LDN Weekly – Issue 36 – 4 July 2018

IT MUST BE MONSOON SEASON

As the temperature continues to rise in the capital, the Conservative party’s candidate selection process for the London mayoralty also begins to heat up. 

With the deadline for applications now officially closed, we take a look at those in the picture and those who have definitively ruled themselves out.

The week has also seen a flurry of high profile ‘people moves’ and we have been inundated with data following a flood of polls and analysis, all of which we have waded through and summed up so you don’t have to.

Elsewhere, Delancey’s plans for the demolition and redevelopment of the Elephant and Castle shopping centre have finally been approved despite its detractors and proposals to transform the iconic Olympia London exhibition centre have been unveiled by new owners Yoo Capital and Deutsche Finance – to highlight only two of several hot development stories covered in today’s issue.

As always, we’d love to hear your feedback and do follow us on Twitter @LDNComms if you don’t already.

ROSINDELL FOR MAYOR?

The Conservative Party’s candidate selection process for the 2020 Mayoral elections is in full swing and the deadline for applications closed at midday today. The successful candidate is expected to be officially announced at the party’s autumn conference, but amidst all the speculation, we thought it would be worth recapping on what we know – and what we don’t. We know of four candidates – all male – who have submitted their nomination papers, namely Andrew Rosindell MP, developer-cum-campaigner Richard Tice, former Kingston Council Leader Kevin Davis and London Assembly Member (as well as former leader of Hillingdon Council) Andrew Boff. Tory MPs Justine Greening, Ed Vaizey and James Cleverly have ruled themselves out, as have former Deputy Mayors to Boris Johnson Munira Mirza and Stephen Greenhalgh, and Baroness Brady - all of whom had been tipped at one point or another as strong contenders. Syed Kamall MEP has also said he is out of the mayoral race, but that he hopes to stand in 2024. Question marks hang above others tipped previously, such as AM Shaun Bailey as well as campaigner Duwayne Brooks and we should remind that this selection is happening much sooner than previous campaigns (Zac Goldsmith was only confirmed as Conservative candidate seven months before the last election in May 2016) so don’t rule out a change to this timetable and possibly some more people throwing their hat in the ring. Much more to come in future issues of LDN on any relevant developments.

ROYAL DOCKS

The London Economic Action Partnership (LEAP) – London’s only Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) – has signed off a five-year delivery plan for the Royal Docks and committed to spend in excess of £300m, in the hope of stimulating growth in the area. While the delivery plan itself is not currently in the publicly domain, committee papers specify that it will be underpinned by “improving access and connectivity” to the area, “promoting inward investment and support for businesses” and “creating employment, training and skills opportunities for local people”. The planned investment will be carried out from September 2018 and last five years. Sadiq has said that the proposals will help unlock the potential for the Royal Docks “to become not only an important new business destination, but also a part of the capital’s key cultural life”.

THE DAY AFTER FOR OXFORD STREET

Following its decision last month to dynamite plans for pedestrianising the capital’s iconic thoroughfare and high street, Tory-led Westminster Council is planning to draw up and implement a new ‘Oxford Street district place strategy’. According to an announcement issued last Friday, the Council’s cabinet will meet on Monday 9 July to consider a report outlining a four-stage project for transforming the Oxford Street district and a separate ‘safety scheme’ intended to provide new ‘pedestrian safety measures’ in advance of the opening of the Elizabeth Line stations at Tottenham Court Road and Bond Street. The report provides few clues as to what the Council’s new plans entail, aside from the ‘withdraw[al] from any future consideration’ of the ‘previously proposed full scale pedestrianisation’. It is however clear that the process will begin with a ‘comprehensive audit and engagement with residents and other stakeholders’ that is expected to take place in the autumn, after which a new strategy will be developed for the area, which will in turn be submitted for a public consultation before being finalised and adopted by January 2019. In a nutshell, yet another round of engagement, consultation and political wrangling ahead on Oxford Street’s future.

