We tested a fix for bad phone signal in London and it's actually decent
Plus: London’s ‘meanest landlord’ returns, Heathrow expansion, and all-you-can-eat lasagne
Morning — there’s one basic thing holding London back from being a proper modern city: a lack of decent public WiFi. It’s surprising how often you can end up in an internet dark spot while out in the city, because either your phone can’t get signal or the hotspot options are poor. But a solution may be on the way — as of last week, City Hall and Westminster council have started trialling a new, joined-up public WiFI network in central London, as seen in the map above. Their ambition: to eventually make the network city-wide. The Connecting London network explained, and the results of our own field tests, are after your round-up below.
Plus: London’s ‘meanest landlord’ returns, Heathrow expansion, and all-you-can-eat lasagne.
In case you missed it: secret meetings, archaic elections, and banquets with £62 bottles of red — on Saturday we published the case for abolishing the City of London Corporation, courtesy of former councillor Graeme Harrower. In the wake of the debacle over the Smithfield and Billingsgate markets, Graeme goes in-depth on why he believes the Corporation is no longer fit for purpose in 2025 — and what he thinks it should be replaced with.
What we've spied
🎥 Asif Aziz, infamously one of London's “meanest landlords”, is back at it again — having shut the world's first YMCA at the end of last year, he's now putting the beloved Prince Charles Cinema at risk. Last week the independent cinema in the West End raised the alarm with a petition, claiming its landlord was demanding "a rent far above market rates" and the addition of a new clause in its lease making it easier to evict and redevelop the cinema. These demands were being made ahead of the cinema's lease expiring in September of this year. The cinema's team wrote:
We are disappointed that our landlords Zedwell LSQ Ltd and their parent company Criterion Capital have demanded the inclusion of a break clause that would require us to vacate the premises at 6 months' notice, should they receive planning permission to redevelop the building, which we interpret as a clear intention to do so.
Moreover, they are also demanding a rent far above market rates, at a level which no cinema proprietor would consider reasonable and refusing to supply any information to back this up.
Criterion Capital is owned by Aziz, a property mogul who veteran Spy readers may recall has had a long career evicting and redeveloping pubs across the capital (see our investigation last year). But his work may be cut out for him this time, given the extent of support already rallying behind the Prince Charles. Along with the petition getting 140,000 signatures in four days, several Hollywood heavy hitters have been speaking out in defence of the cinema, which first opened near Leicester Square in 1961. “If this ‘ninth wonder of the world’ ever closes its doors, life will continue but London will die a little death,” director Danny Boyle told GQ. Directors Christopher Nolan, Robert Eggers and actor Paul Mescal also expressed their dismay, particularly because of the cinema’s commitment to screening classic movies.
In a statement to the Guardian, Criterion Capital said: “We value Prince Charles Cinema and we work closely with our tenants to help best utilise the properties within our portfolio. We operate within the provisions of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954 and categorically deny any attempts to intimidate or disadvantage them.”
Meanwhile: on Friday campaigners lost their High Court battle to stop the sale of the first-ever YMCA, located off Tottenham Court Road, to Criterion Capital.
Some better news for the arts: a former music hall in Walthamstow that has spent the past two decades shuttered is set to re-open as a new theatre.
✈️ In the wake of chancellor Rachel Reeves giving her backing to a third runway at Heathrow, various London politicians, councils and campaign groups are now gearing up for a rematch. Chief among them is Sir Sadiq Khan, who immediately reacted to Reeves’ announcement with an opposing statement that cited noise, air pollution and climate change: “Despite the progress that's been made in the aviation sector to make it more sustainable, I’m simply not convinced that you can have hundreds of thousands of additional flights at Heathrow every year without a hugely damaging impact on our environment”. The mayor is a long-time opponent of Heathrow expansion, having included a commitment to campaign against a third runway in his original 2016 election manifesto, then by backing a legal challenge that ultimately failed. The Telegraph published a good piece exploring what to expect in Khan’s battle plan this time — sponsoring more legal challenges, objecting through TfL, tightening ULEZ, or leveraging his relatively higher personal popularity than his national Labour peers.
More in doubt are the several London Labour MPs who’ve historically opposed Heathrow but may go quiet, given they’re in the same government as Reeves. BBC London has the list: Steve Reed, Streatham & Croydon MP and now environment secretary, Ellie Reeves, MP for Lewisham West and minister without portfolio, Matthew Pennycock, MP for Greenwich and Woolwich and a housing minister, Catherine West, MP for Hornsey and Friern Barnet and a foreign office minister, Fleur Anderson, MP for Putney and in the Northern Ireland Office.
