London's luxury car graveyard
Plus: Pophams bakery landlord dispute, who drove a Waymo "self-driving" taxi into a crime scene, the repentant anti-LTN Green candidate, and what next for the striking tube drivers?
With less than a fortnight until London goes to the polls, we’ve been all over the capital for this weekend’s edition.
Some people want lots of election coverage and some… don’t. So the top half of today’s newsletter consists of a series of quick stories from around the city that will hopefully intrigue – and the second half is pure politics.
Scroll down until you find something that piques your interest.
The abandoned luxury cars in a Knightsbridge garage facing the crusher
When the ultra-rich buy property in central London, there’s no guarantee it’ll come with sufficient car parking.
That’s where the Knightsbridge Public Car Park underneath Cadogan Place comes in. It can charge £48 for four hours of parking and its bays are lined with Bentleys and Ferraris tucked away under dust covers, racking up fees.
Euro Car Parks recently closed the basement level of the car park in order to carry out renovations. But before any work can begin, there’s a problem: abandoned luxury cars.
Tipped off by London Centric reader and podcast supremo Andrew Harrison, we headed down to find that more than a dozen expensive abandoned cars, including a Jaguar, a Range Rover and a Porsche that have been given two weeks to find another spot to park before they’re “scrapped immediately” by Euro Car Parks. Many more expensive cars were sitting there, gathering dust, under sheets.
London Centric ran the different cars’ plates through the DVLA website. Some had MOTs that expired all the way back in March 2023, suggesting the pricey vehicles may have been abandoned here for several years.
Tucked behind the windshield wiper of each car is an A4 piece of paper, explaining that the “vehicle has been left on this site with neither leave nor licence of the Landowner, the Managing Agent or Tenant.”
While London Centric is no Autotrader, we’ve tried to estimate the price of the different vehicles set to be scrapped. A new Porsche Macan could set you back £56,000, with extras costing tens of thousands of pounds, and a new Range Rover Sport could be somewhere between £78,915 and £132,960.
Euro Car Parks is also threatening to “recharge all costs and expenses” for the vehicles’ removal. Sadly, they didn’t respond to a request for comment on whether we could come and watch them being removed.
If any of our readers have abandoned a Porsche in a Knightsbridge car park for three years, do get in touch and tell us your reasoning – and let us know if you still have the keys.
Putting the pain in pain au chocolat at Pophams
London croissant lovers were disappointed this week when one of Instagram’s favourite cafes, Pophams Bakery, stopped serving pastries following the sudden closure of its cafe in London Fields.
What’s not been reported is why: a dispute with its landlord. A notice on the door of the Hackney venue stated that Pophams had forfeited its lease. It stated that “any attempt to reenter the premises without the Landlord’s authority may be a criminal offence and result in prosecution.”
Ollie Gold, Pophams founder, told London Centric that the notice was not for repossession but they are in dispute with their landlord over “a 451% increase in service charge”.
The building is owned by landlord Hazlewood Apartments, based in the offshore tax haven of the British Virgin Islands and overseen by property management company Citidwell. Residents of the building above Pophams are also understood to be fighting substantial rises in their service charges.
London Centric asked both Gold and Citidwell what was behind the increase in service charges and why they had taken control of the bakery, but received no response. Gold wanted to reassure staff and customers and said he is optimistic the dispute can be resolved and Pophams will reopen soon: “We’ll be back on premises in the next couple days.”
Update: Following the publication of this article, Gold has clarified the service charge. This is now reflected above.
Got a story London Centric should look into? Send a WhatsApp or get in touch at hello@londoncentric.media.
Which Way, Waymo?
Earlier this year, when Waymo first announced its plan to launch self-driving taxis in the capital, London Centric met with a representative of the company. We said there would come a moment when we would end up reporting on viral videos of the company’s cars doing silly things on the capital’s roads. They acknowledged that such videos are an inevitable part of the growing process and argued their cars were still substantially safer than human drivers.
And lo, it appeared to have come to pass. On Wednesday night one of the company’s cars drove straight towards a police cordon in Harlesden protecting the site of a double stabbing. Footage of the incident in west London has quickly gone around the world as an example of the risks of self-driving cars.
Except, well, is that what happened? According to Waymo, the car was being manually driven by its human operator at the time, who has since been suspended pending an investigation. More intriguingly, the spokesperson definitively states that the incident would not have happened if the car’s self-driving computer had been in control, as it would have recognised the risk. Waymo is currently in the process of switching the 100 test vehicles it has roaming on London’s streets to full automation (with a human present, for now, as a back-up) ahead of a planned public launch later this year.
The Battle of Brockwell Park is back yet again, in the latest bid by campaigners to limit Mighty Hoopla and other festivals set to take place in the area next month. The locals who won two legal victories against Lambeth council last year, which we reported on at length, are back for a third crowdfunded legal challenge. Their previous legal successes forced the festivals to apply for planning permission for future events. This time, they’re arguing that even though planning permission was granted by Lambeth council, the process was flawed as it didn’t take the environmental impact of the festivals into account.
Tube strikes: Where does the RMT go from here?
Now that this week’s tube strikes are over, is there any sign of a negotiating off-ramp that will enable the dispute to come to a close?
As a reminder (full explainer here), just over half of the tube’s drivers are represented by Aslef, a union which backs Transport for London’s proposal to shift drivers to a 35-hour, four-day working week. They have not been on strike.
The rest of the tube’s drivers are represented by the RMT union. They object to the ‘voluntary’ transition to the Aslef-backed model, arguing it could become the default without the consent of its members. They want drivers to hold out for a 32-hour, four-day working week.
This week’s disruption has been patchy, aided by the popularity of the Elizabeth line, rental e-bikes, and work from home options. While some tube lines have only been partly disrupted, others have been shut down. Much depends on whether you were trying to use a line where the majority of drivers belong to the RMT union or one where Aslef drivers have still been turning up to work.
RMT drivers don’t get paid while they’re on strike, meaning some drivers will have lost hundreds of pounds of pay this week. What’s unknown is for how long members are willing to keep giving up their pay, with a further four 24-hour strikes scheduled for the coming months.
We’ve been trying to work out where there could be room for negotiation. Although the RMT won’t discuss negotiations with the media, a new proposal by TfL would likely look at the RMT’s demands for shorter shifts, more flexible working patterns, and ways to mitigate the safety impact of fatigue.
An RMT spokesperson told London Centric there have been no further talks between the union and TfL this week: “If we are invited back to talks we will of course attend.” With the next strike due on 19 May, the spokesperson said that now there is a “window of opportunity for TfL to come forward with a decent proposal so we can reach a negotiated settlement.”
PS - Thanks to reader Richard Smith for spotting a mistake in our piece earlier this week on the dispute. The current tube driver shift lasts seven hours and 42 minutes including a 30-minute unpaid lunch break, not excluding it as we said. We strive, as ever, for accuracy.
Editor’s note: Housing lawyer Giles Peaker died last week following a short illness. While I never met Giles in person, I spent hours on the phone with him over the last 18 months as he patiently translated, for free, housing law into something a journalist could understand. He helped with our coverage of Criterion Capital’s mass evictions and is quoted in our investigation into the East End property developer James Gold.
Giles’ greatest professional legacy was helping to draft the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act, which set minimum standards for rental properties. He was a kind man who cared about the living conditions of others. A full tribute to him can be read here.
The election section: two weeks to go.
There was a massive response to Sam Freedman’s London election predictions piece, as part of our collaboration with his Comment is Freed newsletter.
Among the many reader responses there were a few things that kept coming up:
A lack of certainty about whether the Greens have the campaign infrastructure and election experience to turn verbal support into votes, especially in areas with historically strong Labour support.
People judging the strength of a party in a local area by the number of leaflets they received through the door.
A handful of particularly contentious borderline calls – such as whether Labour really would lose Barking and Dagenham to Reform UK, or whether the Conservatives really will take back Wandsworth from Labour.
Sam says: “While I won’t be right about every prediction I hope the article gave London Centric readers a good sense of the type of contest that will be taking place in different parts of the capital and what to look out for.”
London Centric deals in reporting, Sam deals in analysis. If you want to read more of his writing at Comment is Freed then there’s a special 25% discount offer here.
Did Newham’s pro-LTN Greens accidentally pick an anti-LTN candidate?
By Conrad Quilty-Harper
Green Party members in Newham are asking why the party’s candidate for Forest Gate North was selected despite her public campaign against the rollout of low traffic neighbourhoods, a key policy of the party’s manifesto.
Shofa Miah wrote a now-deleted Instagram post last year denouncing plans for a low traffic neighbourhood around Woodgrange and Capel Road. She described LTN supporters as “new settler residents” acting against “working class and Global Majority communities.” Her husband runs a local anti-LTN campaign group that has urged people to vote for Labour candidate Forhad Hussain, who has pledged to introduce more car-friendly policies if he wins next month.
Newham Greens insist Miah no longer opposes low traffic neighbourhoods and now supports the party’s manifesto pledge to back them.
James Dow, a Forest Gate resident and Green member, told London Centric: “We have a right to know if we’re being asked to vote for a councillor who has actively campaigned against one of the manifesto pledges.”
Dow suspects his party has been lax in its vetting of candidates due to its rapid explosion in popularity under new leader Zack Polanski: “I want [the Greens] to win in the area… I don’t want that type of thing,” he said. “My theory is that they’ve overreached,” he said, pointing to the Greens’ push to field candidates across all of Newham’s wards. He was told by a local party official that Miah has “been on a journey” and was chosen through a competitive hustings and member vote. He says it would be “wonderful” if Miah really has “done an incredible personal 180” over the last year.
A Green spokesperson said of Miah’s past opposition to LTNs: “These views do not reflect the views of the party. After discussions with the candidate, the social media posts have been deleted. Our commitment to low traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) is clear and unchanged, as set out in the Newham 2026 manifesto.”
Talking of Newham…
We’ve previously reported on the purchase of an empty council flat by Newham’s Labour mayoral candidate Forhad Hussain. The transaction was registered – in what Hussain says was a legal mistake from which he derived no benefit – as a Right to Buy transaction, which we said meant the price paid was not made public.
While this did keep the price off easily accessible public systems, we now understand it is possible to obtain the cost of the lease by sending a paper form to the Land Registry along with an £11 fee.
As a result we are now able to state that, as a serving council cabinet member, Hussain bought 70% of the empty council flat at a valuation of £190,000 in March 2016. A year-and-a-half later Newham council had the flat revalued at £250,000 and Hussain bought the final 30% share at that price.
We’ve published that clarification, along with Hussain’s full statement from his lawyers, here.
After we updated our piece, Newham Labour put out a statement saying London Centric has withdrawn our articles. We haven’t. You can tell this because they’re still available to read. We’ve asked Newham Labour to delete that false statement.
You can tell everybody this is Your Party
Months of incessant and bitter infighting within Jeremy Corbyn’s Your Party mean the organisation has spent more time dealing with internal battles than preparing for May’s local elections.
As a result the party is only formally running candidates in seven London wards, compared to more than 1,500 for the Greens. Instead, it’s decided to give its support to a group of independent candidates and community groups across the capital.
Its key targets are in east London, where it hopes the Muslim population that is already turning away from Starmer will vote instead for existing independent campaign groups, such as the Redbridge Independents, Newham Independents Party, and Lutfur Rahman’s Aspire in Tower Hamlets.
Corbyn, the MP for Islington North, has appeared at Rahman’s events and described his campaign as “one flank of a wider rebellion against the Labour machine”.
A Your Party source said the decision to stand so few candidates was not a legacy of the previous chaos, but instead the implementation of its members’ wishes based on votes at its founding conference last November.
Support will also be given to Ealing Community Independents, the Haringey Socialist Alliance, the Enfield Independents and Arise in Harrow, alongside individual independent candidates across the city. If you want to vote directly for Your Party itself, you have to live in a select corner of Croydon, Greenwich, Lewisham, or Waltham Forest.
PS… There are two stories published this week by friends of London Centric that we loved and wished we’d written.
First, this curious tale on IanVisits about someone who has been selling tickets to unauthorised tours of Abbey Road studios, failing to turn up, then making excuses about why they haven’t been able to refund the money.
“What annoyed me the most was the emotional letdown for the people who had travelled there,” Mansfield told us. “For people who are into music it’s the holy grail of tours.”
Secondly, Diamond Geezer, the Samuel Pepys of 21st century London blogging, has this gratuitously in-depth post on why, as of this month, you will now hear more “this train is being held at a red signal” announcements.
Of course the Greens don’t care about the environmental views of their candidates. The only thing that matters to them now is what you say about Palestine.
Thanks Jim!