ELEPHANT AND CASTLE DEMOLITION APPROVED

Delancey’s plans for the demolition and redevelopment of the Elephant and Caste shopping centre have finally been approved by Southwark Council’s planning committee - subject to the completion of a Section 106 agreement. The decision follows long negotiations, deferred decisions by the committee and intensive activism against the project by local retailers, residents and other campaigners, many of whom staged a protest outside the Town Hall yesterday. The council leadership supports the plans’ latest iteration, releasing a relevant announcement in which Cabinet Member for Development, Growth and Planning Johnson Situ welcomes the committee’s decision and describes the scheme as a ‘key part of the wider regeneration of Elephant and Castle’. The project’s latest plans foresee the delivery of 979 new homes (35% affordable, of which 116 will be for social rent - up from 35 in a previous iteration of the plans), new retail space (10% affordable), leisure and community space, improved transport infrastructure and facilities for the London College of Communication.

The project has thus passed a key milestone, but still has a way to go. Aside from a Section 106 agreement with the council, it will also require sign-off by City Hall and a separate decision by Government on potential listed status for the shopping centre - while activists and critical councillors have vowed to continue pressing for an even better deal going forward. Indeed, the planning committee only voted 4-to-3 in favour of the application, with one abstention, after a gruelling four-hour session. Half of those who voted in favour belong to the Liberal Democrat opposition. Those who voted against were all Labour councillors, while eight other Labour councillors representing the affected area’s wards, including Deputy Leader Councillor Rebecca Lury, have expressed continued dissatisfaction with the project’s terms (particularly around social housing provision, as well as local retailers’ and community organisations’ right to return after the redevelopment is complete). The council’s aforementioned announcement also suggests an acute awareness that opposition to the project will not simply evaporate. Councillor Situ underlines that Southwark ‘recognise[s] the concerns raised by some local residents’ and highlights measures and funds to appease local retailers affected by the redevelopment, increased social housing provision as well as a new review mechanism that could lead to even more affordable housing being provided in future.

OLYMPIA RISING

Grand plans to transform Olympia London exhibition centre have been unveiled by owners Yoo Capital and Deutsche Finance. The iconic 130-year-old building will be renovated under proposals drawn up by Heatherwick Studio and SPPARC architects, as part of a £700m overhaul of the space which will include 600,000 sq ft of new office space and studios and a 1,500-seat theatre. A four-day exhibition outlining the plans is currently underway ending this Friday and a planning application is expected to be submitted to Hammersmith and Fulham Council in September.

SLEEPING WITH THE FISHES

The Evening Standard reported yesterday that plans for a new ‘Wellington Hotel’ in Covent Garden, supported by actor Robert De Niro, have fallen through. Representatives of BD Hotels and landlord Capco have respectively cited a ‘changing economic picture’ and a failure to reach ‘satisfactory commercial terms’ as the cause of the deal’s demise. The project had already won planning permission to redevelop an entire block - six Victorian and early 20th-century buildings - as an 83-bedroom hotel, complete with spa, members’ club and restaurant.

GLA HOUSING RUCTIONS

Yet more evidence is emerging of rifts between the Mayor, the London Assembly and London’s boroughs on major built environment issues. Whether due to lack of clarity or a direct clash of opinions, many of Sadiq’s flagship planning policies are being questioned, frequently by members of his own party. Last week’s session of the London Assembly Planning Committee focussed on the proliferation of tall residential buildings across London. The Committee’s veteran Labour Chair, AM Nicky Gavron, argued that the capital still lacks a ‘single set of plans that look at how tall buildings could meet housing needs’. Indeed, as the meeting’s discussion highlighted, there isn’t even a common definition of what a ‘tall building’ is. City Hall’s threshold is 10+ storeys but Labour-led Harrow Council defines it as a building more than 30m tall. Meanwhile, the GLA has published 378 pages-worth of responses to its consultation on ballots for estate regeneration, which closed on 3 April 2018. Confirming early reports published by Inside Housing last month, the submissions suggest that councils and housing associations are far from uniform in their approach to ballots and it is clear that even those who support the measure ‘in principle’ have significant reservations about its use in practice.

