LDN Weekly – Issue 80 – 5 June 2019
THE BEAST
...is the endearing nickname of Donald Trump’s bullet-proof limousine. If you live or work in central London, you are unlikely to have missed the armada of armoured cars and helicopters ferrying the US President and his sizeable entourage back and forth across the city.
No Images? Click here THE BEAST…is the endearing nickname of Donald Trump’s bullet-proof limousine. If you live or work in central London, you are unlikely to have missed the armada of armoured cars and helicopters ferrying the US President and his sizeable entourage back and forth across the city.This week, LDN covers Trump’s stormy state visit to London, as well as the first big broadsides of the 2020 London election campaign. Politics aside, read on for more stories touching on tall buildings, industrial sites, neighbourhood planning, permitted development and high streets, as well as some major people moves. This edition’s Our Week section also contains a few gems, including links to our latest post-election analysis and maps. If you don’t already, do follow us on Twitter and Instagram. Also, feel free to visit our website for more information on LCA’s team, services, and clients. THE VISITATIONPresident Trump has been in the UK this week on his first official state visit, the opening two days of which he spent in London. Over the course of meetings and functions hosted by the Royal Family and the Prime Minister, interviews with British media and a press conference, Trump has waded into the Conservative Party leadership race and the UK's Brexit policy. Naturally, he has also taken aim at the Mayor of London, branding Sadiq a ‘stone cold loser’ even before Air Force One had landed at Stansted. The President's comment, made of course on Twitter, was in apparent retaliation to an article by the Mayor in The Observer, in which he argued that Trump is a ‘global threat’. The pair’s very public feud has been further stoked by Sadiq again granting permission for protesters to fly the now-infamous Trump baby blimp above Parliament Square, amid demonstrations which were dismissed by the President as ‘fake news’. All the above aside, Trump’s visit also coincides with a more solemn occasion, namely the commemoration of the D-Day landings' 75th anniversary. The President joined the PM and 15 other world leaders in Portsmouth today to mark the event, which will also be commemorated in City Hall by a London Assembly motion proposed by Labour AM Len Duval. BROKEN PROMISES?While Trump and Sadiq spar on Twitter and in the press, the Mayor's domestic critics are also hard at work. The GLA Conservatives have published The Cost of Khan 3, their third report evaluating Sadiq’s performance against the pledges he has made from 2016 to the present. The report asserts that the Mayor has presided over ‘an alarming hike in violent crime, lagging affordable housing targets, and a damaging down-turn in Transport for London’s finances’. It further accuses Sadiq of ‘financial incompetence, a raft of broken promises, and a lack of delivery for Londoners’. While packed with facts and figures to support these claims, the report employs its evidence base… rather selectively and in some places inaccurately. For example, the section on Sadiq’s housing policy states that he has been given government funding ‘to build 116,000 affordable homes by April 2022’, whereas his target is to start building that number. Elsewhere, the report reiterates an assertion that Boris achieved higher affordable housing starts than Sadiq back in 2009/10 and 2010/11, whereas – as we explained in issue 77 of LDN – responsibility for affordably housing funding and delivery was arguably devolved from the Homes and Communities Agency to City Hall only in 2012. The report does however point to numerous challenges that Sadiq has indeed struggled to address. Of those challenges, crime stands out. PUBLIC ENEMY No1According to figures from the Metropolitan Police Service cited by the GLA Conservatives’ report, the 2016-2018 period saw an increase in homicides (24%), knife crime (52.3%), residential burglary (36.9%) and robbery (59.3%). Furthermore, the 135 murders recorded in London over the course of 2018 are described as the highest annual rate in a decade. Recent press coverage paints a more mixed picture: On the one hand, the capital accounted for almost 1/3 of the 100 fatal stabbings recorded in the UK between 1 January and 17 May 2019 alone. On the other, Deputy Commissioner Sir Steve House stated only this week that increased use of stop-and-search has contributed to a 30% drop in killings and 20% drop in knife injuries among under-25s in the year to April (compared to the same period in 2018). For his part, Sadiq blames the rise in crime on central government cuts to policing, education and youth services – and has noted that crime is up nationwide and not only in London. The Cost of Khan 3, which unsurprisingly omits any mention of government cuts, confirms that the London Conservatives will seek to convince voters that Sadiq could have done more with the funds at his disposal. For more on the Mayor’s own latest political manoeuvres, see the Caught Our Eye section below. LONDON PLANNING LATEST
SADIQ ON THE DEFENSIVE?With the Mayoral elections less than a year away, Sadiq and his team are naturally eager to highlight their successes (and reassure the public that any shortfall against targets is manageable). Housing delivery and new cycling infrastructure are two areas where Khan knows he will be carefully scrutinised.
SADIQ ON THE OFFENSIVEBut Sadiq is ever the forward looking Mayor and his most recent announcements have focused on launches and new initiatives across crime, economic development and the environment. Since last Wednesday alone, City Hall has announced: new guidelines for the use of facial recognition technology by the Met Police and the expansion of a trial programme to tag knife crime offenders with a tracking device; the membership of his London Housing Panel (see people moves below); a new £100m Greater London Investment Fund designed to support small and medium businesses; and a programme of ‘hundreds’ of events, activities and seminars to take place as part of London’s first Climate Action week (1-8 July 2019). PEOPLE MOVES
MHCLG PLANNING LATESTAccording to a recent Times article, the government is in the process of preparing draft legislation that will ‘provide greater planning certainty to support the high street and housing delivery’. Early plans, which included PD rights to facilitate changes between retail use classes, were previously put out for a public consultation ending in January 2019. You may find the Government’s own response to this consultation here. A written ministerial statement from the Communities Secretary in March had also confirmed that the Government is set to carry on with its plans – even if majority of respondents to its consultation opposed them.
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