Revealed: The admin error that may have cost London schools millions of pounds
Plus: boarding the Woolwich Ferry in protest, a boost for al fresco dining in London, and Eric Schmidt's £42m mansion in Holland Park
Morning — free school meals for every London primary pupil might be Sadiq Khan’s most popular policy — backed by more than 90% of parents, and billed as a lifeline during the cost of living crisis. But behind the scenes, there’s been a problem. Today we can reveal that a policy meant to help struggling families may have inadvertently drained crucial funding from school budgets in the capital. Now, City Hall is threatening to cut off boroughs that don’t act fast. The admin error that may have cost London schools millions is after your Saturday round-up below.
Plus: taking the Woolwich Ferry in protest, a boost for al fresco dining in London, and Eric Schmidt’s £42m mansion in Holland Park.
What we’ve spied
🚗 The Silvertown tunnel opened on Monday with opinions divided about whether it was ultimately a good idea. The £2.2bn, 0.9-mile road tunnel connecting Newham and the Greenwich Peninsula has been welcomed by those who believe it will take pressure off the traffic-choked Blackwall tunnel to the east. Others say it will simply increase traffic overall, and with it air pollution. And then there is frustration with the tolls — it costs £4 to drive a car through the Silvertown tunnel at peak times, and through the Blackwall tunnel, which also introduced tolls on Monday. Both tunnels are £1.50 off-peak and free overnight. BBC London’s transport correspondent Tom Edwards has a good overview of the pros and cons here, and the Financial Times has looked at how Silvertown is fuelling a wider debate about road tolls in the UK. We’ll leave you with TikToks this week that seem to show drivers opting for the Woolwich Ferry in protest.
🚇 Elsewhere in London transport: Tube drivers have voted for their union to begin negotiating a four-day week. On Thursday, drivers who are members of the union ASLEF voted by 70% on an 80% turnout to back the four-day plan, which would see working hours reduced to 34 hours a week. Aslef says TfL offered a proposal for a four-day week as part of talks last year to avoid strikes over pay. “We will now be writing to the company to inform them of the result and to arrange a meeting to start detailed discussions on implementation,” said Finn Brennan, Aslef’s London organiser, following the vote. A TfL spokesperson said: “We have set out to our trade unions how a four-day working week might work. We will continue to engage with them about it and other points that would make London Underground better.”
🍸 Bans by boroughs on al fresco dining and venues opening late may soon be overturned by City Hall, after the government gave Sir Sadiq Khan new powers to intervene on local decisions. Under a pilot scheme announced by chancellor Rachel Reeves, the mayor will have the power to “call in” licensing applications being considered by London borough councils, just as he can call in planning applications — overruling earlier decisions to approve or block a development. In the case of licensing, it will be any application that is deemed to be of strategic importance to the night-time economy — like changes to opening hours or allowing tables and chairs outside. The move has been widely seen as a response to recent restrictive decisions by the boroughs — namely Westminster council, which has come under fire for its handling of noise in central London as well as its reluctance to bring back al fresco dining in Soho. Westminster has yet to issue a formal statement about the new powers. This week, Khan’s deputy mayor for culture, Justine Simons, wrote to all borough councils in the capital explaining City Hall would now be running a consultation “on the design of the pilot”.
💸 Millionaires are reportedly fleeing London at a rate faster than any other city in the world right now — except Moscow. According to the latest report by wealth migration consultancy Henley & Partners, over the past year London has lost around 11,300 people worth at least $1m, 18 people worth at least $100m, and two dollar billionaires. H&P says it’s partly down to the Labour government’s crackdown on tax non-doms, but there are also longer-term factors, like Brexit and the slow recovery from the 2008 financial crisis. In fact, unlike New York, Paris, Hong Kong and Sydney, London has seen a net decrease of millionaires since 2014. We’d shed a tear for the fallen, except H&P estimates there are still around 215,700 millionaires living in the capital. Plus, there’s our next story:
🏚️ At current rates, it’ll take over a century to clear the waiting lists for social rented homes in some parts of London, according to a new analysis. The National Housing Federation’s research found that it would take over 100 years for Merton, Enfield and Westminster councils to clear their waiting lists for homes with three or more bedrooms. Meanwhile, Camden and Wandsworth have waiting lists for family homes of 82 years. Reacting to the stats, a spokesperson for London Councils, the umbrella organisation representing boroughs, said: “The growing number of Londoners stuck on waiting lists for social housing is evidence of the capital's worsening housing and homelessness emergency.” Both LC and the NHF have called on the government to unlock more funding to build social housing. Related: our scoop last week on the east London council officer who tried to bump themselves up the waiting list.
