In my part of Marylebone we have seen the loss of a number of public houses particularly to residential usage in the last seven years. It appears COVID19 crisis is further pushing this trend as landlords push rents when those running the pubs have not had the customers normally at the local pub coming out of lockdown yet alone during the lockdown itself. 

Take for example, my nearest functionally pub the Globe on Lisson Grove. Its landlord has not been clear at all of what is going to happen with their commercial rents as the economy comes into the recovery phase of lockdown. This while it is clear that the the pub has value if turned into residential like many other old pubs in the neighbourhood like the Perservance and Brazen Head.

In one case over 30 people locally decided to form a group to nominate the Linhope Street Public House (Swan & Edgar Public House, formerly known as the Feathers Public House) for listing as an Asset of Community Value. Please find the link to the Asset of Community Value Nomination Form made to the City of Westminster. It clearly shows how to get one’s local public house listed as an asset of community value under the Localism Act, which then gives the pub extra protection if its put up for sale. This after writing a column in the West End Extra Forum in 2014 under the header of  ” The pub’s a hub and worth cherishing”  it was very reassuring that it was of immediate use to campaigners trying to stop another pub closing in NW1.  

This is also happening to pubs in South London as well like the Bear in Camberwell. Something needs to be done to get landlords to take on board the cultural institutions we are dealing with here when looking at their commercial rents reviews. Otherwise we will be losing a lot more pubs as a result of COVID19 crisis. 

Hanover Square Cabmen’s Shelter awaiting reopening after completion of Crossrail works

It was become apparent to me that a large number of small business owners are missing out on government funding and support in Central London either the £10,000 or £25,000 grants offered to firms via local authorities in March due to their landlords essentially not passing on the grants to them. 

Take for example, the Cabmen’s Shelters in Central London. Its clear the operators of the green shelters for cabbies, have not had these sums passed on to them from the Trustees of the 13 shelters in Central London even though monies have been received from the relevant local authorities. In such pressingly hard times for the operators these grants need to be passed on as soon as possible, particularly when coming out of the lockdown. 

There are of course many many other instances particularly in the catering industry, where the restaurant’s rent is inclusive of business rates and paid through the landlord. A case in point is Normah’s Malaysian restaurant in Bayswater.  They were left so confused with the grant system and implored the government to find a way to support the small businesses which are falling through the gap. While the businesses themselves suggest ” Don’t think about the profits. Just think about how to survive” 

Which all goes to show that l feel, landlords have a responsibility to pass on their grants to the small operators actually running the spaces their provide. This needs addressing urgently if we are not to see many small businesses that we depend on and take for granted disappearing for good, as a poor legacy of COVID19 crisis. 

Rules of the Cabmen’s shelters – pity we don’t have some rules about who gets any grant monies!

Having recently commenting on the government expanding permitted development rights to make sure it does not in rabbit hutch homes, l thought l should have a look around the neighbourhood it see if there is any prospect of such a residential conversion from offices. Being on the gateway to the West End there was bound to be a few cases nearby, and the most obvious one was Tresco House. 

In this search l also discovered that most of central London is, exempt from Permitted Development Rights legislation, as Article 4 Directions have been implemented which cover the Central Activities Zone (CAZ). The CAZ is protected and recognised as containing 1.7 million jobs (a third of the London total), generating 10% of the entire UK’s economic output. As the featured map above clearly shows. 

As for Tresco House, l am not quite sure if it falls within the boundaries of the CAZ for Central London as it appears the CAZ goes a bit along Lisson Grove.  But if its outside of it, the building leads itself to a conversion with wide dimensions so should not end up as a block of rabbit hutches while being on the edge of the CAZ. At the moment its still used by the DWP as an assessment centre though  they was rumours they will have to sell up soon as a result of previous austerity cuts. So watch this space. 

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The approval of the change of use for the petrol station within the landmark Lyon’s Place building along Edgware Rd to an electric charging point station at last weeks City of Westminster planning Committee, should herald a new age in electric infrastructure in London and the demise of the council’s Petrol station preservation Transport Policy. 