PEOPLE MOVES

• Charlie Adan, the Chief Executive of the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames, has left her post as of 30 June and has been replaced on an interim basis by Deputy Chief Executive Roy Thompson. In the relevant announcement, the Council’s new Leader, Liberal Democrat Councillor Liz Green, notably said that she was ‘grateful to Charlie for agreeing to leave at this time’.
• Samantha Wells, Principal Strategic Planner at the GLA, has left City Hall after almost a decade to join Gerald Eve as a senior associate.
• Sarah Considine, also formerly of the GLA’s planning team, has recently joined planning consultancy DP9 as associate director.
• Alison Nimmo CBE, Chief Executive of the Crown Estate and former Director of Design and Regeneration at the Olympic Delivery Authority  has confirmed she will be stepping down at the end of her second four-year term at the end of December 2019.
• Kate Henderson has been appointed as the new Chief Executive of the National Housing Federation, succeeding David Orr. Henderson is currently the Chief Executive of the Town and Country Planning Association and will take up her new role in early October.
• David Prescott has been appointed Director of Strategy and corporate finance at Grainger. Prescott joins the developer from Dutch investment bank Kempen and is expected to begin in his new role in August 2018.
• Rob Noel, the Chief Executive of Landsec, took over as president of the British Property Federation (BPF) this week. Noel was previously Vice President and succeeds Oxford Properties’ Paul Brundage. Meanwhile, Grainger Chief Executive Helen Gordon has become the BPF’s Vice President and David Partridge, Managing Partner of Argent, has been moved up to Junior Vice President.
• Baroness Margaret Ford has been appointed Chairwoman of property investment firm New River Reit. Her previous property and built environment experience includes chairing the board of directors at developers Grainger and Taylor Wimpey, as well as the Olympic Park Legacy Company (OPLC). The Scottish Labour peer is also current Chair of media company STV and an independent non-executive director of the British Olympic Association (BOA), among several other roles.
• Finally, Jeremy Browne, the City of London Corporation’s Special Representative to the EU, will similarly be stepping down after three years in the role, when his contract expires at end-August 2018.

HAMPSTEAD NEIGHBOURHOOD PLAN

Hampstead residents recently voted to adopt the Hampstead Neighbourhood Plan by a sizeable margin (though on a low turnout). The plan, which must now be considered in parallel with the Camden Local Plan, follows the culmination of five years’ preparatory work by the Hampstead Neighbourhood Forum. Key policies include opposing proposals which would result in the loss of small self-contained dwellings, and the development of larger 3-4 bedroom units for social affordable dwellings. The final results of the Neighbourhood Plan vote saw 91.5% vote for the plan (1,484 votes in favour, 138 against), on on a turnout of 20.5% ( 1,622 people voted). According to Neighbourhoodplanners.london, a total of nine neighbourhood plans have now been formally adopted in the capital since the Localism Act came into force in November 2011.

REPORTS

It may be sunny this week, but it’s positively raining polling and analysis.

• YouGov polled 43,000 people across the UK on their views of London. Indicatively, 45% expressed a favourable view of the capital, versus 28% who said they had an unfavourable view of the capital. The strongest anti-London sentiment was found in Tyne and Wear, Scotland and South Yorkshire. Negative sentiments appeared most connected with perceptions that London gets a disproportionate share of public spending, a general dislike of big cities and unfavourable views of multiculturalism.
• Planning consultancy Indigo has released its A-Z of London Planning 2018-2019, which contains a kaleidoscope of beautifully presented facts and figures about the capital’s built environment, its socioeconomic backdrop, and political landscape, both London-wide and for each borough.
•  A report from the Resolution Foundation – part of a wider project on living standards in the UK’s major cities – assessed a number of relevant indicators, including an extensive chapter on housing. The report provides useful analysis on the evolution of prices and occupancy across different tenure types, as well as housebuilding rates, London-wide and per borough.
• Finally, a report by Moore Stephens warns that 7,000 estate agents are ‘at risk’ – noting that 153 went insolvent in the last year, up from 148 the year before. It attributes these worrying trends to factors including pressure from online traders, government plans to ban letting fees charged to tenants, an extra stamp duty surcharge on buy-to-let homes and declining sales volumes.

RESTRAINT VS RADICALISM?

