Twin Towers on Chelsea Barracks lying empty still!

Last year, the Mayor responded to an interesting question about the number of potential homes in London with planning permission but which are currently in ”stalled” developments.  The figure was quite startling – 170,000 stalled developments!  This number, if built, would help alleviate the chronic shortage of homes in the capital, helping to accommodate homeless families; families needing to move into larger properties and the plethora of Londoners waiting to take their first step into owner occupation.

Yet while the national focus is on how to incentivise developers to get on and build, we should not underestimate the part which Land Valuation Tax (LVT) could play in stopping developers sitting on land banks.  The Economist made point of this in its editorial on the 9th March where it said:

“………………. It would be much better to tax the land value: that would make hoarding expensive and force owners to sell to someone who can use the site. Once in use, the site value and the tax would rise—creating a virtuous circle, as the revenues pay for better infrastructure, making land more valuable.”

The New Statesman also articulated the problem in a recent article about “Why all progressives should support land value tax”.  It said:

“Landowners, including homeowners, are freeloaders on a gigantic scale. The total value of the housing stock in the UK was £1.3trn in 1990. With only inflation it would now be worth £2trn, but instead its current value is over £4trn. This £2trn increase above inflation has come through a rise in the value of land itself, not through new buildings; comparatively few houses have been built in the last two decades. Landowners have gained £100bn yearly on average from a rise in land values. As Churchill might have said, never in the field of human endeavour has so great a reward been given for so little effort.”……………

A case in point is Chelsea Barracks (a potential £3 billion proposal) in the City of Westminster, on the border of the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea. This major site in Central London has now been lying empty for probably the best part of a decade, if not more, with no sign of movement.  The original proposal included about 50% affordable housing (before the intervention of Prince Charles).   The local council attempted to find out what the owners were doing with the site and wanted to help move it on recently when it warned the owners “start building or sell-up” , but without much success.   Stories like this probably account for a number of stalled sites across Greater London.  And soon, we are to get another barracks on the market, Hyde Park in Knightsbridge.  Will this also lie empty for years before it gets developed? LVT is a measure which could catalyse developers into utilising land which the capital desperately needs to house its growing population.

Aid isn’t always what its cut out to be!

We are told it’s quite commendable that the UK government is maintaining its aid commitment of 0.7 per cent of gross national income (GNI)  in these auster times amongst all the developed countries in the world but the reality is aid has always been part of foreign policy tools of a country as the letter from Lord Malloch-Brown in FT dated the 3rd of April, reveals so starkly. Here he clearly states the pay-off of British aid in terms of diplomatic influence. So lets not get too starry eyed about it as some do about achieving the 0.7 per cent target.

The reality anyway though is the $50 billion annual of official assistance globally is dwarfed by flows of remittances or money transfers sent by migrants around the world to their various ancestral homes, by almost tenfold. The latest conservative estimates put it at some $ 400 billion by the  World Bank in 2012 . A flow that is given very little attention in developed world particularly amongst think tanks and NGOs.

Interestingly the global financial crisis of 2008/09 has not sent migrant workers streaming back home, despite worsening employment prsopect and anti-immigration rhetoric in some destination countries. Such international migration has enormous implications for growth and welfare in both origin and destination countries. An important benefit to developing countries is the receipt of remittances or transfers from income earned by overseas emigrants. Ask any Finance Minister in the developing world and he will tell this loud and clearly.

So thanks to Lord Mark Malloch-Brown for giving us a reality check about what aid is really about and lets put more of a focus on making better use of these huge remittance flows into the developing world in the first place.

Please find the letter published in the FT on its letter page for the 8th of April 2012

Having spent the Easter break reading the long awaited Aviation Policy Framework (APF), my initial thoughts are that it is not as encouraging as one would have hoped for in environmental terms given the initial draft consulted upon last year. 

I should have suspected the worst as it was released just before the Easter break by the Department of Transport (DoT) released late one friday afternoon. Ideal time for it not to draw too much attention. During the consultation the right questions were being asked and thus the London Assembly Health & Environment Committee responded on environmental concerns like noise and air pollution and some governance issues on behalf of Londoners.

