This week's newsletter focuses on three issues of vital importance to London. On two of these issues (housing and the Ultra-Low Emission Zone) my colleague Andrew Boff and I questioned Sadiq Khan at the most recent Mayor's Question Time. The third issue, the private hire cab industry, is now the subject of a consultation by Transport for London (see below for details.)
At Mayor’s Question Time, Andrew illustrated how Sadiq Khan has been "cooking the books" to try to maintain the pretence that he's anywhere near meeting his housing targets. My focus was on the Mayor's blunders around the Ultra-Low Emission Zone and his failure to offer a convincing explanation for how his preferred scheme would actually work.
All three issues will affect millions of Londoners over the remainder of Sadiq Khan's Mayoral term.
Gareth Bacon AM
Leader, GLA Conservatives
Housing
In June’s Mayor’s Question Time, Andrew Boff asked the Mayor “How will you be recording progress in delivering affordable housing in London?” He received the response that the Government has given him £4.82 billion “to start 116,000 genuinely affordable homes by 2022.”
According to GLA figures, 12,526 GLA-funded affordable homes were started in 2017/18. This included a sudden increase of 5,801 homes between the figures published to the end of Feb 2018 and the end of March 2018.
Following an FOI request, the GLA published a breakdown of affordable housing starts for each scheme of 10 units or more, in the months of March 2018 and March 2017. A number of the schemes listed for March 2018 were then visited, and in a number of cases there are suggestions that work may not have actually started on site.
In addition, there are two schemes that had been double counted in both March 2017 and March 2018. Royal Wharf Phase 3 in Newham is listed in both years with 241 affordable homes being started. Similarly, Milhabour Plaza in Tower Hamlets is listed in both years with 253 affordable homes being started. This suggests that 494 homes have been double counted. If deducted from the 2017/18 total, it would mean that the Mayor fell short of his 12,500 target for affordable housing starts that year.
Given this, Andrew asked Sadiq Khan to “explain how 241 housing starts at Royal Wharf Phase 3 in Newham and 253 affordable housing starts at Mill Harbour Plaza in Tower Hamlets appeared as starts in both the March 2017 and March 2018 figures?”
Once again, the Mayor had no good answer so he decided to try flat out denial. This tactic did not go well for him as you can watch here.
Given that housing is supposedly Sadiq Khan’s to priority, cooking the books in this way is not impressive.
Ultra Low-Emission Zone
Ultra Low-Emission Zone At our most recent Mayor’s Question Time, I questioned the Mayor about the Ultra-Low Emission Zone. The ULEZ should be a powerful tool to improve London’s air quality and reduce the emissions of particulates. Under Boris Johnson it would have been introduced in September 2020 and would have covered precisely the same area as the Congestion Charge Zone. The reason September 2020 was chosen was that it allowed time for new vehicles to come onto the market and time for those who would need to upgrade their vehicles to do so. The advantage of using precisely the same area as the CCZ is that it means there is no need for expensive new physical infrastructure and the scheme would target the area where air quality improvements are most needed.
Unfortunately, but sadly unsurprisingly, Sadiq Khan took a silk purse and turned it into a sow’s ear. In his desperation to make the ULEZ his own, our current Mayor has ensured that it will be vastly more expensive to implement and will penalise millions more of the poorest Londoners, mostly needlessly. His plan is to open the ULEZ in two stages: in Central London from April 2019 and up to the North and South Circulars by October 2021. Moving the start of the Inner London ULEZ forward by 16 months will cause a lot of problems to those Londoners seeking to buy compliant vehicles who had made plans to the original timetable. However it is the extension that will be most damaging.
In January 2017 I published the “Breath of Fresh Air” report on how to genuinely improve London’s air quality. It’s worth reading the report, which explains how expanding the ULEZ to the North and South Circulars would cost £780 million more than sticking to the original boundaries and suggests how that money could be spent far more effectively. And given 3.7 million Londoners and 258,000 small businesses are located within the North and South Circulars, if Sadiq Khan’s scheme goes ahead it will have a huge impact. In September 2017 my colleague Shaun Bailey published a follow up report entitled “Clearing the Air” which explored the matter further.
When I questioned Sadiq Khan on this it became apparent that:
a) He didn’t know what the cost of expanding the ULEZ would be;
b) He didn’t know how his expanded ULEZ would work;
c) He had no answer to how the scheme would be enforced to cover non-compliant vehicles belonging to people living and driving within the zone who did not cross the zonal boundary.
It is worth watching the full exchange here.
It is worth remembering that this is supposed to be Sadiq Khan’s flagship policy. Anyone watching could be forgiven for thinking that this is a scheme designed to chase headlines rather than deliver a genuine improvement to London’s air quality.
Private Hire Vehicles and TfL
Last week, TfL announced a consultation to remove exemption from the congestion charge for private hire vehicles. If this is ultimately approved, then for the first time in the Congestion Charge’s 15 year history, all private hire vehicles that enter the congestion charge zone will have to pay a daily charge of £11.50 for doing so.
Sadiq Khan is once again hammering the private hire industry. This latest move comes hot on the heels of massive increases (in many cases of thousands of percent) in operator licence fees which have caused many decades old mini-cab firms to cease operating. When the industry suffers so do customers – increased costs will inevitably be passed on to Londoners to pay in higher fares.
Having already created a £1 billion black hole in London’s transport budget, it is unacceptable for the Mayor to expect Londoners to foot the bill for his financial mismanagement.
It has been asserted by some commentators that anyone who opposes TfL’s war on the private hire industry implicitly means that they are anti-black cab.
It does not.
We are not in favour of any particular provider. We are in favour of the consumer. That means providing a level playing field for all providers and a diverse service offering for consumers to choose from.
TfL’s war on the private hire industry goes against this, and it is Londoners who will suffer.
The current proposal is under consultation meaning the Mayor has the opportunity to think again and drop this damaging proposal. To respond to the consultation, please click here.