Increasing central London’s residential population could help the capital to weather any future pandemics, according to the chair of the business improvement district covering Bloomsbury, Farringdon and Holborn.
Alexander Jan, chair of Bee Midtown and former chief economist of Arup, said on a Westminster Property Association webinar: “What we’ve seen in Paris and New York is that having a big local, residential and working population in their centres has helped them to stabilise the impact of not being able to use public transport. London is a bit unusual in that so much of its workforce live further out.”
Jan said he was not suggesting going back to “Victorian levels of overcrowding”, but that there is an opportunity for careful densification given that the number of people living in inner London is around 60% of its historical high.
He added that this would not “eclipse” the capital’s broader function of providing employment to those living on its outskirts, and that it would not mark the “end of the office” in London.
Debbie Jackson, executive director of growth, planning and housing at Westminster City Council, said it is too early for the council to have “a seismic change of policy” in response to the effects of the pandemic.
This debate followed a report from Arup into the economic impact of the pandemic on Westminster, which predicted a 24% decrease in the number of people going to work in offices in Westminster in 2024 compared with an anticipated increase of 8% pre-Covid 19.
Jackson said that Westminster’s current draft city plan has been “found sound” by the inspector and is due to be adopted in spring. “It has a target for 63,000 jobs and we still feel optimistic and confident that they can be met,” she said.
For Shaftesbury chief executive Brian Bickell, the big concern is the survival of the landlord’s tenants. He said the firm is doing what it could to help tenants get through this period, but added that “they’ve got no fat left to live off and can’t keep borrowing from [a] government that doesn’t help them”.
He added: “We want those business to survive… coming out of this, the economy is not going to be in a strong position and the prospects of replacing tenants if they can’t make it through is going to be quite daunting, because you are seeing more vacancies appearing across the West End and on some of its busiest streets.”
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