LDN Weekly – Issue 42 – 29 August 2018

CALM BEFORE THE STORM? 

Following a bumper edition of LDN last week, it’s been a much quieter week in the capital before Parliament, the London Assembly and London’s local authorities kick off in earnest over the weeks to come.

As such, we’ve taken a slightly deeper dive into last week’s decision by Sadiq to approve proposals on the former Citroen Site in Brentford, review London’s ongoing air pollution problems, and postulate on the future of the Liberal Democrats and their leader and MP for Twickenham Vince Cable. This week we also cover London’s biggest office sale of the year, more worrying crime figures for the capital, and the latest people moves.

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

SADIQ APPROVES CITROEN SITE PLANS  

Further to our mention last week, the Mayor of London has resolved to grant permission for the construction of 441 homes on the site of a former Citroen garage in Brentford, having exercised his powers to call the scheme in on 26 February this year. The original application had been refused by the London Borough of Hounslow on grounds of causing harm to nearby heritage assets such as Kew Gardens and a ‘heavy reliance on the provision of one and two bedroomed units’. Following the intervention of the Mayor and the GLA Planning team, the applicant amended proposals to increase the provision of affordable housing by habitable room from 40%, to 50% (65% of which will be Shared Ownership and 35% to be let at London Affordable Rent). This, the Mayor stated in his resolution to grant notice, ‘contributes to my long-term strategic target of 50% affordable homes across all new developments in the capital’, outweighing concerns raised about impacts on local heritage assets. Some additional family-sized homes were also secured, and the height of one building will be increased by two storeys to 17 storeys.

This is the seventh scheme the Mayor has used his powers to call the application in since taking office (with four more call-ins awaiting a decision), and is the fourth occasion that he has extracted a larger affordable contribution offer from the applicant (the others being Hale Wharf in Haringey, Palmerston Road in Harrow, and Swandon Way in Wandsworth).

FOREIGN INVESTORS GO FOR GOLDMAN  

Investment bank Goldman Sachs has agreed a £1.16bn sale and leaseback of 1 Plumtree Court, its new City-based European headquarters with Korea’s National Pension Service (NPS). The deal stands to be the biggest acquisition deal for a London office building this year, and the second-largest ever for a London office building behind the 2017 sale of the ‘Walkie Talkie’ tower, also in the City, to Hong Kong-based company Lee Kum Kee. An NPS spokesperson said that the building was a ‘high-quality asset’ and well aligned with the fund’s strategy. It has been reported by property agents Cushman & Wakefield that £1.1bn of Korean money entered the UK property market in the first half of 2018.

LONDON DEATHS HIT 100 IN 2018   

London’s uptick in crime has reached an unwelcome milestone in the past week as the 100th homicide (stabbings, shootings, vicious domestic attacks) in the capital this year was recorded last Thursday. As it stands, the figure is already in excess of the total number of homicides recorded in 2012 (89), 2013 (86) and 2014 (83) and looks on course to exceed the total recorded in 2017 (131, including the 14 victims of last year’s terrorist attacks). Reported crime at Notting Hill Carnival over the weekend bore out this upward trend and saw 373 arrests made – up from 313 the year before – and for the first time saw the introduction of knife arches placed at ‘strategic points’ in the area (36 knives were seized over the weekend). Both Labour and the Conservatives have taken a view on what can be done to remedy the situation. Labour MP Chuka Umunna has recently suggested violent crime should be treated as a public health issue, while Conservative Mayoral candidate Shaun Bailey made front page news in the Standard by calling for a reduction in ‘Khan’s own police bureaucracy’ to free up resource and allow more police to spend time on the beat. Commentators of all political stripes are quick to attribute a range of causes for the surge in violent crime on London’s streets, from the closure of youth centres to a loss of funding for the Metropolitan Police. For his part, the Mayor has said that London’s crime rate should be framed as part of a national rise in crime – therefore requiring a national solution.

PEOPLE MOVES  

• Former chief executive of London City Airport Declan Collier has been announced as the preferred candidate to be chair of Office of Rail and Road, subject to his attending a public scrutiny hearing later this year before the Transport Select Committee. Depending on the outcome of the hearing Collier is expected to start as chair of the regulatory body on 1 January 2019.
• Allison Flight has been appointed deputy head of development management by the GLA. In her new role she will work to John Finlayson, head of development management, and Juliemma McLoughlin, assistant director of planning. Flight was previously strategic developments team leader at the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea.
• TfL’s director of public affairs and external relations David McNeill has left after 10 years in post. Former director of news Matt Brown has replaced McNeill, taking on the additional external relations function of McNeill’s former role, as director of news and external relations. A wider restructuring of TfL’s communications operation has been taking place in tandem.