In term of noise, the decision to retain the 57Leq contour is frustrating as is the assertion that compensation should be paid only for a 3dB increase in noise when the comparable level for road schemes is 1dB.

In regard to air quality, the document contributes nothing concrete to helping solve the problem and is extremely disappointing in this area. The Government appear to be passing the buck to Davies who has pledged to assess all proposals for new capacity in terms of their air quality impact. 

All this confirms to me that the APF has given the Davies Commission a free rein over environmental issues, illustrating well how ministerial changes do matter. When both Justine Greening MP  & Theresa Villiers MP were at DoT covering aviation at least both were asking the right questions and we saw that clearly within the consultation document. After this episode I’ve come to the view now that environmental concerns and responsibilities in the transport arena should be taken out of the DoT and put into one of the environmental ministries asap. Otherwise the issues won’t get the attention merited of them by Londoners.

Last night l was shocking informed of the above facebook page that had been put up clearly by Bengali Islamists against alleged atheists in London. Nastik is the Bengali for atheist. Whatever you may think of the politics of Bangladesh at the moment particularly with the war crime trials, nobody should be making threats to other individuals with whom you may disagree with on such matters particularly when British residents in the UK are involved.

jahadist with this list will think it is their Jihadi duty to annihilate those listed as atheist.  Those who have put the page up have thus  endangered the individual above lives. And while the page has now been put down, do not think the danger is over as events over in Dhaka have yet to come to their end game. Thats why l have approached the Met to offer these individuals and their families protection.

LAS control centre in Waterloo

With all the sweeping charges in the NHS in London now upon us, spare a thought for the London Ambulance Service (LAS) which after the Met deals with the most emergency 999 calls in London if not the country with over a 1.5 million annually.

The LAS has an annual budget £283 million employing about 5,000 people. As a result of the Nicholson challenge it needs to make a saving of 53 million pounds over five years. That is a 19 per cent reduction by 2015/16 compared to 2011/12 with as a result plans now to cut 890 jobs over five years including 560 frontline jobs. This at a time when it dealt with 1.6 million calls in 2011 with calls rising annually by 3 per cent annually and urgent calls rising fastest at 14 per cent in 2012.

Furthermore we have a situation where potentially  London could lose up to 8 A&E departments out of 31 across Greater London. In this scenario people are expecting the LAS to pick up the slack, but with even fewer trained staff to do this they simply don’t have the capacity to do it and its only going to get worse. Compounding this situation is our growing and ageing population will undoubtedly put increasing pressure on A&E waiting times, as London’s population races from 8.17m now to 9m by 2020.

If we lose A&E departments we need more ambulances, not fewer. As ambulances are often the first point of contact for emergency patients, A&E department closures will impact on the LAS workload, with fewer A&E departments clearing meaning longer journey times to reach hospital and thus increases to both blue light journeys and non emergency trips. And fewer paramedics mean longer response times for an ambulance to reach the emergency. Not surprisingly in January 2013 the Care Quality Commission reported that the LAS has dangerously low levels of staff and sometimes ill-equipped vehicles.

No-one is appears to be looking at the combined impact of A&E closures and simultaneous ambulance cuts. Over the winter period already the LAS was given an extra £6m to help category A responses to reach 79% within 8 minutes in January when the target is 75 per cent. So London’s emergency patients are being squeezed in a pincer movement of healthcare cuts and lives could be put at risk. The warming signs already there for all to note, so lets not forget the LAS when saving London’s emergency services.

 A fulerl version of this blog has been printed in this week Forum column in the West End Extra

At last night’s London Waterways Commission (LWC), we had a presentation from Transport for London on their recently launched River Action Plan, to double passenger numbers along the Thames by 2020.

It was welcomed by all, yet many of the Commissioners agreed it should be called the “Passenger” River Action Plan because it fails to mention the role of freight along the Thames.  The emphasis is clearly on river passengers alone.  By highlighting this, The LWC Commissioners hope to usefully address these concerns.

Nonetheless, I found the river tube plan very interesting (above), in particular all the new piers being suggested, essentially by developers of waterside developments.  In the West we have Plantation Wharf and Battersea Power Station while in the East we have Barking & Gallions Reach.

