Fuming: Foreign Office names and shames embassies for unpaid congestion charges February 25, 2020 Transport for London (TfL) is owed more than £116m of unpaid congestion charges by diplomatic officials, with the US embassy leading the way. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office released the figures today, showing that the US embassy had accumulated a total of 102,225 unpaid congestion charges, which adds up to £12.44m in lost revenue for [...]
Sadiq Khan budget: Uncertainty over Met’s special operations funding February 24, 2020 Sadiq Khan will spend an extra £227.6m on the Metropolitan Police in 2020-21, however its specialist operations branch may face future funding uncertainty. Khan’s £18.5bn 2020-21 budget was approved by the London Assembly today. He plans to increase day-to-day spending for the The Mayor’s Office for Policing And Crime (MOPAC) to £3.89bn, which includes funding [...]
Sadiq Khan’s budget lays out path for East Bank development February 24, 2020 City Hall yesterday confirmed its plans to spend £437.5m over the next five years to fund a new culture and education hub across the Stratford waterfront. The £1.1bn East Bank development will be the home of a new Sadler’s Wells theatre, BBC music studios, a new Victoria and Albert Museum museum and campuses for University [...]
Exclusive: Tory mayoral candidate Shaun Bailey calls for £104m ’emergency crime budget’ February 24, 2020 Tory mayoral candidate Shaun Bailey will attach an amendment to the mayor’s budget in an attempt to inject an extra £104m to the Metropolitan Police’s coffers. The London Assembly will vote on Sadiq Khan’s £17bn 2020-21 mayoral budget at City Hall today. The 25 assembly members can successfully add amendments to the budget, or over [...]
Mayoral candidate Siobhan Benita wants to ‘Love London Better’ February 22, 2020 For a brief moment in 2019, the Liberal Democrats looked a serious chance of upending Britain’s two-party political hegemony. After years in the political wilderness, the party rode a wave of Brexit uncertainty and parliamentary division to top Westminster YouGov polling in late May, eliciting cries of jubilation from long suffering Lib Dem supporters. It’s [...]
Coronavirus: Tokyo hits back at ‘inappropriate’ suggestions London could host 2020 Olympics February 21, 2020 Tokyo governor Yurilo Koike has labelled claims London would be ready to host the 2020 Olympics if necessary as “inappropriate”. While a number of sporting events having been cancelled due to the coronavirus outbreak, Japan has been determined to get this year’s Olympic Games on. Earlier this week, the Conservative Party’s London mayoral candidate Shaun [...]
Barclays forgot about the humans in HR February 21, 2020 Barely a day goes by without a think tank, employers’ group or minister talking about the need to improve the productivity or British business, and while this generally conjures up images of factory floors it’s reassuring to know that investment banks are also searching for elusive gains. How else to explain the decision by Barclays [...]
Mayor of London election candidates have £420,000 campaign spending limit February 20, 2020 Candidates in the 2020 mayor of London election will have a limit of £420,000 to spend during the official campaign. Mayor of London Sadiq Khan will go head-to-head with Tory candidate Shaun Bailey, independent candidate Rory Stewart, Liberal Democrat Siobhan Benita and Green party co-leader on 7 May. Khan’s odds are as short as 1/7 [...]
Keir Starmer refuses to sign Khan’s London pledges February 20, 2020 Labour leadership frontrunner Sir Keir Starmer has refused to sign a set of so-called London pledges drawn up by Sadiq Khan. City A.M. exclusively reported last week that the mayor of London had asked the remaining three party leadership candidates — Starmer, Rebecca Long-Bailey and Nandy — to sign a set of six pledges aimed [...]
TfL ‘service performance’ complaints skyrocket in new figures February 20, 2020 Commuter complaints to Transport for London (TfL) skyrocketed in 2019, with complaints about service performance increasing by 62 per cent in just two years. TfL logged 110, 072 complaints from travellers in 2018-19, which was 19 per cent higher than two years earlier. More than 25,000 of these were around issues of “service performance” – [...]