Starting with the latter, this decision should see the death of Transport Policy 17 in the Westminster Council UDP to preserve petrol stations. So it will be very interesting to see what now happens to other developments where the Council insisted that they have petrol stations incorporated into them like the one along Cleveland St, Fitzrovia. As it is noticeable that we have been losing petrol stations in Central London for the past 10-15 years anyway. 

This while its clear to me that we have been losing petrol stations in Central London for sometime, as car ownership drops amongst local residents and those with cars still are prepared to travel further away to “tank up” the car.  As it is noticeable that we have been losing petrol stations in Central London for the past 10-15 years anyway. And in the Church St ward that Lyon’s Place building finds itself in, we have car ownership dropping down to 35 per cent since the beginning of the century when it stood at 50 per cent. 

So this landmark development won’t just be the place we have the big red retro-petrol pumps making it stand out along the Edgware Rd but also be the first place where we saw a petrol station converted into a major electric charging point station. Marking a major advancement in the electric infrastructure of London for the new future of electric cars and buses on the streets of London. 

At the last full council meeting, Westminster City Council passed a motion on Health Inequalities by the Labour Group which was amended by the Tory Group whereby the council resolves to review any recommendations of PHE Report on COVID19 & Ethnic Minorities, incorporating them into the Council’s recovery strategy. These are top five recommendations l would make to reduce the impact of COVID19 to Westminsters ethnic minority communities within their corporate strategies. 

• Work with Black & Asian Minority Ethnic communities in the City particularly their voluntary sector

BAME individuals are more likely to suffer from comorbidities, such as obesity or diabetes, and other health issues such as Vitamin D deficiency. The council should ensure that standard messaging on these public health issues is reinforced within BAME communities during the pandemic. 

The council should also ensure that all public health information is provided in a wide range of languages including, but not limited to, Polish, Punjabi, Bengali, Arabic, Urdu, and Gujarati, French, Chinese, Portuguese and Spanish. At present, not all materials appear to be available in all of these languages. 

And in this respect the council should work with the voluntary sector rooted in these communities like the Marylebone Bangladesh Society & Queens Park Bangladesh Association within the Bangladeshi community

• Protect and defend the Chinese community against racists accusations

From early in the pandemic, racist behaviour was observed against those of East Asian heritage due to the Chinese origin of the coronavirus. The council should remain vigilant against such behaviour and work with the Chinese community in the West End to support them against any potential resurgences For example, those arising from the publication of reports into the origins of the virus and every time Trump makes an anti-Chinese utterance!  

• Better support for and understanding of intergenerational households 

Much of the communication of guidance on household activities, including isolation and shielding, is mostly presented in the context of ‘traditional’ households. It should be recognised that intergenerational households are more common in Asian & Arab communities than White ones; and that these communities often contain a higher proportion of frontline healthcare workers. When older family members are co-resident with these workers, the risks of infection to those who are in a shielding group are elevated. Although some guidance on multi-generational households does exist, the council should undertake urgent consultations with members of these groups to explore how to better support them within the existing familial structures, and also to better understand the transmission of COVID-19 in such settings. 

• Prioritisation of BAME individuals in Pillar 1 testing 

The current testing prioritisation strategy used by the NHS does not make any mention of the increased risk to BAME individuals. The council should make the case to consider explicitly making ethnicity a factor in devising testing priority and frequency plans, both in Pillar 1 (“those with a medical need and the most critical key workers”) and the later pillars.  

• Shielding 

For individuals in a ‘moderate risk’ shielding group, consideration should be made of whether being from an ethnic minority is enough to justify moving the individual to the ‘high risk’ group in marginal cases. The extra concerns associated with shielding status must be allayed and should be considered within a socioeconomic context, such as the difficulty of isolation within a multigenerational household that includes frontline workers. 

