doubt, the opposing side’s campaign teams) hunting for favoured issues, buzzwords or perhaps even material for launching political attacks.

In today’s LDN we delve into both manifestos, looking beyond the front covers, carefully chosen images and cleverly crafted wording to give our insight on what both are offering to Londoners. But with manifestos, nearly as important as what’s included is what’s not included. With Khan’s manifesto slimmer than in 2016 and 2021, the reduced word count sees some things from the last manifesto not making the cut this time. Hall’s was relatively short too, but very much confirmed her campaign messaging to date –  tough on crime, pro-motorist and about listening to Londoners.

Mayoral manifestos also reflect the particularly unique role of the office. Yes, mayors have statutory responsibilities but (at least compared to similar cities around the world) these are pretty limited. By far the biggest part of the Mayor’s remit is Transport for London, with a smattering of strategic powers such as on planning, responsibility for adult skills and the affordable housing budget. Yet even where mayors are accountable (policing being the most obvious example) it is messy, with Whitehall retaining considerable power – and the Mayor having little sway over the causes of crime or the rehabilitation of offenders.

But the mayoralty is partly a victim of its own success – the office-holder has high recognition among the city’s voters (confirmed recently in the polling by Centre for Cities) and is backed by an enormous direct mandate. Many campaign groups look to commitments by the candidates to promote their causes from City Hall, knowing that the Mayor of London on board can be hugely powerful. City Hall’s bully pulpit is a highly effective convener, influencer, lobbyist and champion.

Both previous mayors are on record saying how much more they got done when their own party was in power nationally. Khan’s eight years as Mayor have seen only a Conservative government in Westminster. If the polls are right, there could be a political alignment by the end of the year with Labour in charge in City Hall and Westminster. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a slug of Khan’s commitments explicitly rely on Keir Starmer in 10 Downing Street to deliver them – and his manifesto shows the hallmarks of having been drafted in close cooperation with Starmer’s team. Hall, on the other hand, has no such commitments with her manifesto reading (and looking) as if written (perhaps deliberately) in total isolation from the Tory Government. We don’t have long now until we know which of them will be in a position to begin implementing what they’ve promised voters.

We will be producing an Election Special Edition of LDN on Sunday 5 May with all the latest results and reaction – look out for this landing in your inbox.

Nick Bowes, Managing Director, Insight

nb@londoncommunications.co.uk

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A TALE OF TWO MANIFESTOS

Manifesto-to-toe: The two front-runners in the race for City Hall published their manifestos. We’ve cast our eye over what’s in them (and what is missing).

A Fairer, Safer, Greener London for Everyone: Sadiq Khan's manifesto …72 pages …(approximately) 140 commitments. Simmer than his previous manifestos. Includes references to Keir Starmer (including a photo with Khan), 39 mentions of ‘Labour’, with a strong theme of cooperation with an incoming Labour Government, including at least 18 commitments explicitly conditional on there being a Labour government.

Built environment headlines: Build 40,000 council homes by end of the decade, create new Land Assembly Zones and Mayoral Development Corporations to boost housebuilding, establish a City Hall developer to build affordable homes, establish an overcrowding taskforce, 6,000 ‘Rent Control Homes’, deliver a New Deal for Renters, work with councils and housing associations on retrofitting homes and offices, strengthen planning to support delivery of affordable homes.

Best of the rest: Fares freeze until 2025, expanded Superloop network, backing (but no funding) for big infrastructure projects like Bakerloo Line and DLR extensions, continued investment in walking & cycling, a new London Growth plan, further backing for creative industries and culture.

And breathe… A new vision for central London’s businesses and tourist industry, explore a 2040 Olympic bid, free school meals for primary school children, end rough sleeping by 2030, keep ULEZ as is for next four years, oppose airport expansion in London, zero emission bus fleet by 2030, 1300 extra police and community support officers.

What’s missing? Compared to the 2021 manifesto, absent are mentions of protecting the Green Belt, London Living Rent, calls for rent control powers, active travel journey targets, 15 minute cities, LTNs, London Power energy company, waste/recycling, strikes/industrial relations, Night Czar role, Parliament Square pedestrianisation, Sutton Tram Link extension.

Below the surface… Crossrail 2 mentioned in context of safeguarding the route only. Given Khan’s championing of improved air quality, perhaps unsurprisingly Silvertown Tunnel doesn’t appear.