Given the emphasis on Piers as destinations in the action plan, it occurs to me that one place that has been neglected is Brentford in the West.  It is the point at which the river Brent and the canals meet the Thames and it’s envisaged that passenger boats will go past it on their way to to Richmond and Kingston, so why can’t Brentford have a Pier as well.  Famously it is claimed that Julius Caesar landed there when he came over to Londinium during his reign  in 54 BC for the second invasion of Britannia as Brentford is a likely site of a battle recorded between Julius Cæsar and the local king, Cassivellaunus

So a Pier at Brentford on the Thames called “Julius Caesar Pier”?  Has a ring to it and is something l should possibly pursue with the Mayor?

The new Police and Crime Plan repeats the claim that all of London’s 32 boroughs will see an increase in the number of police officer based in their borough. The Mayor has been previously criticised for this claim as it is based on police numbers in 2011, a low point for the Met following a recruitment freeze. Compared to 2010 17 of London’s 32 boroughs will see a decrease in the number of police officers, and the remaining boroughs will not receive as many extra officers as promised.

The plan also confirms that over 60 police stations and front counters will be closed, 12 stations earmarked for closure have been reprieved but more stations that were safe have been put on the list. The Police and Crime Plan fails to provide any detail about these closures, it also fails to details where the new “Contact Points” will be based.

Londonwide Assembly Member Murad Qureshi AM said:

“For Boris to continue claiming that Westminster will see an increase in police officer numbers is misleading.  Westminster will have 58 fewer officers once his plans are put in place. He is peddling his tired old line that his plan won’t cut frontline police services. It’s time he was honest with residents and tell them he failed to get a good deal from government and now we are paying the price.

“Boris is planning on closing all the stations in the north of the Borough against the wishes of local residents who have been clear in their opposition to the Mayor’s plans. He told us that all police stations closed down would receive like-for-like replacements but today’s announcement shows this isn’t the case. Rather than wasting time promoting himself on the national stage, the Mayor should be paying attention to his day job and getting a better deal for Londoners from his colleagues in government”

Ends

Notes

1.    Murad Qureshi AM is a Labour Londonwide Assembly Member

2.    Attached is a table detailing the amount of police officers in each borough and how the Mayor’s claims are inaccurate.

3.    Please find the plans for each individual borough here: http://www.london.gov.uk/priorities/policing-crime/mission-priorities/police-and-crime-plan

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The scale of cuts announced by the Police and Crime plan yesterday is no laughing matter

Whilst l enjoyed the mauling of the Mayor of London on the AM Show on Sunday morning by Eddie Mair, it was five years too late to have any significant political impact.  The same interview in 2008 would have almost certainly scuppered Boris’s ambitions to become Mayor.  That’s probably why he was able to laugh it all off yesterday by suggesting Eddie Mair was only doing his job. 

However, Londoners are the biggest losers as a result of the current spotlight on the Mayor’s past, not least because of the conveniently scheduled BBC programme last night ‘Boris Johnson: The irresistible rise’ which has quite neatly served to divert attention away from yesterday’s announcement on his police cuts in London.  The scale and potential impact of this to policing in London is huge and yet it has made few editorials today.  The Mayor’s London Police and Crime Plan confirms that over 60 police stations and front counters will be closed, 12 stations earmarked for closure have been reprieved but more stations that were safe have been put on the list. It fails to provide any detail about these closures and also fails to detail where the new “Contact Points” will be based.  Despite the Mayor’s dubious claims, police numbers are also down in several boroughs and safer neighbourhood policing goes out of the window.  

Call me a cynic, but it was not surprising that the Mayor launched his Police & Crime Plan on the morning of the one hour special on his life on BBC2. Critically it took away attention from what he is doing as Mayor and focused on the man himself. So, all the headlines today, both in the press and on TV have been about the alleged fall-out from the interview and last night’s programme rather than what he’s doing to the police service in London. 

Boris may be laughing off his car crash interview, but he’s also having the last laugh at Londoner’s expense as the BBC appear to help him out of another very difficult corner in his political life – but on this occasion, the cost to London is too high. 

The Mayor’s Police and Crime Plan can be viewed here