How does Tower Hamlets spend my council tax? I’ve been shovelling cash at them for 19 years so I strolled along to the new town hall to find out where the money goes. The new town hall cost a packet, clearly. Carved out of the Royal London Hospital, the spacious lobby looks cool, stylish and reassuringly anonymous, like a private bank in Zurich. Glass doors swish apart and I enter the debating chamber where the councillors sit at a curved mono-desk opposite the public gallery. Everything is slick and hyper-modern. The pristine floor glows beneath the recessed lights. I had expected an ordinary meeting but I seem to have stumbled on an important debate.
I’ve been shovelling cash at them for 19 years so I strolled along to the new town hall to find out where the money goes
Developers are applying for permission to build three skyscrapers on a vacant lot on the Isle of Dogs. Zillions of pounds are at stake. Battle begins. Mr Developer shows us slides of the 180ft towers which are made of twinkly steel and glass, but they bear no trace of ornament, warmth or imaginative flair. Soulless boxes for robot citizens. Hives of chrome where human termites will lurk. Mr Developer promises homes for 918 students as well as larger apartments for families on the ‘affordable housing’ list. He doesn’t call the flats ‘flats’. He calls them ‘units’.
Objections are raised. A councillor asks about students disturbing the peace with parties and all-night sex marathons. No chance, apparently. A university rep assures us that his students are swots who work around the clock. ‘They keep their heads down,’ he says. But will the new inhabitants overwhelm the Tube? We learn that a sweetener of £133,000 has been promised to the network controllers. A councillor wonders how this figure was calculated. Mr Developer isn’t certain. And no one asks what the money will actually buy. Maybe the sum was dreamed up by a fat cat at Transport for London.
It’s frustrating that we can’t put questions from the floor and we have to rely on our elected betters. Not an impressive crew. Most are male, many are Bangladeshi. They sit hunched in their seats, staring at their screens and muttering questions into their microphones. Many seem unfamiliar with spoken English. One elderly chap keeps saying ‘dovmont’ when he means ‘development’. All of them lack the fizz and sparkle that come from speaking regularly in public.
How did these drowsy mumblers get elected? Perhaps it’s no coincidence that Tower Hamlets has a rather cavalier approach to democracy. The mayor, Lutfur Rahman, was sacked in 2015 after an electoral court found him guilty of bribery, postal vote offences and making false statements about a candidate. Yet he returned to power in 2022.
The debate moves to ‘affordable homes’. A previous developer had earmarked 300 underpriced flats for poorer tenants but the number has dropped to 59. Why so few? Mr Developer explains that he can’t raise enough cash for more – which sounds fair enough. ‘Affordable to sell’ may mean unaffordable to build. And the ‘affordable homes’ label sounds suspicious. Speculators look for properties being sold in haste under pressure from creditors or from greedy family members itching to get their hands on granny’s loot. But with left-wing councils, the pressure is manufactured by the saintly politicians themselves who want to pose as saviours of the downtrodden. Estate agents don’t give a fig about motives, however, only about prices. And the sharks ensure that every bargain swiftly rejoins the market at full value. The speculator may be the new owner himself. Even the most deserving tenant with a disability is likely to flip his affordable home and bank the profits. That’s what I’d do.
Finally, the all-important vote. The nine councillors raise their hands. And it’s close. Four against. Five in favour. Motion carried. Permission granted. Towers ahoy. This seismic result is greeted in near silence. Mr Developer and his team melt quietly away. And the dopey councillors seem reluctant to celebrate the ‘community infrastructure levy’ of £8.5 million, which is owed to the council in return for planning permission. Sadiq Khan and the GLA will collect an additional £2.1 million. What a triumph for socialism. A bunch of capitalists have just been relieved of ten million quid and the haul will be shared out among the needy and the skint. Won’t it? Mayor Rahman is absent but the result aligns perfectly with his vision for the borough. ‘We want to go high. We want to go dense. And we’re open to business,’ he said in a recent pitch to investors. He welcomes developers who can build gulags-in-the-sky and cram them with inmates – preferably students whose fees enrich the universities and keep the supply chain lubricated.
Mayor Rahman welcomes developers who can build gulags-in-the-sky and cram them with inmates
Last March, the mayor and his team visited Cannes for a property fair arranged by MIPIM (Le Marché International des Professionnels de l’Immobilier). The jamboree set out to ‘bring together the world’s real estate decision-makers to help them unlock capital through strategic partnerships’. Mayor Rahman had such a good time that he went back this year.
So here’s what I learnt at the town hall. My taxes subsidise a four-sided property cartel. The mayor supplies the contracts. The speculators raise the towers. The university stuffs them with lodgers. And the East End provides the land. I can’t help noticing that one of these resources is not renewable.
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