Our quick take: A shorter manifesto than the two previous elections, invariably leading to a scramble for what’s in and what’s out, strong focus on council housing, fares freeze, free school meals, Khan’s liberal values. Also reads as if it has been written in close co-operation with Keir Starmer’s team given the ambitions that require a Labour government to be delivered (begging the question what would happen if Labour doesn’t win the General Election).

A Mayor Who Listens: Susan Hall's manifesto …27 pages …41 separate commitments, built around the ‘pro-motorist, tough on crime, Khan isn’t listening’ campaign focus to date.

Built environment headlines: Prioritising family homes, high density/low rise development, tall buildings only in ‘appropriate areas’, bring more empty homes back in to use, protect the Green Belt from ‘Sadiq Khan’s allies’, overhaul the London Plan to cut excessive red tape, encourage more homes on surplus industrial land and near stations, more flex on car parking spaces in new developments, lend City Hall planners to councils to clear application backlogs.

Best of the rest: ULEZ expansion scrapped on day 1, unwanted LTNs scrapped, 20mph speed limits on TfL roads reviewed, expanded Night Tube, boost in electric vehicle charging points, increased numbers of electric buses, more funding for policing to recruit 1500 more officers, restore borough policing, focus on knife crime, burglaries, robbery and women’s safety.

What’s missing? No mentions of house building targets, affordability percentages in new developments, rough sleeping, backing for big transport infrastructure projects and commuter rail devolution. And interestingly for a Conservative politician, no business section (and nothing on the creative industries and culture).

Desperately seeking Sunak: Also not mentioned is Hall being a Conservative Party candidate, bar a tiny imprint at the foot of the back page. Also absent are any photographs with Rishi Sunak or other cabinet members.

Our quick take: No huge surprises in Hall’s manifesto, tightly drafted around the core campaign messaging, little on using the role as a voice for London, quite ‘Reform-y’ with a strong pro-motorist stance, likely to play well in key audiences in the outer boroughs where Hall needs to do well.

LONDON POLITICS ROUNDUP

Mind the gap: Manifestos now published, the latest YouGov poll shows the gap between the two main candidates narrowing, with Khan on 46% and Hall on 27%. This 19-point gap smaller than the 25-point gap in February’s YouGov poll. However, this masks a bigger story, with Khan’s lead in Inner London surging to 50 points, while in Outer London it shrank to just five.

Faux pas: Hall’s campaign trail hit the Henry Prince Estate in Earlsfield this week. Perhaps a case of tanks-on-Khan’s-lawn given this is where her Labour rival grew up? But no – Hall admitted to ITV London she was unaware the estate was where Khan was raised.

Hustings: In a campaign in which the two main candidates have avoided many of the hustings, Tuesday evening saw the Labour, Conservative, Lib Dem and Green candidates take part in an LBC debate.

Exchanging blows: Topics covered included housing, transport, crime and free school meals. Khan accused Hall of being ‘the most dangerous candidate’ he has fought against to date, while Hall said that ‘nobody believes’ what the Mayor says.

Policing: During the debate, all four candidates expressed confidence in under-fire Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley, after two separate incidents in a matter of days once again brought the spotlight on the city’s police force.

Policing protests: At the weekend, a police officer was filmed threatening to arrest an anti-Semitism activist at a pro-Palestine march, describing him as ‘openly Jewish’ and that there could be ‘reaction’ to his presence at the protest.

Backtracking: The Met’s original apology – which said that opponents of the protests ‘must know that their presence is provocative’ - drew further criticism and was later withdrawn – leading to a further apology about the apology. A spokesperson for the Mayor said that the Met’s actions were ‘concerning’ and ‘insensitive’ and that it was ‘right’ that they had apologised.

Another apology: The force has also issued an apology to Baroness Doreen Lawrence for their failure to update her on the aborted probe into a sixth suspect related to the death of her son Stephen. On the 31^st anniversary of Stephen’s murder, the Met apologised for the ‘totally unacceptable’ failure.

Independent review: The Mayor of London said that the Lawrences had been ‘let down’ by the police over three decades, and announced a review of the Met’s handing of the new evidence by an independent police force.

• Stanhope and Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan have unveiled new plans for 70 Gracechurch Street following the purchase of the site from Tenacity back in 2022. The KPF designed proposals reimagine a previous consent granted in 2021 with many elements of the existing building re-used and plans to transform the site into a new southwest gateway to Leadenhall Market aligning with the City of London Corporation’s ‘Destination City’ ambitions.
  