The five recommendations aside, it is clear that structural factors, such as discrimination in healthcare and education, play a substantial role, and manifest in a variety of different ways. These range from poorer healthcare literacy, to greater prevalence of underlying respiratory conditions from exposure to air pollution, to reduced access to public services. And in this respect residents of Westminster City Council are doing better than others in the overall picture in England and London as well, by measures of COVID19 daily cases; the actual number of fatalities and the patterns of deprivation and COVID19 cases per 100,000 people.

That said there are variations within the City of Westminster, like that between Church Street and St James & Mayfair localities which the council should be mindful when directing public health resources. For example in the former, we have had 21 fatalities so far while the latter has had only 2 going by the figures up to 31st of May. 

This all comes at a time when Westminster City Council has been highlighted in a report to have only 13 per cent of its councillors from BAME communities even though its population is made up of 38 per cent of BAME communities. The Report suggested that the lack of BAME councillors ‘perpetuating racial inequality and disadvantage’ in the UK and something the Council needs to address urgently as well. A much more diverse Westminster City Council would no doubt have made the same recommendations to limit impact of COVID19.

M&M Buildings,W2 private leaseholders are facing huge increases in their annual building insurance along with the anxiety of living with ACM cladding

Last month l was invited to go along to Paddington Walk,W2 to hear from residents in a private block known as the M&M Building about the impact of the Grenfell tragedy on private leaseholders which has similar ACM cladding installed.  The management company has struggled to secure terms to renew the policy, and they risk having no cover or see premiums raised by a truly shocking 1000% which puts even more strain on their overburdened finances due to the cost of interim fire safety measures and is a huge cause of anxiety. So not only have they got to deal with the mental tension of living in flats where a fire could spread very quickly but their annual building insurance has sky rocketed as a result, to cover the potential cost of it all! 

This was made clear in the a response my colleague Andrew Dismore the Assembly Member for Camden & Barnet got from a written question he made to the Mayor where he asked what he was doing to persuade the government of the scale and urgency of the matter.  In the response the Mayor made the point about ACM cladding and building insurance that the problem is felt acutely in London and it can only be solved by nationwide action from Central government. He reassured that his team will redouble their efforts to ensure the government takes concert action the on the issue. 

This is goes against all the evidence shown by the experts in the field.  The London Fire Commissioner has identified what needs to be done, including new equipment such as radios, BA and specialist vehicles including 64m aerial ladders; urgent training to raise standards on incident
command and blue light appliance driving; new procedures, tactics and training for
high rise firefighting; community outreach, improved fire safety work, and youth
engagement. The cost of this vital LFB Transformation Delivery
Plan was reported as being a “£4.1m estimated ongoing cost to deliver” it. How is
this going to be found with the proposed £25 million cut in the Brigade’s budget?

In 2016, the Mayor also commissioned the Anthony Mayer independent review into the Fire
Brigade’s funding, after Boris Johnson’s draconian cuts to fire stations, fire engines,
and firefighters. His report was unequivocal: he said the Brigade could not shoulder
any further funding reductions “if it is to have sufficient resources to meet the
challenges of the future, and to keep Londoners safe”.

Since then, we have seen the new post Grenfell legislation which will expand the
Brigade’s enforcement role. New regulations are already bringing more buildings into
its regulatory and enforcement role yet this expansion is barely funded. The LFB
already had a significant budget gap before this latest crisis. Cuts of this magnitude
cannot be achieved without affecting the front line response, as Meyer
indicated. So are the average London wide six- and eight-minute response times for
the first and second fire engines’ attendance now going to be at risk and jeopardised. This will be a major issue in the May 2021 election. 

As the Met refers itself to police watchdog over the stop and search of the athlete’s Bianca Williams in their family car in W9, maybe it is time for them to realise that not all black people in big cars have gained them illegally!  

This kind of thing was happening also in the early eighties then with local lads who made it big in  football running around in their new cars in North Paddington except then the Met was not at all accountable then.  “Some things just don’t change with the Met” comments one of those who was caught up in all that then. 

