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.
No Images? Click here 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 PLANSFurther 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 GOLDMANInvestment 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 2018London’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
LONDON’S POLLUTION PROBLEMLast 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 2018While 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.
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