  
• Countryside and One Housing have unveiled new plans to redevelop the 120-home Juniper Crescent estate in Camden following the withdrawal of previous redevelopment plans in 2020. The developer’s proposals include the demolition of the 1990s estate and the delivery of eight new residential blocks up to 15 storeys in height, containing 475 homes (at least 50% affordable), plus 4,600 sqm of open green space. 63% of the estate’s residents voted in favour of redevelopment in a January 2023 ballot.
  
  
• Caleus has received planning permission from Westminster City Council for a ‘deep retrofit’ and extension of a seven-storey office building on Dering Street, Mayfair. The developer’s plans for the building, which was bought from Legal & General in 2022, includes adding four floors and a new façade and core offering a total 33,000 sq ft of office and ground floor retail space, along with terraces on the sixth and seventh floors.
  
  
• Overcourt has secured planning permission from Southwark Council for the redevelopment of two office buildings at Paris Garden. The developer proposes retaining the four storey, 4,074 sqm building while retaining and refurbishing parts of the five-storey building to increase overall office floorspace to around 150,000 sq ft in an building built up to 11 storeys.
  
  
• Marstead Living has secured a loan from Federated Hermes to purchase 18 acres of Green Belt land at Mill Hill in Barnet. The loan is to support the ongoing development of the £260m Marstead Mill scheme, consented by Barnet Council in 2023 to deliver a 175-home retirement village comprised of 10 new buildings between one and five storeys, plus nine affordable family homes.
  
  
• Southwark Council planning officers have recommended approval for Hines’s plans to deliver a 44-storey office building alongside two residential blocks of 22 and 40 storeys, comprising 433 homes (40.5% affordable). The 44-storey building will provide around 820,000 sq ft of office space plus 20,000 sq ft of affordable workspace for local businesses.
  
  
• General Projects has submitted plans to Hackney Council to redevelop a 0.6-acre ‘Island Site’ in Shoreditch into a 185,000 sq ft mixed-use development. The proposals include the demolition of three existing buildings and the restoration of Victorian buildings on the Great Eastern Road, as well as the delivery of three new buildings including a 22-storey, 232 apart-hotel, four-storey residential building containing 12 apartments (none affordable), plus 70,000 sq ft of offices and 5,000 sq ft of retail and hospitality space.
  
  
• Regal has secured planning consent from Brent Council to deliver the ‘Wembley Greenway’ purpose-built student accommodation scheme on the Wembley High Road. The plans include demolishing existing buildings to deliver two new buildings of 20 and 22 storeys, set on a site adjacent to the railway at Wembley Central.

• Watkins Jones has appointed Simon Jones as its new Chief Financial Officer, succeeding the developer’s current finance chief Sarah Sergeant who is stepping down in June. Simon Jones joins from Mapeley Group where he has been CFO since 2013.
  
  
• Gleeds has appointed Craig Ward and Andrew Todman from Avison Young as new directors in the project management team.
  
  
• Former private secretary to Boris Johnson when he was Mayor of London and Chief of Staff to Met Commissioner Cressida Dick Roisha Hughes has been appointed a trustee of the National Lottery Heritage Fund.
  
  
• The GLA’s Sarah Considine is the head of the new Design Unit, joining from the Good Growth department where she led as Programme Manager.
  
  
• Phil Ellis and Julian Rudd-Jones’ terms as members on the LocatED Board have been extended for two months, while Caroline Tolhurst has been re-appointed as a Board Member for three more years.
  
  
• Kim Caddy, Paula Higgins, Wendy Wilson, and Emer McNally join the Leasehold Advisory Service Board as Non-Executive Directors. Caddy is currently a Conservative councillor in the London Borough of Wandsworth.
  
  
• Duncan Shrubsole has been appointed as Chief Executive of St Martin-in-the-Fields Charity, joining from Lloyds Bank Foundation for England and Wales.
  
  
• Rachael Cunningham, Nikki Davis, Stephen Gray, Julia Heap and Herman Kok have joined the Board of the Construction Industry Training Board for a four-year term.
  
  
• Former Labour MP for Birkenhead and Director of the Child Poverty Action Group, Frank Field, has died aged 81. Field was a Minister for Welfare Reform in Tony Blair’s first government and later became a Crossbench peer in 2020.

• Cabinet Member for Climate, Ecology and Culture on Westminster City Council, Cllr Ryan Jude, has been selected as Labour’s candidate for the constituency of Tatton in Cheshire.
  
  
• Campaigner Laura Coryton has been selected as the Labour candidate for Richmond Park.