As a video of the incident, which saw the Team GB sprinter and her partner Ricardo dos Santos pulled from their car in W9, has gone national online, we certainly did not have the mobile phone to record such incidents, only rumours which in many ways is more dangerous.  

Furthermore while there has been some trouble in the North of the borough after people relaxed from the closure of the lockdown, it was in the West End where we had a lot more trouble from local accounts. Yet the Met saw fit to send their vans of police to the North rather than the West End. 

So for some we are back to the eighties in more ways then we realise. 

Local pre-school centre in Broadley St Gardens telling us its closed for till further notice.

Child-care is going to be a huge issue when Londoners finally return to work and in fact, it has been a huge issue during lockdown as women have taken on the bulk of caring duties.

The IFS & UCL Report ” How mothers and fathers balancing work and family under lockdown?” confirmed this as it revealed mothers taking the majority of the additional childcare as a result from COVID19 and women losing their jobs to a greater extent than men – so gender inequalities should also not be forgotten.  

Up to a 34 per cent of early years providers are facing closure due to COVID19 according to another report from the Sutton Trust

I suspect the TUC call for a four day week, will become popular for those in meaningful employment now.  

Robert Clive known by his admirers as “Clive of India” was responsible for the mass invasion and brutalisation of millions across Bengal, Bihar, Orissa and the rest of the Indian sub-continent.

As the first governor of the East India Company’s Bengal Presidency, Robert Clive looted massive wealth from Bengal ( his first loot is said to have been worth £250 million in today’s money for his company ) and was responsible for profit driven policies that provoked a four-year long famine, killing a minimum of one million people and reducing the population by a third. The East India Company continued to collect taxes as these people died, unable to cultivate their crops, while Robert Clive amassed his fortune.

The East India Company’s activities particularly the behaviour of the company servants roused much public indignation in England including the father of modern Conservatism Edward Burke. He become their most outspoken critic in parliament against the company abuse and immorality in India by suggesting “ Tomorrow these delinquents of India maybe the commons of Great Britain” As Clive used the massive wealth he had amassed to buy “rotten boroughs’, corrupting England’s own democratic processes. Horace Walpole Whig Politician and author, said of him “ They starved millions in India by monopolies and plunder, and almost raised a famine at home by the luxury occasioned by their opulence raising the price of everything, till the poor could not purchase bread” Furthermore, the establishment of this market monopoly by the East India Company in India offended and angered thinkers, including Adam Smith.

There is also a blue plaque at 45 Berkeley Square,W1 his last home in London stating he is a soldier and administrator when this is patently not true. It states he was a soldier but it does not tell you he was one for a private army for hire to the East India Company. Maybe a mercenary would be a better description. And as for an administrator, the plaque does not tell you that he was vilified by his contemporaries in Britain & put on trial before Parliament for looting Bengal; committing mass atrocities & policies which led to famine in Bengal.

As for his death, while Clive left no suicide note, Samuel Johnson wrote that he “had acquired his fortune by such crimes that his consciousness of them impelled him to cut his own throat”.

There are three main reasons to remove the statue. First the glorification of a mass murderer and looter in the heart of the national capital is profoundly insulting, especially those from a South Asian background. Secondly, the location of the statue at the entrance of the FCO tells visitors that the British state today condones the murderous activities of the East India Company. It tells our civil servants, MPs and Whitehall staff that they are furthering his work. Why are we, as a country asking our public servants to work in such an environment? And finally It is time to improve and increase the education that we receive about the British Empire. If the purpose of the statue is to remember history, this statue does not do the job. Let us teach people about Clive’s legacy in an archive or museum, accompanied by fresh historical work.

The Council can consult on where to move and preserve the statue and the reliefs where separate proposals can be made. The goal of this petition is to stop the glorification of Robert Clive, as one of the greatest Corporate rogus continues to have pride of place at the heart of government.

As a result, if you live, work or study in Westminster, please sign this petition below to remove the statue of Robert Clive

https://petitions.westminster.gov.uk/RemoveClive/

This piece was published in the Westminster Extra in their addition for the week beginning the 26th of June.