Exclusive: London Fire Brigade rejects push to hire more women and minorities as 'unrealistic'
Plus: Khan calls for weed decriminalisation, Jenrick chases fare dodgers, and swingers descend on a stately home in south London
Morning — it was supposed to be the start of a culture reset. But three years on from a damning review into misogyny and racism at the London Fire Brigade, progress is stalling. Despite pressure from City Hall, fire chiefs have now rejected calls to raise their recruitment targets for women and ethnic minorities. We’ve seen the letter — and the pushback. A snubbed DEI drive in London’s fire service is after your round-up below.
Plus: Khan calls for weed decriminalisation, Jenrick chases fare dodgers, and swingers descend on a stately home in south London.
In case you missed it: last Saturday we published a big read on London’s helicopter wars. For years Battersea and Fulham residents have been rowing with London Heliport, which they claim has turned the skies above their homes into a fast lane for the rich. But now things have really boiled over — heliport management are quitting a group meant to hold them accountable.
What we’ve spied
🚗 Campaigners have told the Spy that Lambeth plans to appeal a landmark court ruling over a low-traffic neighbourhood (LTN) in Dulwich — as we reveal the council’s legal bill from the case. Earlier this month the High Court handed victory to the West Dulwich Action Group (WDAG), a group of residents who had taken Lambeth to court over a controversial LTN that was being trialled for 18 months starting September 2024. Lambeth said the scheme would “reduce road danger” in West Dulwich as well as improve local health, but on May 8 the High Court ruled the LTN trial was unlawful because the council had failed to fully consult residents beforehand. It was the first time an LTN had been nixed by a court in the UK, and the ruling has significant implications for other London boroughs looking to implement one.
While WDAG celebrated the ruling, it’s also criticised Lambeth’s decision to fight the case as “a shameful misuse of resources”. And according to a response to a Freedom of Information request we received this week, the legal bill is already hefty. It reveals that Lambeth has so far spent £24,042 on barristers from Landmark Chambers in relation to the case, plus £303 in court fees. The full cost of Lambeth’s defence is unknown, however — the council said it was unable to provide a figure for the effective cost of the time spent on the case by its internal legal staff.
Reacting to the FoI, WDAG spokesperson Almira Mohamed told the Spy:
We are saddened that, rather than coming to the table to address our genuine concerns, Lambeth council finds it easier to spend public money fighting its own residents. There are no winners in this situation. Taxpayers fund both sides — first through the council’s legal costs, then again as we raise money to challenge them in court.
All we’ve asked for is a proper discussion about the real impact of the West Dulwich LTN, which we believe increases pollution, raises hazards on already overburdened boundary roads, and disproportionately affects poorer communities who live on the boundaries, and a large number of commuters, including 6,300 schoolchildren who go to school or commute through these roads daily.
Mohamed also said: “Lambeth is seeking to appeal the judgement, spending even more of our money.” When we asked the council, its press office didn’t deny this — instead referring us to a statement from the council’s leader, Rezina Chowdhury. She said: “We acknowledge the court’s decision and are carefully considering the implications of this judgement; we will provide further updates in due course. The current trial scheme in West Dulwich will remain in place in the meantime, while we await further directions from the court.”
🌿 Sir Sadiq Khan has backed decriminalising the possession of small quantities of cannabis for personal use. “We need fresh thinking on how to reduce the substantial harms associated with drug-related crime in our communities,” the mayor said on Wednesday, following the publication of a report by the London Drugs Commission, which Khan established in 2022 to examine the impact of cannabis laws in the UK. The commission’s report made 42 recommendations, which include:
Removing natural cannabis from the Misuse of Drugs Act
Eliminating the smell of cannabis as a sole justification for police stop-and-search
Enhancing public health services and education related to cannabis use
Lord Charlie Falconer, a former Labour cabinet member who Khan appointed to lead the commission, said the current law around cannabis “doesn’t work” and that cannabis-related stop-and-search “is disproportionately used against young black men”.
However, Khan doesn’t have the power to decriminalise cannabis as London mayor, and later in the week deputy prime minister Angela Rayner said the UK government had no plans to change drug policy. Khan’s idea also failed to get the backing of Met Police chief Sir Mark Rowley, who said a change in law is “not something we’re calling for”. Former Met detective Dominic Adler went further in an article for UnHerd, writing: “The politics behind this review are typical of London’s mayor: performative, headline-grabbing, problematic for policing and designed to garner support from Labour’s base, especially younger voters.” Khan’s ideas did get the backing of Brian Paddick though, a senior Met officer who in 2001 trialled cannabis decriminalisation in Lambeth. He told the Guardian that the scheme helped ease community tensions and gave officers more time to tackle more serious criminals.