On the other hand, there are some London Labour MPs who’ve always been in favour of Heathrow expansion who’ll have less trouble falling in line, such as David Lammy, Tottenham MP and foreign secretary, and Wes Streeting, Ilford North MP and health secretary.
As for the Conservatives — while leader Kemi Badenoch may be in favour of a third runway, her London colleagues take a more mixed view. A spokesperson for City Hall Tories tells the Spy: "At its core, Heathrow's third runway is simply not ambitious enough for our capital city, as demand for air travel into and out of London balloons. We will need a fourth and fifth runway, but this simply is not something that Heathrow can provide, and for that reason this money would be better spent on a new, bespoke airport for London. As the national conversation turns to airport expansion let us be bold enough to say it is time for the seventh London airport, on the Isle of Grain, to unlock the unlimited potential for growth in our city."
🚌 TfL says it wants to expand its express bus routes — a ‘Superloop 2’— by the end of the year. Transport commissioner Andy Lord has told the Local Democracy Reporting Service that he hopes new routes will launch before 2026, as the transport body makes good on an election pledge by Sir Sadiq Khan to effectively double the outer London bus network, Superloop. His comments came as TfL launched a consultation for the so-called ‘Bakerloop’ bus service, an express route that follows the proposed path of the Bakerloo line expansion from Elephant & Castle to Lewisham. An actual Tube expansion is currently unfunded, so Khan has proposed the bus service as a “precursor” to the real thing. We’ve had a first look at a prototype Bakerloop bus courtesy of TikTok’s favourite bus aunty, Bemi Orojuogun, who teamed up with Khan for a promo video for the consultation.
🏗️ PLANNING CORNER 🏗️ Plans for a restoration of the Barbican Centre have been unveiled that includes proposed work on three of its most well-known spaces. The cultural centre’s conservatory, foyers and lakeside space are all slated for upgrades under the first-round of the restoration, following the City of London Corporation unlocking £191m for the project. If things go to plan, construction on the revamp is expected to start in 2027.
Elsewhere: a new 54-storey skyscraper has been approved near Liverpool Street Station; a rooftop bar and club in Hackney — Netil360/NT’s Loft — has claimed its under risk from plans for ‘luxury flats’ next door; and Lambeth council has granted permission for a new small nightclub, Gaffe, in railway arches off of Wandsworth Road.
🍺 The historic Ye Olde Swiss Cottage pub, famed for resembling a Swiss chalet, has suddenly shut. The pub, which gives the surrounding area of Camden its name, served last orders on Sunday, after its owner, Samuel Smith’s Brewery, decided to close it out of the blue. Samuel Smith’s has so far been quiet about the reasons behind the closure, but CAMRA is among those mourning its loss, with spokesperson Joane Scott telling the Standard it is a "real loss for the local community and also for London". Pub reviewer Dead Pubs took one last look at the pub before its imminent closure. And for more on the threats to London’s pubs, there’s this in-depth piece on the impact of noise complaints from The Londoner.
🔍 And finally, we leave you with:
An all-you-can-eat lasagne restaurant opening in Shoreditch (Londonist)
A former Spoons for sale in north London (Rightmove)
Goodbye to the 347 bus (Reddit)
London as depicted in Disney films (TikTok)
London is beautiful 💕 (TikTok)
London’s most romantic restaurant, according to Time Out (Time Out)
What part of London is best dressed? (TikTok)
The freight-only Underground line (YouTube)
A new documentary on knife crime presented by Idris Elba (iPlayer)
A cosplayer getting out a ‘gun’ on the Underground (Daily Mail)
Fixing London's terrible phone signal
Last week City Hall and Westminster council began trialling something that may prove a godsend to anyone plagued by bad phone signal in London: a new public WiFi network.
As documented recently by London Centric, the capital can have infuriatingly poor mobile coverage in places, with your internet randomly crapping out even when your phone is showing full bars of 5G.
Enter Connected London, a new single sign-on WiFi network that's being piloted in central London as an attempt to fill in the gaps.
What's special about this WiFI network is that in theory, if you sign in once, you'll then automatically connect to every hotspot as you pass by.
