Exclusive: East London bureaucrat fired after 'allocating themselves council house'
Plus: Idris Elba for mayor, blowing up Hammersmith Bridge, and the Peckham pimp aesthetic
Morning — families, carers, and people in urgent need are now waiting an average of roughly seven years for a council home in London, as homelessness continues to rise. But that already high figure pales next to Barking & Dagenham’s, in the east of the city: 26 years. If only there were some way of cutting the queue... A Spy exclusive on one brazen bureaucrat's attempt to do just that leads your round-up below.
Plus: Idris Elba for mayor, blowing up Hammersmith Bridge, and the Peckham pimp aesthetic.
In case you missed it: on Tuesday we published an investigation into shady dealings over a building that was once the heart of a north London neighbourhood: Hornsey Town Hall. Just when hopes were rising that a new arts centre might finally reopen in the building after years of being shuttered, a secret £47m deal has thrown everything up in the air again.
What we've spied
🏚️ An east London bureaucrat has been fired for misconduct after allegedly allocating themselves a council house — skipping a local waiting time of 26 years. The Spy can reveal that an officer working in the housing department of Barking & Dagenham council has been dismissed following an internal investigation, after they were alleged to have bumped themselves up the waiting list for social housing in the borough. The brazen attempt reportedly took place sometime in the last year, but it was spotted early enough by management that the officer never moved into the council property. The case triggered a "full review of systems and processes" and the council concluded "there was no evidence of further misconduct," according to a spokesperson.
What's less clear is whether the ex-officer will be facing further consequences. Councillors on Barking's audit and standards committee attempted to quiz the council's head of fraud, Chris Martin, about the case earlier last month, but they were shut down, after Martin said the matter was subject to an "ongoing criminal investigation". He said he would provide a full report to councillors further down the line, "once criminal proceedings had been concluded", according to official minutes.
Yet when we approached the council for an update this week, we were told Martin had been "incorrect". A spokesperson said that there had, in fact, been no criminal investigation at all — because the council determined there wasn’t enough evidence to pursue one. In their own words: "There was no criminal investigation due to the higher threshold of proof required for prosecution".
In a follow-up, we asked if the council had consulted with the police or the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) before reaching that conclusion. A council spokesperson said the decision was made internally, by its Counter Fraud Team and legal department, using the evidential threshold in the CPS’s Code for Crown Prosecutors as a benchmark. The council has the legal power to carry out its own prosecutions, but in this case opted not to proceed further.
That leaves a few awkward questions hanging — not least why councillors were initially told the case was criminally active, and whether such serious allegations should have been handled entirely in-house. So far, the council has declined to explain how the miscommunication arose.
The case comes against the backdrop of Barking & Dagenham having the longest wait for social housing in not just London but the entire UK. An analysis by the Times in February found the average waiting time in the borough is 25.8 years, compared to a London-wide average of 6.6 years and a national figure of 2.9 years. Waiting times are even longer for large family homes in the borough — 67 years for a four-bed.
Barking & Dagenham council also has a complicated history with in-house fraud. In 2009, the council undertook a mass firing of more than 30 of its employees after an internal investigation found widespread fraud, including money laundering, false papers for early retirements and benefit fraud. And there we were thinking public service was its own reward.
🔴 A report in the Sun newspaper claims the actor Idris Elba is Labour's favourite to replace Sir Sadiq Khan as London mayor. The newspaper reports it has been told by a senior party source that Elba is "top of our wish list" to be the next Labour candidate for City Hall. "Idris has star appeal — but he is also a thoughtful political campaigner," the source explained, in reference to Elba's recent work campaigning on knife crime. They added: "We can pick a Labour insider and try to make them famous. Or we can pick someone famous aligned with Labour". No word from Elba himself on the high praise — but those on the right aren't impressed. "There is something depressing about the naked political cynicism on display," writes Jawad Iqbal in the Spectator. "Is this really what politics has come down to? A case of sticking the campaign rosette on the most famous person you can find, and hoping that celebrity status swings it with the voters."