This past week has seen new housing policy announcements from the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. For the Conservatives, yesterday Housing, Communities and Local Government Secretary James Brokenshire announced the launch of several initiatives, notably including a consultation on proposals to extend tenancies for those in the private rental sector from a year to three years. The idea has been warmly welcomed by some of London’s foremost builders of rental flats, including Quintain chief executive Angus Dodd, who has said the proposals ‘provide investors with better predictability on longer-term income’. Meanwhile, Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable also launched a number of proposals aimed at ending the country’s housing crisis. At a speech held at the RIBA, Cable laid out proposals that included more than doubling, to 500%, council tax rates on second homes and introducing a £2,000 loan for people without cash to pay a deposit on a rental property. Interestingly, in a separate interview with Building magazine last week, Cable suggested that the Green Belt was ‘a kind of religion’ and that he would introduce different categories of Green Belt land to stimulate more rational discussion on the matter. While the Conservative proposals would appear comparatively more likely to be realised, it will be interesting to see whether the Liberal Democrats will see any of their proposals gain traction in the wider, mainstream discourse in years to come.

NLA LONDON AWARDS 2018

LCA has sponsored New London Architecture’s [NLA] New London Awards and Annual Lunch 2018, held earlier today, which recognises the very best in architecture, planning and development in the capital, including both new and proposed projects across all sectors of the built environment. The Mayor of London gave the keynote speech at the event. Our Executive Chairman Robert Gordon Clark presented the two Awards for the Masterplans & Area Strategies category, to Old Kent Area Action Plan by Southwark Council and Andover Estate Phase One by Studio Partington for Islington Council. The NLA also awarded Croydon Council Chief Executive Jo Negrini as ‘Londoner of the year’ – last year, the award was won by architect Sadie Morgan. Sadiq also presented the Kings Crescent Estate project by Karakusevic Carson Architects, Henley Halebrown and MUF architecture for the London Borough of Hackney with the Mayor’s Prize, an award celebrating a project that best reflects the Mayor's ambition for supporting diversity in London, as expressed through his Good Growth by Design. The overall winner of the NLA Awards 2018 is London Bridge Station by Grimshaw Architects for Network Rail, while the People’s Choice award was won by the Walthamstow Wetlands, from Witherford Watson Mann Architects, Kinnear Landscape Architects, who were working on behalf of Waltham Forest Council, Tames Water and the London Wildlife Trust.

Sadiq speaking at the NLA Awards 2018

Robert Gordon Clark presenting Southwark Council's team with an award for the Old Kent Road Area Action Plan
 

QUO VADIS? LONDON’S ROADS & STREETS

LCA was also present at today’s Centre for London conference, which explored the future of mobility and place in London’s surface transport system and public realm, which among others, was sponsored by LCA clients Northbank BID and British Land. The event featured keynote speeches by London’s top transport officials, and we heard from Heidi Alexander in her first major speaking engagement as the new Deputy Mayor for Transport, as well as Transport for London Commissioner Mike Brown. Both focused on efforts to realise the Mayor’s Transport Strategy ambition for 80% of journeys in London to be made by walking, cycling or public transport by 2041, emphasising his commitment to leveraging transport policy to benefit Londoners’ health. Alexander also notably argued that the devolution of London’s wider rail network to the Mayor is an idea that should be realised.
 

LCA HITS THE ROAD 

With the borough elections done and dusted, development projects are grinding back into gear. The LCA team is running a number of consultation exhibitions this month, covering an entertainment venue, a hotel refurbishment, and residential developments throughout London. Our most unusual public exhibition involves using a specially equipped vehicle for the ambitious MSG Sphere project in Stratford, which will be taken on a roadshow stopping at locations in several East London boroughs. Meanwhile, we are presenting plans for the refurbishment of the Portman Hotel on behalf of client L&R, in Westminster. We are also organising and staffing exhibitions for residential development projects in Blackhorse Lane (Waltham Forest), Southall (Ealing), the Royal Docks (Newham) and London Bridge (Southwark). It is worth noting that LCA’s community and political engagement services are reinforced by a dedicated, in-house design team.
 

LCA prides itself on its intelligence-led approach to PR and communications and our dedicated research 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. 

If you have received LDN Weekly indirectly and would like to subscribe to receive it every week, please click here to register your details.

LDN is put together by a dedicated team at London Communications Agency. The content for each edition is developed from news drawn from the last week from every London local paper as well as the regional and national press, from intelligence gathered by monitoring local, regional and national government activity and from the insight and expert knowledge of the entire LCA team.

If you would like to know more about anything covered in this or any other edition of LDN or if you would like to know more about LCA please contact Duncan Hepburn on 020 7612 8480 or dh@londoncommunications.co.uk.

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 Duncan using the details above.