At the risk of a comparison that may age some, it's a bit like eduroam, the WiFi network now used at many UK universities.
This initial trial, launched on Thursday, is at 51 locations in the borough of Westminster, mostly in council service buildings and libraries.
But the pedestrianised Strand Aldwych has also been included, as well as four street markets: Berwick Street in Soho, Strutton Ground in St James's, Church Street in Paddington and the new Maida Hill market.
Moreover, City Hall, which provided a £10,000 grant for the project, says it's eyeing a London-wide expansion that may also include private businesses or the transport network, if the two-month trial goes well.
"The intention is to work with other types of locations and other London boroughs after this pilot, but conversations with those potential partners are too early to discuss now," a spokesperson for the mayor's office told the Spy.
In the meantime, we headed to central London on Monday to see how things are actually working, armed with a phone, tablet and laptop.
In summary: it actually performed really well for us, except for one hiccup, and it was generally a marked improvement on the other kinds of public WiFi we've used across London.
We picked Pimlico Library as our first location. We couldn't find any posters advertising the new scheme when we arrived, though to be fair it only launched a few days ago.
So we joined via the QR code on Westminster council’s website — we've included it below for reference, and here's the URL contained in the code, if you have a device that can't scan: https://qrco.de/bfiWZy
The steps to join the network are slightly more involved than a normal public WiFi, and may slightly prang out technophobes. You also already need to have an internet connection to join.
On an iPhone, it involved downloading and approving a connections profile, then going into our settings app to install it. The tutorial, emblazoned with the Mayor of London logo, was pretty clear though and had detected what device we were on, so the steps were tailored.
Refreshingly, we didn't have to enter any personal data (no name, no email) or untick boxes consenting to promos during setup, unlike the WiFi at most chain coffee shops or pubs.
However, we'll leave it to someone more qualified for a full assessment of what data you might be sharing by connecting to the WiFi.
But once connected, speeds were decent, and we were watching HD YouTube videos and scrolling TikTok with ease.
The WiFi was actually faster than our phone’s internet, which was seemingly hindered by Pimlico Library being in the basement of the building: a 62.5 Mbps download speed on Connecting London, vs 11.1 Mpbs on the phone.
But the magic came when we walked 10 minutes to Victoria Library, near the coach station. Our devices had automatically connected to the public WiFi while we were still on the pavement outside.
Speeds were even better here — in the library lobby we clocked 340.3 Mbps on the WiFi — and the connection was maintained as we strolled about.
Of course, London libraries already had public WiFi. More interesting is the prospect of the network being deployed in new places across the capital, like open air spaces.
Our next stop was Strutton Ground market, where we're sorry to report performance took a hit. Our phone connected to the WiFi at the market's northern entrance, but it would drop by the time we walked halfway down the street.
Things were much better at Berwick Street in Soho though. We had a strong connection as soon as we arrived near the Co-op on the bottom and we stayed connected through the whole area.
The signal even reached inside the Blue Posts pub on the corner with Broadwick Street, which will be good news to its TikTok punters.
We compared speed readings at each of the four Connecting London spots with our phone network (Vodafone), summarised in the table below:
In its current trial form, Connecting London is clearly not a substitute for actual mobile data, given the relatively modest coverage.
But both City Hall and Westminster council are optimistic about potential expansion.
When we asked if the network could expand to private businesses, or even stations and the Underground, a Westminster council spokesperson said: "That is our ambition. We want to encourage private businesses and other operators of free public WiFi to adopt this authentication method. We are exploring how we could enable this on the free WiFi networks that we have in our community halls. We are also sharing our approach with other London and UK local authorities."
What puts a potential London-wide rollout more feasible is that existing WiFi hotspots can be reconfigured with the single sign-on tech.
Westminster council have hired an Italian company, Guglielmo S.R.L, for the trial, but the technology being used is part of an international framework called OpenRoaming, developed by the Wireless Broadband Alliance.
Other places in London are already using this protocol, and it's also used in other cities globally.
Indeed, the Westminster council spokesperson told us someone who had signed up to Connecting London was later detected connecting to another OpenRoaming spot in Tokyo.
As for when we might see expansion, the trial in central London lasts two months. But other borough councils have already expressed an interest in replicating it.
"We are in talks with other councils but cannot give further details at the moment," the Westminster council spokesperson said.
"Ellie Reeves, MP for Lewisham West and minister without portfolio"
And also a certain someone's sister…