🛥️ A pier on the Thames has been renamed after criticism by anti-racism campaigners. Plantation Wharf Pier on the south bank in Wandsworth will from now on be called St Mary’s Wandsworth, after critics pointed out the previous name was associated with colonialism and the transatlantic slave trade. Among campaigners is Battersea MP Marsha de Cordova, who welcomed Thames Clippers’ decion to rename the pier. She said: “The term ‘plantation’ carries highly offensive connotations, does not serve the wonderful diversity of Battersea’s residents and makes a mockery of the violent history of chattel enslavement. Having campaigned for Thames Clippers to change the pier’s name, I am pleased this has been achieved. It marks an important step forward in how we structure our public spaces.” No word yet though on the nearby Plantation Wharf housing estate, which de Cordova has also criticised.
🔍 And finally, we leave you with:
Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s £42m mansion in Holland Park (City AM)
Reform is coming for Dagenham (UnHerd)
A rare chrome Lime bike (TikTok)
London’s phone theft hotspots marked with blue plaques (BBC)
The 25 best pubs in London (The Fence)
The Barbican in minature (TikTok)
Ofsted vs Stamford Hill (The Londoner)
Someone smoking crack on the Tube (Reddit)
The UK transport secretary reacting to someone smoking crack on the Tube (LBC)
A real-time Tube map (www)
Where to watch the Boat Race in London this Sunday (Time Out)
A fox on a London bus (TikTok)
The most underrated estate in London (TikTok)
The current location of the Elephant & Castle statue (TikTok)
How mandem from the south propose (TikTok)
8am in Croydon (TikTok)
Free meals, at a cost: How London schools lost out on millions in crucial funding
By the Spy team
In February 2023, Sir Sadiq Khan paid a visit to his old Tooting primary school, Firecroft.
The mayor was there with media to bang the drum about his new £120m policy: free school meals for all primary school pupils in London, regardless of their family's income.
He sat with pupils in the canteen and recalled his own experience receiving free lunches, at a time when it was only offered to the most deprived children.
"One of the things I still remember four decades on is the shame and embarrassment I felt going to get my free school meals token, eating a bit later from my mates who weren't receiving free school meals," he told a reporter.
"That stigma stayed with me. I think there are some things that should be available universally."
Since that launch, Khan has pledged to keep free meals in place for "as long as I am mayor of this great city".
He's seen off attacks from critics, who've argued the cash is being used "to subsidise free school meals for middle class parents who can afford them".
Polling shows it's overwhelmingly popular. 92% of London parents said they supported the scheme in a YouGov poll commissioned by the mayor's office in 2024.
But behind the scenes, City Hall, borough councils and schools across the capital have been grappling with a problem.
They're facing an unintended consequence of the policy that may have cost millions in education funding.
The cause is an administrative oversight: because low-income households no longer need to register for free meals, it's become harder for London schools to report how many of their pupils need extra help.
In turn, it's slowed the flow of deprivation funding from central government into the capital, prompting alarm.
So much so that the Spy can reveal that City Hall is issuing London boroughs with a new ultimatum: get registrations back up, or the cash for free meals will be cut off.
The escalation comes after statistics for the current academic year revealed a fall in free school meal registrations in London.
Two years on from the introduction of Khan's policy, the number of pupils registered for a free school meal in London fell by 4,200, according to the Spy's look at Department for Education enrolment records.
Around 150 classes of deprived children disappeared from official school records across the capital between the 2023 and 2024 academic years.
The fall went beyond the broader decline in pupils in London happening right now. In 2024, the number registered for a free meal as a share of all primary pupils had sunk below where it had been in 2022.
There was also a concerning mismatch.
Separate figures, published by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), showed the number of children in absolute poverty in London had actually risen in the same period, as the cost of living crisis continued to bite.
The DWP figures, based on families' applications for key benefits like Universal Credit, estimated a rise of 27,600 children in absolute poverty in London between 2023 and 2024, when looking at all children aged 15 and under.
In other words: more children in the capital were falling into poverty, but fewer were being officially recognised by schools as needing help.
This growing gap — between child poverty registered with schools and child poverty registered with the government — emerged in London at the same time as City Hall's free school meals program entered full swing.
Parents and guardians had previously needed to fill out a form to acquire free school meals — an opt-in policy — but under the City Hall scheme, this was no longer required. Meals had been made universally available. Registrations began to fall.
This could have just been a paperwork blunder, except for a very real knock-on impact for schools — a loss of extra funding from Whitehall, to the tune of £1,000 per pupil.
Alongside City Hall's meals scheme, the UK government directly funds schools with higher rates of deprivation, in a policy known as pupil premium funding.
This cash is handed directly to headteachers to pay for extra educational support, such as tutoring, homework help, teaching assistants, school trips and mental health support.
The criteria for getting it: having high numbers of pupils registered for a free school meal, which is used as a proxy for deprivation by the Department for Education.
But in 2024, with meal registrations down, the flow of this Whitehall cash slowed to a drip in London.
Some boroughs saw large falls — in Lambeth, pupil premium funding across the borough's primary schools fell by £385,000 between the 2023/24 and 2024/25 academic years.