🏃 TfL has told its staff not to risk stopping fare dodgers, after a video of shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick stopping fare dodgers went viral. On Thursday Jenrick posted a video to X of him confronting people who had gone through the barriers at Stratford station without paying, captioning his post with: “Sadiq Khan is driving a proud city into the ground …. He’s not acting. So, I did.” Now viewed 12.5m times, the montage sees Jenrick following the dodgers, faces blurred, and asking: “Do you think it’s all right not to pay?”. And in one seemingly tense encounter, Jenrick asks: “You’re carrying a knife, did you say?” Jenrick later claims in the video that nearly one in 25 passengers fare dodge on London transport — which is basically true, with the latest data from TfL showing a fare evasion rate of 3.4% last year. The official TfL account responded directly to Jenrick’s video on X, saying: “Fare evasion is unacceptable. That is why we are strengthening our capability to deter and detect fare evaders, including expanding our team of professional investigators to target the most prolific fare evaders across the network.” The Telegraph has followed up with a report claiming that TfL has been telling staff they don’t have to confront fare dodgers if they don’t believe it’s safe to do so.
💰 There’s been lots more London transport news this week, like: TfL has proposed increasing the capital’s congestion charge by 20% to £18 from January 2026, the first rise since June 2020. TfL is also scrapping the exemption for electric vehicles, though it’s offering a general 25% discount and a specific 50% discount for HGVs and vans, amid concern about disincentivising companies from transitioning to cleaner vehicles. A public consultation on the charge proposals is now live until August 4. Meanwhile: TfL has published data showing road casualties in London have fallen significantly, while a restructuring of some bus routes in central London has been confirmed. Lastly: a group of anti-ULEZ protestors found guilty of harassing Sir Sadiq Khan have had their convictions quashed, after the Crown Prosecution Service received “new information” which undermined evidence in its case.
🗺️ The MP for Romford has called for the borough of Havering to secede from London. Andrew Rosindell has been campaigning for the outer London borough to become part of Essex instead, as part of wider government plans currently underway to reorganise local government in England. Rosindell made a speech in the House of Commons earlier this month outlining his case: “Romford is geographically Essex. We are historically Essex. We are culturally Essex and our social, sporting and commercial connections have always looked towards the county of Essex.” He also reeled off some gripes about being part of Greater London, including a lack of police, ULEZ and what he called “planning interference” from the London mayor. A minister for local government, Jim McMahon, gave an open-ended reply to the idea: "It is currently not envisaged that the boundaries of Greater London will be changed, or that the proposed Greater Essex mayoral combined county authority will be expanded, although the latter would be possible at a later date should it be locally desired and should statutory tests be met."
🪦 Families with relatives buried in Highgate cemetery have hit out at a plan to exhume remains in order to build a toilet block. As reported by the Guardian, the bereaved families, including those of the actor Tim Pigott-Smith and sociologist Stuart Hall, say they’re outraged by the plans, which are part of an £18m redevelopment of the cemetery. Highgate has been getting all sorts of bad press lately — last year, proposals to sell graves near its most famous resident, Karl Marx, for £25,000 to fund upgrades got quite a lot of attention.
💩 Thames Water has been fined a record £122.7m in relation to sewage spills in London and beyond. It’s the biggest ever fine issued by the water regulator, Ofwat, and it’s also intended as punishment for the company’s shareholder payouts. Thames Water has overseen close to 10,000 hours of sewage spilling annually around London’s waterways in recent years. On the plus side, London’s new super sewer, Thames Tideway, which will divert sewage spills from the Thames, is close to being fully online. Speaking of, here’s a series of photoshops on TikTok imagining if the Thames was clean.
🎨 The much-hyped new V&A museum in Stratford opens this weekend. More than 250,000 artefacts are going on display in the V&A East Storehouse, which the Financial Times has described as “a genuinely radical new museum” on account of its striking glass casing. It opens today (Saturday) — and later in the year the building will also see the opening of the David Bowie Centre, a collection of objects related to the musician.
🗞️ After 160 years of covering the capital, we’re sad to report that the South London Press is closing down. The paper’s final edition was last Friday — on Tuesday its website went offline and staff were told their contracts had been terminated. The loss of SLP will be particularly felt by south London’s football fans, who till the end had valued its sports pages, despite the years of wider cutbacks. It’s rough out there for local news, folks.
