Defeat for a London pub wrecker
Plus: an East End rebel, Slaydiq Khan, and a ‘shark’ sighting in the Thames
Morning — a little while back we introduced you to a London property tycoon notorious for shutting pubs across the capital, usually turning them into flats. Well this past week, someone has finally stood up to them. Good news for The China Hall in Rotherhithe leads your round-up below.
Plus: an East End rebel, Slaydiq Khan, and a ‘shark’ sighting in the Thames.
In case you missed it: on Saturday we revealed London golf clubs are considering plans to build houses on their courses, amid growing scrutiny of whether the land is being used fairly in a city short of space. Golf takes up a huge amount of land in London — roughly the size of an entire borough altogether — and there’s increasing interest about what could be done with the land instead.
PS: Once again apologies for our late round-up and our wonky publishing schedule this past week. We’ll have another London feature with you in the next couple of days, then a Sunday round-up this weekend!
What we’ve spied
🍻 A Victorian-era pub in Rotherhithe has been saved, in a major setback for a family property empire that's been shutting down community boozers across London for over a decade. On Wednesday Southwark council announced it'd been successful in its bid to stop developer Hamna Wakaf from converting The China Hall into flats without planning permission. The pub, more than 100 years old and a favourite of Millwall fans on match days, was closed down in 2018. In 2021, Hamna Wakaf began turning the pub's upper floors converted to flats, in that case with planning permission. But when council officials visited in 2022, they discovered that the pub's downstairs had been turned into an "empty shell" without authorisation — the bar removed, beer lines cut, and fixtures and carpet stripped. The case was referred to a planning inspector, who has now sided with the council and ordered Hamna Wakaf to restore the pub to its former glory. Former patrons in The China Hall Local Community Group are jubilant, with a spokesperson saying: "We’d like to thank council officers and their legal representatives in their outstanding energies, due diligence, and tenacious amplification of the China Hall’s cultural significance to Rotherhithe and Bermondsey". The Isle of Man-registered Hamna Wakaf is one of several offshore companies linked to property tycoon Asif Aziz and his family, best known for owning chunks of the West End, but also notorious for closing a number of pubs in the capital — like The Junction in Brixton and The Sovereign in Camden. More on the Aziz family pastime in our recent investigation into who owns London pubs.
❌ An East End MP was suspended from the Labour Party on Tuesday for voting to lift the two-child benefit cap. Apsana Begum, the MP for Poplar & Limehouse since 2019, joined six other Labour rebels in voting for an SNP motion that called for an end to the policy, which prevents parents from claiming Universal Credit or child tax credit for more than two children. Shortly after the vote, the rebels were suspended from the party by prime minister Keir Starmer. Begum later wrote a column in Huck magazine to explain why she voted against the government: "My constituency in east London has suffered from disproportionately high levels of child poverty and deprivation for a long time. In fact, we have some of the highest rates of child poverty in the entire country". Begum's constituency is in Tower Hamlets, where around 50% of children are in relative poverty, according to the charity End Child Poverty. Statistics published by the Department for Work & Pensions earlier this month show there were 4,200 households in Tower Hamlets affected by the two-child cap as of April 2024. That's the second highest number of households affected by the cap in London — Newham has the most at 4,300. Newham's two Labour MPs, Stephen Timms and James Asser, voted against scrapping the cap.
🍏 As politicians on both sides of the Atlantic jump on the brat summer bandwagon, leading some to declare the trend is now dead, Sadiq Khan offered up his own nail for the meme's coffin: "ulez is working". This week City Hall published its first major analysis of the impact of the expansion of London's ultra-low emissions zone last August, finding a significant drop in air pollution. The analysis, based on the first six months of the expanded scheme, estimates the falls in pollutants like NOx across Greater London were equivalent to removing 200,000 cars from the road for one year. The London mayor took to Instagram to share the findings, using the black-text-on-green style of pop star Charli XCX's recent album that's gone so viral it's been co-opted by Kamala Harris's presidential campaign. "Slaydiq," wrote one commenter. "Black text on a green background doesn't provide sufficient colour contrast for colourblind or partially sighted people," wrote another. Related: Khan recently appointed a new environmental chief at City Hall, Mete Coban, a 32-year-old Stoke Newington councillor, who'll be working on policies like ULEZ. "High-carbon Coban" is how the Times headlined its profile, pointing out Coban has flown 40,000 air miles in little over two years.
