Amid football freebies, a public park gets fenced off in north London
Plus: the Thames super sewer comes online, Lizzy line set for strikes, and a far right boxing club in Vauxhall gets infiltrated
Morning — the campaign to stop Tottenham Hotspurs from taking over a park in north London took a major knock last week, after Enfield council green-lighted the football club’s plans. 60% of Whitewebbs Park will now become a football academy for Spurs’ women’s team, and the public will be shut out. Locals have always been aware they faced an uphill battle though, given the club is a global business worth billions. And on top of that, Spurs has a habit of showering London councillors with free gifts and hospitality. Our report on the football freebies surrounding the Whitewebbs saga is after your Thursday round-up below.
Plus: the Thames super sewer comes online, Lizzy line set for strikes, and a far right boxing club in Vauxhall gets infiltrated.
In case you missed it: Spy regular Tom Duggins was recently given inside access to a group targeting rogue estate agents and landlords across the capital — the London Renters Union. We published his write-up on Saturday, where Tom unpacks what he learnt about the LRU’s tactics and membership.
FYI: We’re jetting off on a short holiday this weekend, but the Spy will be back in your inbox next week 🌴
What we’ve spied
💩 Thames Tideway, the super sewer designed to stop sewage dumping in central London, has been fully connected to the water network. Last week the firm that's spent the past 10 years constructing the £5bn mega project announced Tideway is now actively diverting sewage away from the Thames. The 16 mile long, 24ft wide pipe targets the 34 most-polluting sewage outflows in London, many dating back to the Victoria era, and is rerouting waste to a treatment works in Beckton. It's estimated Tideway is stopping half a million tonnes of sewage from entering the Thames. The project is not yet complete though, as it still needs to be tested in storm conditions in the months ahead. Thames Water will then take over when that's finished.
🟣 Elizabeth Line train drivers have voted to go on strike for four days over pay. Beginning Thursday, February 27, drivers are walking out after their union, Aslef, rejected an offer of a 4.5% pay rise from Lizzy line operator MTR. The other strike days are Saturday, March 1, Saturday, March 8 and Monday, March 10. The strikes come ahead of Tokyo Metro taking over operation of the line from MTR in May. More industrial action: civilian staff at the Met Police were on strike last week in a dispute over a new attendance policy that cuts down on working from home.
👮 Speaking of the Met: police commissioner Sir Mark Rowley has vowed to keep rogue cops away from the public, after a court ruled last week that they had been dismissed unlawfully. The court ruling over the removal of vetting clearance had blown up Rowley's clean-up operation of the Met, which has seen dozens of officers accused of misconduct dismissed in a bid to restore public trust following the murder of Sarah Everard by Wayne Couzens. Rowley has since said he plans to sideline officers by putting them on paid leave, but at a heavy price — the Guardian reports this may cost up to £7m a year. Money was already tight for the Met, and indeed on Wednesday the force announced cuts to its workforce to meet a £260m budget shortfall. Elsewhere in the Met: Josiah Mortimer of the Byline Times has uncovered an internal report that found Black police officers are much more likely to be subject to internal misconduct investigations than their white counterparts.
🗺️ FROM THE BOROUGHS 🗺️ 🤑 Kingston, Croydon and Harrow are the London boroughs with the highest council tax this year, according to figures compiled by the Standard. From April, residents of Band D properties will be paying £2,488 a year in Kingston, £2,480 in Croydon and £2,396 in Harrow, when the mayor's precept is also factored in. That's in contrast to Wandsworth, where Band D council tax is going to be £990, or Westminster, where it'll be £1,017. Reporter Ross Lydall has a good chart here that ranks the boroughs and colours them by the political party in control.
Elsewhere: Barnet is becoming the first council in the UK to ban smartphones from its schools. From September, 103 primary schools and 23 secondary schools in the borough will be covered by the ban, which has the aim of letting pupils "learn, socialise and grow, free from addictive algorithms". In Lambeth, residents have been in court with the council in an attempt to scrap a low-traffic neighbourhood in West Dulwich. Lambeth reportedly gave officers involved in the case a day of "wellbeing leave", following the six-hour grilling in court. And in Southwark, the ruling cabinet is facing a confidence vote next week over housing policy failures recently identified by the social housing regulator.
🚒 A luxury central London hotel frequented by celebs caught on fire on Friday. The historic Chiltern Firehouse in Marylebone was partially destroyed in the blaze, which firefighters believe was caused by wood falling from a pizza oven. Twenty fire engines and 125 firefighters attended the fire at the hotel, which is Grade II listed and has hosted the likes of Lewis Capaldi and Princess Beatrice. Around 100 people were evacuated but there were no reported injuries.
⛏️ London's first Roman basilica has been uncovered under an office block near the Leadenhall market in the City. Archaeologists have hailed the 2,000-year-old discovery as one of the capital's most significant finds ever — it's the remains of the town hall-like building that was at the heart of Roman London's forum. It was discovered during refurbishment works at 85 Gracechurch Street, and the project is now being redesigned to showcase the findings.
🔍 And finally, we leave you with:
Claims a computer algorithm was behind the controversial Gail's in Walthamstow (Independent)
Drama over nude models at a north London life drawing class (Times £)
Cockneys reviewing the first EastEnders episode in 1985 (BBC)
Remembering the 1975 Moorgate Tube disaster (Guardian)
The London house wrapped in cork (Guardian)
Hate for big cars in London (Reddit)
The last four films watched by the Prince Charles Cinema's head of programming (TikTok)
A walk down Oxford Street in 2004 (TikTok)
A permanent home at the London Museum for Banksy's piranhas artwork (BBC)
The Tube ad critic (www)
Asking the hard-hitting questions on the Underground (TikTok)
Is being a London cabbie still financially worth it? (YouTube)
The Muswell Hill grocery shop that's barely changed since 1897 (Londonist)
A retro video game console repair shop in Elephant & Castle (Guardian)
Free tickets and an executive lunch: The freebies hanging over Enfield’s park decision
Tottenham Hotspurs FC has won a long-running battle to build a new training ground in north London, snuffing out local hopes the land would be kept as a public park.
Last Wednesday Enfield council officially handed over a 25-year lease to Spurs for 130 acres of Whitewebbs Park, which the club will use to build a football academy for its women's team.
It's on the site of a municipal golf course that Enfield council shut down in 2021 — regular Spy readers may remember Whitewebbs from our recent big read, where we spoke to campaigners trying to keep the rewilded land in public hands.
"A dark day for parks," is how some have reacted to Wednesday's decision, given the signal it sends to other borough councils looking to cash in on their public green spaces.
But the deal is revealing of another fact of local political life in London: the influence of freebies from the city's major football clubs.
Spurs regularly hands out free match tickets and hospitality to north London's elected representatives — including to those making decisions that have a direct bearing on the club's financial interests, like in the case of Whitewebbs.
Take Nesil Caliskan, the former leader of Enfield council and now Labour MP for Barking since July 2024.
Caliskan was in charge of Enfield when the council first began sounding out interest in a deal at Whitewebbs, before it was eventually awarded to Spurs.
But it would turn out that, just days before the tendering process for Whitewebbs lease had closed, Caliskan had received several freebies from the club.
That included lunch with the club's executive chairman at Spurs' training ground in Tottenham on February 13, 2020, and then three tickets for a match at Tottenham Stadium six days later — a Champions League game against RB Leipzig.
It would take over a year for Caliskan's freebies to be spotted in the gifts and hospitality register, at which point the Spurs deal had already been publicly announced.
She was nonetheless called out by some members of Enfield's overview and scrutiny committee, who suggested the freebies biased her decision to pick Spurs for the land.
Caliskan denied this, insisted she had "done nothing legally wrong", and pointed out she regularly met with stakeholders “for a variety of reasons”.
Perhaps — though the only other gift registered by Caliskan that same year was a box of Hotel Chocolat chocolates, valued at £100, given by a local doggy day care, Halo Dogs.
But in any case, the Spy can reveal yet another Spurs freebie relating to Whitewebbs that has previously gone under the radar.
That was a free ticket from the club to councillor Dino Lemonides, once Caliskan's deputy for housing and planning in the borough.
Lemonides, who has since left the council, was given a ticket to see Spurs play Southampton in the FA Cup on February 5, 2020 — just weeks before Caliskan went to her complimentary matches.
Lemonides also represented the Chase ward in Enfield, where Whitewebbs — and many of the residents who are campaigning to save the park — are located.
Indeed, Lemonides was publicly involved in the Whitewebbs process, at one stage chairing a community meeting just a month before accepting his freebie, where campaigners clashed with council representatives over the potential leasing of the land.
Sean Wilkinson, chair of the Friends of Whitewebbs Park, recalled to the Spy: “It was the Green Belt Forum and we used it to robustly question what was going on with Whitewebbs. Cllr Lemonides allowed the questioning to continue.
“Subsequently the Forum was closed and its functions were handed over to a much more docile body.”
Once the Whitewebbs deal began to be nailed down, Spurs stopped offering Enfield councillors free tickets.
But the club has continued to offer freebies to local politicians elsewhere: in Haringey, the borough where its stadium is actually located.
From the Spy’s look at Haringey’s public registers, Spurs has gifted tickets together worth £2,720 to councillors since November 2022.
Many of these were given to cllr Sue Jameson, the borough’s ceremonial mayor, who in turn donated them to local charities.
But cllr Peray Ahmet, the council’s leader, and cllr Sarah Williams, her deputy and cabinet meeting, have accepted tickets for themselves.
Most recently, they both were given tickets by the Spurs to the September 2024 north London derby against Arsenal. They were worth £600 and included hospitality.
And it just so happens that a month before, Haringey council agreed to double the non-football events at Tottenham Stadium like concerts, despite objections from locals.
Previously, Ahmet has received tickets from Spurs for a boxing match at Tottenham Stadium in 2021, for football matches against Manchester United and Shakhtar Donetsk in 2023, and a gala at the Tate Modern in May 2024.
Of course, the fact of these freebies is by no means proof of any wrongdoing on either side.
But, at least in terms of Whitewebbs, they did nothing to assure locals that dealings over the park were free from bias.
Spurs was clearly willing to accept that risk, however. As the club’s motto goes: “To dare is to do”.
As for the Whitewebb campaign, despite last Wednesday’s decision, locals aren’t quitting.
Campaigners were out in force outside the planning meeting where Enfield councillors ratified the deal. They held a banner reading “Save Whitewebbs”.
Wilkinson adds: “It is our firm intention to carry on the fight to protect our beautiful and precious park”.