🔍 And finally, we leave you with:
The sex parties coming to a stately home in Dulwich (Telegraph £)
A Whitechapel vape shop planning a goodbye party for disposable vapes (www)
Spinning around on the Tube (TikTok)
The re-opening of the Square Mile’s largest open green space (Londonist)
The Santa Maria arriving at Tower Bridge on Wednesday (Reddit)
Spotting Charli xcx in London Fields (TikTok)
The ghost bus of west London (TikTok)
What festival-goers think of the Brockwell Park backlash (TikTok)
The drawing of London that will take 1,000 hours to finish (YouTube)
A ranking of the best sausage rolls in London (New York Times)
A montage of north London set to the walking Putin meme music (TikTok)
The ice cream van that cost Greenwich council £47,000 (The Londoner)
Finding out your London room shouldn’t legally be inhabited (TikTok)
Wild scenes of Spurs supporters celebrating in north London (TikTok)
London Fire Brigade tells City Hall: Raising diversity targets is ‘unrealistic’
London Fire Brigade has rejected calls from City Hall to increase its targets for hiring women and ethnic minorities, in a rebuff of efforts to clean up the brigade’s “toxic culture” unearthed by a damning review.
The Spy can reveal that political leaders at City Hall — including Sadiq Khan’s deputy for fire services — have been pressing the LFB to raise its diversity targets to better reflect the capital’s population. The brigade has currently set itself the goal of having 20% women on staff (compared to half of Londoners) and 19% ethnic minorities (compared to 46%). But in a letter sent to City Hall on May 5, the brigade’s head of HR shot down a more ambitious DEI drive, describing the current targets as “realistically achievable” given limitations “outside of direct control”.
The pressure from City Hall follows an independent culture review into the LFB in 2022, which found evidence the organisation was “institutionally misogynist and racist”. The review was triggered by the suicide of a young Black firefighter, 21-year-old Jaden Francois-Esprit, whose family claimed he had been bullied by his LFB colleagues because of his race. Women and ethnic minorities within the LFB went on to tell the review’s chair, the lawyer Nazir Afzal OBE, that they experienced poor treatment and barriers to career progression. In the years since, City Hall and the national fire service regulator have heightened scrutiny of the LFB, in an attempt to enact reforms and root out rogue firefighters.
But whether the LFB’s diversity targets need an overhaul has now become a sticking point. In April, the London Assembly’s fire committee published a report investigating the LFB’s progress since the culture review. It raised concerns about delays in handling staff complaints and revealed that in 2024 the LFB had paid out a total of £888,000 to those accused of misconduct while they were suspended on full pay. But, concerned that casual racism and misogyny were still present at the LFB, the committee also called for “immediate actions” on “attracting and retaining more diverse candidates into the service”.
That is partly because the LFB is nearly achieving its relatively low targets — the brigade most recently reported it employs 19.0% women and 18.5% ethnic minorities. “As we are getting close to hitting these targets, it is probably about time we review realistically what they should be set at,” said Jules Pipe, London’s deputy mayor for fire during a meeting with Sally Hopper, the LFB’s head of HR, in March. "I do not think the targets that the LFB has set itself are very stretching here and they are nothing like the background population of London," said assembly member Leonie Cooper at the same meeting. Hopper told the meeting the challenge was “fair” and “something we should take away and consider”, but her May 5 letter has since snubbed higher targets. She claimed “demographic changes are likely to be gradual” and pointed to a wider lack of diversity in fire services nationally in the UK.
Still, it’s a seeming change in the position for the LFB, given previous comments from the outgoing London fire commissioner, Andy Roe. In December he told City Hall: "We may never get there but you have to set yourself a target to represent the London population if we are truly a public sector organisation representing our city."
When we contacted the mayor of London’s office about the LFB’s refusal to raise targets, a spokesperson said:
The Mayor is committed to working with LFB leaders to reform the Brigade’s culture and systems, improve standards, rebuild trust and confidence and deliver a fire service that is representative of all the communities it serves.
A new Professional Standards Unit is now in place to investigate complaints, there is a renewed emphasis on community engagement and the Commissioner has taken a zero-tolerance approach to racism, misogyny, and homophobia.
But there is more to do and the Mayor will work closely with the new Commissioner, Jonathan Smith, to build on this work and ensure the Brigade is a workplace where people from all backgrounds can thrive.