What is Labour in London Doing About Cleaning Up the Air We Breathe?
And if you could breathe cleaner air, wouldn't you want to?
Dear Human of Planet Earth,
I bring you news from the very fringes of the UK Labour Party’s 2023 London Conference! Or maybe, since it’s over a week later, we’ll call it a story.
I bring you a story:
On the last weekend of January, at the end of a long day of listening, clapping and scribbling, I found myself in a classroom-sized space for a SERA meeting titled: ‘Air Pollution: London Labour tackling the health and climate emergencies’.
Earlier that afternoon, Labour’s Shadow Minister for Climate Change and Net Zero, Ed Miliband reminded the Conference:
"[in the ‘Sprint towards Cleaner, Greener and Energy Security for All’] while Central Government has a role, the change we need will be delivered by local authorities.”
Well, our Labour-run local authorities have definitely been giving it a shot!
Councillors from Tower Hamlets and Ealing were at SERA’s Air Pollution fringe event to share their experiences and answer the question:
What are Councillors for Tower Hamlets and Ealing getting done?
Lessons Learned from Tower Hamlets
“Children in Tower Hamlets are born with on average, 10% less lung capacity. This is a problem that affects all of us and the solutions should be co-designed by all of us.”
The Chair of the Tower Hamlets Labour Group, Councillor Asma Islam, pointed out that under what was then Labour leadership, Tower Hamlets was one of the first councils to declare a climate emergency in March 2019. When the Covid pandemic hit, they didn’t abandon their climate agenda, but moved to working towards this online.
Conversations with residents brought to light that many saw climate concerns as a white middle-class issue. Cllr Islam emphasised the climate emergency is an issue affecting all of us and solutions should be co-designed by all of us.
But their Council’s enthusiastic introduction of ‘Liveable Streets’ as part of a Low Traffic Neighbourhood (LTN) programme was met with controversy and resistance.
Though the then Labour-run council also put an emphasis on educating their community about climate impacts, improving air quality and installing charging points for electric vehicles, voters ultimately punished them at the next local government election - and the succeeding sitting council has undone much of Labour’s work on improving air quality.
Cllr Asma Islam reflects that with babies in Tower Hamlets being born with ‘10% less lung capacity’ because of air pollution, her council did the right thing.
But they’ve learned a hard lesson:
Impatience doesn’t pay. Councils need to get local community ‘buy-in’ before implementing changes such as ‘Liveable streets.’
Cllr Islam was very humble in recognising this failing, but also pointed out many residents did get used to the changes and expressed they were happy to keep the changes in place - which illustrates another lesson, one Cllr Islam acknowledged:
Better to make unsettling changes early in your term of office, giving residents time to realise the benefits and ultimately embrace the change.
Clean Air in Ealing
Councillor Diedre Costigan had a similar experience when her Labour-led Council implemented LTNs without adequate consultation. In response to the uproar, her council apologised and were then able to inspire enough confidence from their constituents to win a record number of councillors when elections came around again.
She says half her work now involves sitting with residents, poring over maps, working out with residents what changes can be made, along with the wheres and the whys! After all, Cllr Islam emphasised, changes should be co-designed by all of us.
Cllr Costigan was proud of her Labour Council’s work on installing EV charging points and the #LetsGoSouthall project, which includes getting more residents happily cycling:
Let’s Ride Southall is part of the Let’s Go Southall, Ealing Council and Sport England funded programme. We are the biggest community cycling project in London and aim to make a markable impact to travel patterns, transforming Southall into a sustainable, healthy and environment-friendly place.
Individuals and families who sign-up to our cycle training and join the Southall movement to get residents healthier (see eligibility criteria on website), will be able to take part in our giveaway of up to 2,500 adult and children’s bicycles. This will consist approximately of a mixture of 1500 brand new bicycles and 1000 fully repaired and recycled second-hand bicycles. We value inclusivity highly at Let’s Ride Southall and want all individuals to travel sustainably, therefore we will also provide 35 bespoke bicycles for those with disabilities.
To ensure that Southall residents receive full benefit, we will provide a free cycle training to those committed to regular cycling and who meet our terms and conditions. -Source
Now is that inspiring or what? Makes you ask, ‘Well, what’s my council doing?’
Ealing Council also began using infra-red graphene to heat council homes and phasing out gas boilers on council properties. They have big plans for retro-fitting council homes to improve insulation, a project supported by the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, with an emphasis on reducing the cost of heating for those most in need first.
It’s not all housing and transport either. Ealing Council has an ambitious plan to plant 50,000 trees - over a space the size of 130 football pitches.
And why not? Let’s go Ealing Council!
We can only mitigate our climate crisis and have some hope of holding human civilisation together with a multi-faceted approach, one that sees people actively involved and working together, doing the ‘solutions’ and not having solutions ‘done to them.’
