‘We are not revolutionaries’: Business warms to Labour-led Westminster council

For some businesses in London, the change of regime at the historically Conservative Westminster City Council in May last year caused concern.

“We are now under the People’s Republic of Westminster,” remarked one property company boss after Labour took control for the first time in 58 years.

But on a tour of the West End, council leader Adam Hug was quick to reject such views, citing Labour’s new “pragmatic” approach to business championed by its national leader Sir Keir Starmer.

“We are not revolutionaries,” said Hug, a 41-year-old former director of a policy think-tank.

Home to the Houses of Parliament, the vibrant West End and numerous tourist attractions, Westminster is one of the UK’s most closely watched local authorities. Last May’s result was part of a shift towards Labour in the capital, with the party also seizing Barnet in the north and Wandsworth in the south.

The swing away from the Tories reflected national factors — notably the perceived chaos of Boris Johnson’s government — and local ones, including the much-derided Marble Arch Mound. Launched in July 2021, the tourist attraction closed in January 2022 after burning through £6.6mn of taxpayer money.

Some businesses with operations in Westminster — which stretches from the legendary Abbey Road in the north to the river Thames via the upmarket districts of Knightsbridge, Soho and St James — initially feared the effects of a socialist administration.

Half a year later, they are finding relations to be surprisingly cordial. Charles Begley, chief executive of Westminster Property Association, a lobby group, said Labour’s manifesto had been particularly “punchy . . . but as soon as they got into power they started to talk to us. They seem pragmatic, approachable.”

Begley cited WPA research suggesting the number of planning permissions granted by the council — a key measure for developers in the area — was in line with the previous administration.

Hug admitted that on “day one, there were certain [business] people running around in a panic” but added that the “feedback we get is that [companies] feel that we’re much better at listening to them than the previous administration”. 

“It’s a pragmatic, business-like relationship based on mutual respect to get the most out of opportunities. We know that business is a vital part of the city.”

The Labour-led council has already been branded “woke” by rightwing commentators, notably after it adopted the phrase “global majority” in place of “Bame” — which stands for black, Asian and minority ethnic.

But Hug said he did “not spend a huge amount of time worrying about” such criticism, describing himself as a “pragmatic social democrat who wants to see as much change as possible . . . but recognising that, in the real world, not everything can happen overnight”.

He said his approach bore “a lot of similarities” to the national strategy of Starmer, who also hopes to overturn a large Tory majority at the next general election.

“We’re both working hard to make sure people can trust us with power,” said Hug. “We have ambitious plans, but we weren’t going to throw the baby out with the bathwater.”

For an unspecified period, Hug has frozen council tax to help households struggling with the surge in living costs. Westminster has the lowest council tax in the country at present, at £866 a year for mid-range, band D properties.

The previous Tory regime changed the local plan for taxpayer-funded new homes to aim for 60 per cent “intermediate” housing — or part-owned, part-socially rented properties aimed at low-income workers such as nurses — with just 40 per cent fully social housing.

But the council is now flipping the ratio in favour of social housing, which Hug said was the typical figure for London boroughs, as well as investing in its own temporary accommodation.

“For decades, the previous administration let developers off hundreds of millions of pounds’ worth of affordable housing contributions,” he said. “We want a robust, pragmatic relationship with developers and, as construction rebounds, to make sure that they’re all paying their fair share.”

Nickie Aiken, Tory MP for the Cities of London and Westminster, said thousands of working people would “miss out” on housing because of the change in policy. But Hug said the change merely took the council back to the status quo before the previous administration.

Westminster is home to some of the richest and poorest streets in the UK, with a corresponding gap in life expectancy of about 14 years, according to Hug. Aiming to halve this by 2035, he has already implemented free school meals for all state primary school children in the borough.

But Hug was clear that it was necessary to ensure money kept coming into the West End, one of the UK’s busiest tourist destinations, where footfall has been nearing pre-pandemic levels. To that end, the council has plans to improve the areas around Oxford Street by creating wider pavements and planting more trees.

As part of its push to improve the street and a wider campaign against “dirty money” in London, the council has launched a high-profile crackdown on sweet shops with mysterious ownership structures.

“The challenge is finding out who . . . is running the businesses,” said Hug, standing outside one outlet. “It’s playing Whac-A-Mole to find who is real, who is fake, who is just a patsy.”

The council has already reduced the number of sweet shops around Oxford Street from 30 to 21, while legal action against five in recent weeks resulted in the recovery of about £250,000 in unpaid business rates.

“We’re working hard to make sure people can trust us with power,” said Hug, pointing to newly vacated premises. “Ultimately, people here in Westminster were frustrated. It was a sense of an administration that had run out of steam and stopped listening to people.”