Free school meal registrations had dipped by 385 children in the borough. That was despite separate statistics published by the DWP, which showed the number of children living in absolute poverty in Lambeth had risen by 500 between 2023 and 2024.
Similarly, funding for Croydon schools fell by £279,000, while schools in Waltham Forest saw a £234,000 fall.
All in all, more than half of London boroughs saw a fall in pupil premium funding across their primary schools between 2023 and 2024. Yet only one, the City of London, had seen a fall in child poverty, according to the DWP.
The cumulative effect since 2022 is that London has started to lag behind the rest of the country on pupil premium funding.
While other primary schools in England had seen a 7.3% rise in pupil premium funding since 2022, the capital's saw only a 3.4% rise.
If funding in London had kept up with the rest of England, the capital's schools would have received an extra £9.1m in funding in 2024/25 — equivalent to £5,000 per primary school, our calculations show.
The potential shortfall wasn't going unnoticed on the ground.
Dr Katharine Vincent, director of a network of school leaders across the capital, Reconnect London, told a Greater London Authority committee investigating the issue last year that headteachers were concerned.
"What schools are saying to us is that the scheme is very welcomed by children and families in their school because many of them are facing very difficult financial circumstances," she told the GLA's economy committee.
But on the fall in pupil premium funding, she added: "Secondary heads are quite worried about this because if parents are not incentivised to apply for FSM [free school meals] while their children are at primary school, then it could be the case that they enter secondary school and there is a big drop."
Meanwhile, some have been attempting to take matters into their own hands — like councillors in south east London last month.
At a Bromley council meeting, Lib Dem councillor Julie Ireland proposed a motion to implement auto-enrolment for free school meals across the borough.
This would make sign-ups for free meals essentially 'opt-out' in Bromley — by compiling lists of eligible families from other data sources, like the DWP's benefit claims data.
"Current estimates are that if all the children in Bromley schools that are entitled to, but not formally signed up to FSM were auto-enrolled, Bromley schools would qualify for an additional £750,000 in pupil premiums," cllr Ireland wrote in her motion.
But the rest of the Conservative-run council voted the motion down, citing the hassle of implementing the system.
It's a frustration for City Hall, which has been pushing boroughs to maintain their registrations in the wake of the free school meals program.
"With the introduction of the Mayor of London’s expansion of universal free school meals, it is important to make sure that families continue to register for the government funded Free School Meals to maintain pupil premium funding," wrote City Hall in a guidance page that was produced for borough councils as part of the free meals roll out.
City Hall has been offering boroughs a £20,000 pot of cash to help pay for the switch to auto-enrolment. It also hired a private consultancy, Policy in Practice, to run workshops in 20 boroughs to encourage uptake.
At least three boroughs have been convinced — in the past year, Lambeth, Wandsworth and Lewisham have announced they are implementing auto-enrolment for free school meals. They estimate this will lead to an extra 1,000 deprived pupils being brought back onto the books, generating £3m more in funding.
City Hall had been using the carrot — but now it’s prepared to use the stick.
The Spy understands that next year, City Hall is making it mandatory for all boroughs councils to implement some form of "universal registration" of free school meal eligibility.
This may be auto-enrolment, or another system — in Islington, for instance, parents are required to complete a free school meal registration form whenever their child enters a new phase of education.
And crucially, implementing universal registration will now be one of the conditions for boroughs to receive City Hall's free school meals funding.
A spokesperson for the mayor's office told us: "As part of the funding agreement, boroughs will be required to bring in a process to ensure that all qualifying pupils are registered. The preference is that this is an auto-enrolment system, but where that is not feasible they should deliver an alternate approach to universal registration."
There are early signs City Hall's registration drive is beginning to work. Figures for the upcoming academic year, 2025/26, show that free school meal registrations have begun to rise again in London — up by 1.2% on the previous year.
Yet this is a smaller rise than the 1.4% increase for schools in the rest of England, and means the gap between London's and the rest of the country's deprivation funding has widened.
In response to this piece, a spokesperson for the mayor pointed us to the latest statistics for 2025, which show free school meal registrations have begun to rise again.
However, they did not address the fall in 2024/25, nor the fact pupil premium funding is now lagging behind the rest of England.
The spokesperson added:
"It has long been a challenge across the country to ensure that schools receive their full pupil premium funding due to the need for parents to apply, but the introduction of universal free school meals has enabled the wider implementation of auto enrolment in London.
"City Hall has been supporting every borough to ensure that schools secure the government funding they are entitled to and next year all boroughs are being required to introduce universal registration to make the process easier.
“Delivering free school meals for all state primary school children has been one of the mayor’s proudest moments and he is committed to providing the funding for as long as he is mayor.
"The unprecedented programme is delivering significant benefits to Londoners, with an independent evaluation finding that it is improving family finances, the health and wellbeing of children, and positively impacting school communities."