But how to get ‘buy-in’, particularly in the face of ‘bad-faith’ agitators?
The labour councillors in the audience were all in favour of cleaner air, but very aware that the intended expansion of ULEZ (the Ultra-Low Emission Zone) to areas of ‘outer London’ was already being met with cantankerous objections from both sincerely concerned residents and bad-faith political activists, long before its intended roll-out in August 2023.
The support plan for those adversely affected by the ULEZ expansion hadn’t been published at the time of the meeting, so everyone present was crossing their fingers, hoping the measures would calm the storms brewing in their local constituencies!
If you are a Londoner, have you read about these measures yourself here on the tfl website? Does the plan seem extensive enough? Should the measures go further? For whom and why? Feel free to add your comments on this but only after you’ve read the measures yourself!
How do we get ‘Buy-In’ from communities though?
For ‘Buy-in’, the health benefits of cleaner air need to be emphasised in language residents can understand. Do people know that cleaner air reduces our risk of Alzheimer’s, depression, anxiety and cancer?
Polluted air is a major contributor to lifestyle disease.
And the benefits of driving less need to be emphasised in language residents can understand too. As my long-time readers know, I’ve been inspired by elderly neighbours, as well as my son and husband, to replace some short car trips with my two legs. The exercise alone is well worth it - and best of all, I end up running into acquaintances and having more chit-chat. As we discovered during the Covid lockdown, close relationships are important but so are casual ones. Our casual interactions help us feel we belong, that we’re anchored in our communities. And that my friends, is excellent for our mental health.
Improving the bus routes in areas where ULEZ is being expanded is on the Mayor of London’s To-Do List but Cllr Islam emphasised we should be taking the Conservative government to task for their inadequate support. For instance, they appear to be hindering the ULEZ project by underfunding scrappage schemes and underfunding Transport for London!
‘Clean Air’ should not be a political football in which the Tories rig the game so the Labour Mayor loses - because it’s not about him, it’s about Londoners, about their health and well-being.
So, Is ‘Clean Air’ A Political Football?
I’ll sum up the frustration in the room like this:
With an ambition backed by law, to phase out the sale of petrol and diesel vehicles by 2030, shouldn’t our sitting Tory government have a better nationwide scrappage scheme to help citizens make the switch?
Shouldn’t they be installing electric car charging ports in an organised and determined way? Shouldn’t UK citizens be well informed as to the progress of these plans? ULEZ supports the phasing-out policy, so shouldn’t they be supporting ULEZ?
Why don’t supportive measures like the scrappage scheme extend to residents in the areas surrounding London? It’s obvious that plumbers in Kent will have business in London!
Does Central Government want its policy of taking diesel and petrol cars off the market by 2030 to fail? Is that why the goal isn’t well supported by deliberate action?
Electric Vehicles are not the Big Solution
It was a relief to hear Cllr Deidre Costigan emphasise that electric vehicles are not the answer. Sure, her Council is installing electric charging points, trialling electric scooters, and encouraging electric bikes - but going forward the 20-minute neighbourhood must be what we’re aspiring to and planning for.
‘Dormitory towns,’ as she called them, must be a thing of the past.
Amen, I thought. Someone who knows what they’re talking about.
Several months ago in a hustings for Croydon’s Mayoral Election at the local Methodist church hall, The Green Party’s Peter Underwood made the same point, to perhaps the loudest applause of the night.
Sure, electric vehicles will help clean up our air - but we could replace every petrol/diesel vehicle we have and still be hurtling towards our ecological destruction.
The 20-minute neighbourhood is a small nod towards humans existing within planetary resource limits, towards a change of culture that shuns overconsumption - and values clean air.
Subscribing is FREE, as is all the hard work of writing this piece - FREE to you of course. It costs me that precious thing called time. But if you subscribe, you make it all worth it!
Podcasts! Glorious Podcasts! I’m on a Podcast Fast but I’m allowed to recommend ….
So who says they’re five-star podcasts? Well, me!
On ‘Clean The Air’, Sadiq Khan interviews various leaders making a difference by reducing air pollution. My favourite episodes include the ones where he interviews Tory grandee Lord Deben (25/10/2022), a veteran environmental leader, and the one where Mayor Eric Garcetti (8/11/2022) chats with Sadiq about the pro-active role cities and local government can make.
On ‘Reasons To Be Cheerful,’ Ed Miliband and Geoff Lloyd, laugh and joke their way through the climate news, with an emphasis on what is going well, as well as do great interviews.
I’ll be listening again when I release myself from my podcast abstinence after bingeing greedily over the last few weeks.
With Love,
Your Friendly Neighbourhood Radical,
Croydon,
London,
That patch of earth known today as the United Kingdom
Lat +51.51 Long, -0.118