LONDON’S POLLUTION PROBLEM 

Last week’s Financial Times big read (£) was perhaps less eye-catching in its exposition of London’s well-documented air pollution crisis, but more for presenting how severe it really is in some places. According to new FT research, annual mean nitrogen dioxide (NO2) levels in 2013 were recorded as high as five times greater than limits set by the EU (40μg/m3) at Marble Arch. Other notable pollution hotspots, according to the visualised data include Tower Hill, Hyde Park Corner, Victoria, Piccadilly Circus and the length of Marylebone Road. While it is true that the data has moved on five years, the underlying factors that make these areas hotspots have not changed. These areas suffer from a potent combination of congestion, historic street design and tall buildings funnelling pollution into them, and promotion by former governments in favour of diesel vehicles has also left an imprint.

While the Mayor is bound in part by a legacy of policymaking and in full by structural limitations, Sadiq has made a series of announcements on the environment in recent weeks. Firstly, he has announced that 40,000 new trees will be delivered across London parks to help air quality and store carbon. He has also, along with 18 other international city mayors, signed the Net Zero Carbon Buildings Declaration which pledges that all buildings in the cities will meet the set standards by 2050. Only this Sunday, Sadiq also signed a letter alongside 16 other mayors and city leaders demanding that Theresa May take immediate action to fight air pollution. While Sadiq has made use of the environmental policy levers he controls throughout his Mayoralty – most notably fast-tracking the implementation of the central London Ultra-Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) to April next year – harder lobbying for wholesale policy change at national government level may be needed in order to accelerate air quality improvements for Londoners.

LIFE AFTER VINCE? 

Rumours abound that Liberal Democrat leader and MP for Twickenham Sir Vince Cable is planning to use a speech one week before his party's annual conference in September to announce he is stepping down. These reports have been roundly denied by the leader’s office and Sir Vince. However, plans have been publicised by the party to make extensive changes to its rulebook that could pave the way for a leadership (and style of leading) quite different to that at present. Among rule changes under consideration include plans to allow non-MPs to stand for the leadership, and a new category of registered supporter. It has been suggested that the package of party reforms are aimed at cultivating a broader base of support for the Lib Dems to become a self-defined centrist party.

FAIR FUNDING FEARS?   

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has predicted that the government could make inner London borough councils bear greater costs for the delivery of statutory services, as the Ministry for Housing, Communities & Local Government (MHCLG) considers consultation responses to its Fair Funding Review. The Review is designed to determine how resources should be allocated to local authorities from April 2020. The IFS contends that inner London boroughs, which often set low tax rates (such as Wandsworth and Westminster), will be assessed by the Government as having lower spending needs and thus less wanting of central government funding. The IFS interpretation of the Review’s direction is an interesting one, but should only be treated as an interpretation given the number of other factors the Review considers that could determine final funding allocations, such as employment density and so on. That said, the fact the IFS  has led with these predictions poses questions for those London boroughs that have historically chosen to keep council taxes low, many of whom often have high assessed spending needs. Might the Review, if the IFS are correct, eventually spell the end of low-tax boroughs across the capital?

TOTALLY THAMES 2018  

While the Summer season of festivals draws to a close, the River Thames is set to come alive across the next month as part of the Totally Thames festival. Now in its 21st year, the festival plays host to over 100 events across September including lectures, exhibitions, live music, the world’s oldest boat race and much more. To see the full array of events, all of which are connected to the River Thames, click here.

A NEW DISTRICT CENTRE

Earlier this month, LCA’s client Argent Related submitted its proposals for a major redevelopment of central Tottenham Hale. The planning application encompasses five pieces of land earmarked for change and supports Haringey Council’s vision of a new ‘district centre’ for the area. The transformational scheme will see 1,036 new homes; 15 new retail spaces; co-working and office space; a health centre serving 30,000 local people and two football pitches’ worth of open space, all greened with 75 new trees. LCA has worked closely with Argent Related since September 2017 to deliver a comprehensive 11 month consultation and engagement programme. For more information you can visit www.talktottenhamhale.co.uk.
 

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. 

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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.