Geography: In the third of our deep-dives into London Assembly battlegrounds, we visit the leafy green constituency of South West, which covers the boroughs of Hounslow, Richmond and Kingston. 

History: The seat is a unique three-way fight between the Liberal Democrats (with their control of Richmond and Kingston councils since 2018), Labour (who historically dominate in Hounslow, controlling it since 2010), and the Conservatives (with a strong historic presence, but much-reduced in recent local and General Elections). Aided in part by the three-way fight, the Conservatives have come through the middle and the South West super-constituency has voted for Conservative Assembly Members and Mayoral candidates at every election (except in 2000 when it voted for Ken Livingstone).

Extinction level event: The near-extinction of the Tories on Richmond and Kingston councils is a remarkable feature of the recent politics of south-west London. Both were boroughs held by the Conservatives until 2018 – yet, just six years later, with January’s by-election defeat, the Tories lost their sole remaining councillor in Richmond.

Politics: Nick Rogers is the Conservative incumbent for the Assembly seat, first elected in 2021 succeeding longstanding Tory Assembly, Tony Arbour. Rogers narrowly held the seat for the Tories in 2021 with an 8,000-vote majority.

Splitting headache: Last time round, Rogers was fortunate to see his Labour and Lib Dem challengers split the vote, picking up 57,000 and 61,000 votes respectively (behind Rogers on 69,000). However, Rogers is stepping down to pursue ‘non-political projects.’

2024 candidates: Replacing him is Gunnersbury councillor Ron Mushiso, with the Lib Dems once again fielding Richmond Council leader Gareth Roberts. Labour picked campaigner Marcela Benedetti, Chas Warlow stands for the Greens, Steve Chilcott for Reform UK, with independent Abigail Hardy finishing off the list.

What to watch: South West has moved quickly to become a Lib Dem stronghold boasting majorities at council and parliamentary level, with the party campaigning hard to win what would be their first-ever constituency Assembly Member. With the Tories languishing in the polls, it would seem their best hope is that Labour and the Lib Dems once again split the vote. This looks like a toss-up, with perhaps the Lib Dems slight favourites.

WE RECOMMEND

• Dame Vivienne Westwood’s clothes and jewellery go under the hammer in June.
• What the future holds for London’s pubs.
• The viral London Marathon runner who sampled a different glass of wine at each mile.
• The Standard’s guide on how climate change will transform London over the next 10, 50 and 100 years.
• Why Taylor Swift fans have been flocking to the Black Dog pub in Vauxhall.
• What’s behind the UK’s self-storage boom.
• The councils selling off their assets.
• Election supremos Thrasher and Rallings’ analysis of the local elections.

EARTH DAY - DEMYSTIFYING ESG

This Monday, LCA clients Quintain, King’s Cross, WilkinsonEyre, The Crown Estate and Stanhope were featured in Building Design to mark Earth Day 2024. The industry leaders came together to share their perspectives on demystifying ESG practices within the field, and to provide insight into navigating a sustainable future within the built environment. Read the full piece here. 

MAYORAL ELECTION SPECIAL BREAKFAST WAFFLE

The latest in our breakfast waffle series, last week we welcomed clients and associates into our offices for a Mayoral election special. Our Managing Director of Insight Nick Bowes presented all the latest on the candidates, polls and policies and their implications for London and the built environment. Professor Tony Travers, Director of LSE London, provided his expert take on the coming contest and his predictions of the likely winners (and losers!). If you would like to attend our future events, please get in touch using marketing@londoncommunications.co.uk 

RACE FOR CITY HALL BLOG SERIES

Our Associate Director Phoebe Gardiner has op-eds in City AM and Arts Professional on how the arts, culture and creative sectors are featured in London’s mayoral candidates’ manifestos. The in our Race for City Hall series sees Senior Account Manager Fiorella Lanni look at the issue of air quality in London’s politics and built environment.

LDN CONTRIBUTORS 

LCA prides itself on its intelligence-led approach to PR and communications and our dedicated insight team monitors London politics, news and issues as it happens.

If you would like to know more about LCA or anything in this edition of LDN – London in short please get in touch. 

Nick Bowes

Managing Director, Insight

Robert Gordon Clark

Senior Advisor and Partner

Emily Clinton

Account Manager, Insight 

 Daniel Reast

Insight Executive

Design:  Aroa Maquedano Pulido:

We strive for balance and accuracy at all times; however, if you feel we have made a mistake, omission or have misrepresented a story or issue please alert the team by contacting the LDN team by using the details above.

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