🌉 A taskforce assessing what to do about Hammersmith Bridge has been presented with quite a drastic option: blowing it up. That proposal — demolition and replacement with a new crossing — is one of six new ideas recently put forward by the Department for Transport, which has renewed efforts to fix the partially closed bridge once and for all. Hammersmith has been closed to vehicles since April 2019 when cracks appeared in its pedestals, but pedestrians and dismounted cyclists have since been let back on. Indeed, permanently banning cars was one of the other proposals which were discussed at a January meeting involving DfT officials, local MPs, TfL and London's deputy mayor for transport, Seb Dance. The taskforce rejected the demolition idea though, along with another proposal to turn the bridge into an inaccessible "monument". The full repair option is still on the table, but with a hefty price tag: the most recent estimates put it at £250m.
🏳️🌈 The Met Police has been accused of "homophobic bias" in its investigation into the death of a drag artist in central London. Friends and supporters of Steven Gygelko aka Heklina, who was found dead at their Soho flat in 2023, held a rally outside Scotland Yard at the weekend, to draw attention to what they see as the force's mishandling of the case. Criticism of the Met includes a lack of a public appeal for witnesses and the fact it took two years for CCTV footage to be released. LGBTQ+ activist Peter Tatchell was at the rally — he told the BBC: "That is an abject betrayal of trust and confidence, and I think the police have to answer those questions and have to start getting serious about finding out how Heklina died". The criticism of London's police hasn't ended there: the Met raided a Quakers meeting house in Westminster last week and arrested six people connected to the protest group Youth Demand, a move that has been described as heavy-handed. Lastly on the Met: the force has announced it's cutting 1,700 staff in order to plug a £260m budget shortfall. That's despite Sir Sadiq Khan raising his mayoral share of council tax this to give police more funding.
🏗️ A controversial plan to replace a food hall in Elephant and Castle with skyscrapers has been approved by Southwark council. Last week councillors on the planning committee narrowly voted to permit the Borough Triangle development, which will see 900 homes in towers up to 44 storeys high built on a site which is currently home to the Mercato Metropolitano food court. More than 40 traders with stalls will now be moved out, which locals say is gutting the "heart of our community". But developer Berkeley Homes has pledged to include a community centre in the development. Meanwhile, 35% of the new flats will be affordable.
💸 A group of London tenants have been awarded a £263,000 payout after taking their billionaire landlord to a tribunal. For the past three years residents of 15 flats from across two blocks in Hackney have been in a legal battle with John Christodoulou, their landlord worth an estimated £2.5bn by last year's Sunday Times Rich List, over unsafe conditions. A judge has now sided with the tenants, saying that "the landlord’s business practices involved a systematic or institutional neglect of regulatory requirements". There's now concern about whether the tenants will actually see any of the cash, though, given Christodoulou has a history of ignoring rent repayment orders.
😅 Here's some of the London-related April Fools pranks we spotted:
The announcement of a 50ft high statue of Sadiq Khan in Greenwich Park
Abbey Road studios announcing the removal of the Abbey Road crossing
Ealing and Hillingdon merging to form the London Borough of Ealingdon
🔍 And finally — we leave you with:
The Peckham pimp aesthetic (TikTok)
"They will have flying cars in 2025" (TikTok)
Wayne Rooney caught weeing in public in Marylebone (Daily Mail)
North Korea's man in London (The Londoner)
When my boyfriend sees me in central London with my phone out (TikTok)
Soho's Mildreds through the years (TikTok)
The Thames at very high tide (TikTok)
An anti-Musk protest outside a Tesla showroom in west London (Guardian)
Accidental holy imagery in Snow Hill (Reddit)
Is a triad gang war underway in London? (London Centric)
Photos inside the Silvertown tunnel ahead of its opening next week (IanVisits)
London's secret midnight treasure hunts (Londonist)
The re-opening of London's joint-oldest spa (Time Out)
Great scoop! And persistence in getting it.