🤼♂️ One more thing from City Hall: Khan met with wrestler Triple H on Thursday, as part of the mayor's campaign to host WrestleMania in London. Khan pledged to bring the wrestling event to the capital during his recent re-election campaign, alongside promises to develop another Olympic bid and try to host the Super Bowl. The previous 40 incarnations of WrestleMania have all been held in either the US or Canada, but after the talks, Khan hinted it might come to Wembley Stadium in 2027. Wrestling fans did wonder if Khan could have been given a bigger belt to hold in the photo ops.
🏳️🌈 A man has spoken out about his experience of a homophobic attack in Soho last week. In a now-viral post on X, Linus Karp recounts walking down Dean Street with his partner when a stranger hit him over the head with the wooden handle of an umbrella. His partner partially blocked the attacker, who then shouted: "You saved his life, I would have killed him otherwise". "My crime: being visibly queer," writes Karp, who shared a photo of a bruise on his head. The Met Police described the attack as a "homophobic assault" and said "there is no place for hate in London and we will not tolerate this kind of behaviour. Our officers are continuing to carry out all lines of inquiry". The continued threat of homophobic attacks in Soho was highlighted last November when the venue G-A-Y Late announced it was closing, in part due to a lack of police support to guarantee the safety of its staff and customers.
📣 Tributes have been paid to three children who died in a fire in East Ham earlier this month. The children have been named as 13-year-old Nakash Malik, his 11-year-old sister Aayat Malik and their seven-year-old brother Muhammad Hanan Malik. Their parents, Khurram Malik and Naumana Gul Khan, said: “Your lives were a blessing, your memory a treasure. You are loved beyond words and missed beyond measure. May you rest in peace in God’s heaven". Police and the fire brigade have said they are continuing to investigate the cause of the fire, but have so far found no evidence to indicate suspicious circumstances.
🏗️ PLANNING CORNER 🏗️ A win for John Lewis's real estate ambitions, after councillors in south east London approved the retailer's plans for three new residential blocks, dubbed the 'Waitrose towers'. The plans are for 320 rental flats and 30 affordable homes above a Waitrose supermarket near Bromley South station, with construction expected to begin next year. In Bethnal Green, developer Latimer has received permission to redevelop the London Chest Hospital into 274 homes, 50% of which will be affordable. Much of the hospital's existing structures will be demolished, except for the Grade II listed parts of the main building, which was built in the 1850s. The hospital has been vacant since 2015. Meanwhile, student rooms developer Unite continues its takeover of London’s uni halls, buying up a building in Borough for a 444-bed scheme already granted planning permission. It means Unite now has a total 3,200 student beds in the works in the capital over the next five years. Finally, two bits of planning news in Plaistow: councillors have rejected a plan for 80 flats because not a single one was affordable, while an architectural practice has unveiled plans for an art hub in a former warehouse. Also, worth reading if you have an FT subscription: this visual story on what's happening to empty offices in Canary Wharf.
🚇 The Piccadilly line is partially closing, ahead of the rollout of the Tube’s first-ever air-conditioned deep trains. The routes from Wood Green to Cockfosters and Rayners Lane to Uxbridge will be closed on weekends and then for a two-week stretch ending September 1 to upgrade parts of the track ready for the new trains. The upgraded fleet, part of a £2.9bn package of improvements for one of the Tube’s deepest and oldest lines, is expected to come online next year — a video preview of what they look like here. Enjoy the Piccadilly heat while you still can.
🔍 And finally, we leave you with: