The Thames Water customers who can't shower in their own homes
Plus: The Oxford Street cable car that never was • Khan and the Met go to war over Palantir • The London council closing its children's water play areas in a heatwave
If the skies stay dry for the next week, London will see the first July without a drop of rain at Kew Gardens since the site began collecting records in 1871. From wet winters to extreme heat, the climate of the city is changing, and the city’s Victorian infrastructure is struggling to cope.
Today, as reports swirl that the prime minister is considering nationalising Thames Water, we bring you the unreported story of the thousands of Londoners who are unable to take a shower or wash the dishes in their own homes due to the measures being taken to reduce leaks by the stricken water supplier.
Scroll down to read that…
Got a story we should be looking into? Send a WhatsApp or send an email.
The London Cable Car that never was
More exclusive details on the “second London cable car” proposed during Boris Johnson’s time as mayor (reports former London Standard City Hall editor Ross Lydall).
London Centric last month told how, shortly before the 2012 Olympics, the then Transport for London commissioner Peter Hendy received a possibly tipsy call from Boris Johnson, during which the then mayor of London suggested a successor to the newly opened Royal Docks to North Greenwich “dangleway”.
“Why don’t we build another cable car?” Johnson was said to have asked, as he wobbled home on his bike from an evening engagement.
Now a well-informed source has told London Centric about a proposed route for a cable car that was floated during that period – linking Oxford Street with Knightsbridge, via rooftop stations on the top of John Lewis, Selfridges and Harrods.
However, the new route was apparently not the work of TfL nor the mayor. Instead, the proposal is thought to have come from a consortium that included a cable car manufacturer looking for new business away from Europe’s traditional alpine slopes.
TfL says its archives contain no documentary proof of the proposal. But London Centric was told the proposal was for the cable car to have started from Tottenham Court Road and carried passengers the length of Oxford Street, before traversing Hyde Park to Knightsbridge.
When a mocked-up CGI image was presented to TfL, sources say an order went out internally: on no account was Boris Johnson to be told about it or shown the picture in case he became even more enamoured with the idea. Having wasted vast amounts of time and money on “Boris Island” airport and the ill-fated Garden Bridge, the last thing TfL wanted was to engage more brain power on another hugely challenging project.
London Centric has spoken with numerous key figures from Johnson’s mayoralty. One former Boris top aide said: “The original cable car was viewed as a potential part of a new network of cable car lines – working their way down, criss-crossing the Thames.”
Do you have any documents relating to abandoned plans for cross-London cable cars? Get in touch!
The new Weekend Hopper bus fare comes in this weekend, meaning you can make unlimited bus journeys around London for £1.75 a day on weekends this summer. Here’s an explanation of why Transport for London is having to try new things to convince people to even consider taking the bus.
The Palantir dispute dividing the mayor and the police
There’s an extraordinary row brewing between Sadiq Khan and the Met Police after the mayor blocked a £50m contract the police had agreed with the US data firm Palantir.
The tech company, founded by American Trump-supporter Peter Thiel, had been due to use its technology to automate analysis of criminal investigations, similar to the work it already does for the NHS. But Khan’s team blocked the deal on procurement grounds, having previously raised concerns with the Guardian’s Robert Booth about the Met signing contracts with companies that “act contrary to London’s values”.
Palantir is now suing for the contract to be reinstated, arguing it won the contract fairly only to be blocked for political reasons. Met Police boss Mark Rowley is publicly furious with Khan that the deal has been blocked and said the mayor’s decision will cost the police money and force him to cut officers.
Now, details of the legal defence by the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime, which oversees the Met, are coming out. London Centric has been told that City Hall will claim a senior member of the Met’s commercial team was instructed to ensure that Palantir got the £50m contract and that the police’s procurement process was formulated specifically to hand the data contract to Palantir.
The mayor’s team will also claim that the Met Police provided inaccurate data to the deputy mayor for policing and crime about the extent to which other companies were in the running for the contract when, it is alleged, Palantir was the only game in town. The mayor’s office will also argue that the deal was really blocked because the police’s supposed desire to give the contract to Palantir had made it impossible to confirm whether the deal was value for money, rather than for ideological reasons. This has the potential to get very messy.
Talking of Sadiq Khan… he has lost his longstanding head of communications, with Sarah Brown leaving City Hall to run Andy Burnham’s Downing Street media team. Her departure inevitably adds to the speculation that Khan’s team are preparing for life after the mayoralty.
Sorry children, the water fountain is cancelled
What will Thames Water’s hosepipe ban, which came into effect on Thursday, mean for the city’s overheating children?
In east London, Newham Council has said due to restrictions on “non-essential water in public places” the water play areas in Central Park, Plashet Park and Plaistow Park will remain closed for the duration of the ban.
But in the borough of Waltham Forest, fountains in Fellowship Square, Troubridge Square and Coronation Square will remain open, as their water fountains operate using recycled water. A council spokesperson said the fountains “are designed to be environmentally friendly, using a fully recyclable, recirculating water system that is safely treated and chlorinated.”
Tower Hamlets council said it would be keeping open its splash pools in Victoria Park and Mile End Park as they recirculate water, rather than drawing on a fresh supply: “The social, health and wellbeing benefits they provide to residents significantly outweigh their relatively limited water use.”
…and good luck finding a swimming pool
Meanwhile, the sudden closure of the York Hall leisure centre in Bethnal Green has been a source of frustration for east Londoners looking to cool down.
No reason was given but London Centric has learned that it’s due to the discovery of traces of legionella bacteria within the centre’s hot water system. A spokesperson for Tower Hamlets council confirmed: “We have closed York Hall as a safety measure and to allow specialists to clean and flush out the hot water pipes and then retest the hot water system to ensure it has completely gone… We expect this process to take a week or so and we apologise for the inconvenience this has caused.”
Lowering the bar: The Londoners who can’t shower after Thames Water turned down their pressure
By Sophie Wilkinson
Aversano Jacques lives on the top floor of 1950s-built Barwell House by Weavers Fields in Bethnal Green. For the last five months he has been unable to get more than a trickle out of his tap, forcing him to fetch water from a courtyard: “I used to get up at 5:30am to collect water to fill this tank,” he said, pointing to a kitchen bin.
Going all this time without water has taken its toll: “It was humiliating. I’m from India. My family used to laugh at us. ‘You are living in London, you don’t have water for five months?’”
Down the road, we met a single mother who lives on the top floor of a low-rise block of flats in Tower Hamlets with her 13-year-old son. For months, every time she turned her kitchen tap on, only spits of water came out.
“Each morning, I have to pour my kettle from the bathroom handbasin, and then I make tea,” she said. “I’m just fed up and I’m working, I’m a single mum, it’s so stressful, I cannot manage.”
Her son “used to change his uniform two to three times a week”. Now, she says, he has to make one uniform last a week due to the time spent handwashing.
According to Thames Water staff, it’s because the company has turned to a completely legal but extremely frustrating tactic in certain areas of the capital to reduce leaks from ageing pipes: cutting the water pressure.
Want to keep reading and support independent journalism about London? We don’t have any financial backers. Every subscription makes a massive difference to how many stories we can report. Subscribe now and get 25% off your first 12 months, with full access to our paywalled archive.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to London Centric to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.