Rachael Robathan, leader of Westminster City Council, has made it into her office for three days of each week during the coronavirus crisis. Lockdown or no lockdown, it’s the working environment she prefers. “I like the rhythm, the routine of actually being here physically,” she says.
For the majority of her first five months leading the council, Robathan found the rhythm of Westminster more subdued as she battled to keep vital public services going during the pandemic. Now, as the slow emergence from lockdown begins, her focus is turning to getting Westminster back up and running.
In doing so, she aims to double down on the area’s sustainability drive, give a lift to the retail and hospitality businesses that the local economy relies on – and perhaps even re-set some of the fractious relationships the borough has had with real estate developers in years gone by.
Push forward
Despite having to pause several initiatives to concentrate on getting Westminster through the Covid-19 outbreak, Robathan feels this period has thrown the council’s broader aims into “sharper focus”. Now she wants the council to “push forward at pace” with its plans, including making Westminster cleaner and greener.
That will feature reducing traffic across the borough by consolidating freight deliveries and commercial waste collections. This should lead not only to better air quality but also to freeing up the centre of the city, which in turn could allow the council to be more ambitious with its plans for the Oxford Street district, Robathan says.
The council’s “Place Strategy” for Oxford Street and the surrounding area is being dusted off, with the first post-lockdown meeting on it now having taken place. As a report last year on the district noted: “Oxford Street’s current condition does not match its importance and status.” Problems include pedestrian congestion, inadequate public realm and poor air quality.
“We need to look at this again to make sure that we were being as ambitious as possible,” Robathan says. “There’s no point in doing something of this scale that we’re not going to be proud of in 20 years’ time. This is all about taking this area and future proofing it, so my children are going to want to visit in years to come.
“It shouldn’t just be about retail. It also needs to be around how we can improve things, such as the food and beverage offers, so people will want to go there for lunch or just to walk around. I will be having a conversation with the mayor of London about how we can hopefully work together on the Oxford Street district.”
Robathan also wants to move forward with the development of Westminster’s environmental supplementary planning document, which includes measures to make sure the council and developers build in a way that reduces emissions and is more energy efficient.
“[It’s] a really important way of how we can work with developers… to encourage development activity in a way that is going to be supportive for our residential community,” she says.
Can-do approach
The relationship between Westminster Council and London’s developers has been thorny. Some developers have criticised what they consider an overly strict adherence to policies by the council on issues such as change of use for space and the insistence on having affordable housing on sites they consider inappropriate. Others have slammed the shake-up of the planning process, which has handed greater power to planning officers, given residents the opportunity to speak at planning meetings and introduced stricter rules on hospitality.
The shake-up took place after the resignation of deputy council leader Robert Davis, who received hospitality or gifts more than 500 times over six years, often from property developers ahead of planning decisions.
To foster a better relationship, Robathan has established regular meetings with the big estates and other landowners in Westminster, which she hopes will cement shared goals and, “where there are issues, we can discuss them together”.
“We want developers to develop here, absolutely,” she adds. “But it has to be development that works for our residents as well.
“It’s very important that we have a very active dialogue with all of these entities that are active in Westminster… They have a very significant, invested interest as major landowners in the city and that’s why it’s important that we as the city council are working closely with them to deliver on what I hope are shared goals around more sustainable development to tackle climate change and also affordable [housing] delivery.
“I think all of the great estates and landowners recognise that they need to be working with us on this so that we can make sure that Westminster going forward is a city where people of all incomes are able to live.”
Developers already see a difference in the council’s approach with Robathan at the helm. “It’s the polar opposite of what had gone before,” says the chief executive of one London developer. “It’s been positive over the last few months. The City Plan is still making its way through and elements are still up for debate, but she wants to find a way through.”
“It’s pretty improved,” says another real estate executive. “Rachael is upfront about what she wants to do and has a can-do approach. They’re going to be careful and considered but we should expect that.”
As for the council’s views on change of use, Robathan acknowledges that the council will need to be “very much focused on and sensitive to” the topic as the Covid-19 pandemic passes.
“It may be a part of the legacy from the last few months that people will be working from home far more, so there may be less demand for office space,” she says. “Or it may be that in a year’s time office demand is as strong as ever. It’s difficult to tell right at the moment, but I think we have to, as a city, look at how we move forward.”
Another “legacy” that may come out of the pandemic is a move to a hybrid of physical and virtual planning meetings. Westminster, like most councils, has been holding virtual planning meetings to keep the development process moving. Robathan feels they have been a success.
A return to physical meetings is expected once the pandemic subsides, but she hopes that if people are unable to attend these that they will be able to make virtual representations.
“We’ve been able to run the meetings entirely virtually,” she says. “I do know that it is more difficult to host a hybrid meeting, but the last few months have shown that anything’s possible in terms of ways of working.
“You only have to look at some of the major meetings that we’ve had, for example, with the Holocaust Memorial Education Centre. We had some incredibly powerful testimony at that from all sorts of people… I watched the whole of the session from my home.”
Temporary measures
The focus for Robathan now is on getting Westminster’s businesses open and people back to the area.
Temporary measures have been put in place including 19,000 sq m of additional footway and 11km of new cycleways to encourage people to return to the streets and shop, which is critical for the borough’s economy.
The measures will also help Westminster’s hospitality sector when the government gives the go-ahead for this sector to reopen, Robathan says.
“It was very clear that until people felt comfortable that they could move around the pavements safely, they weren’t going back to shop on Regent Street or Oxford Street and we need those streets to come back to life. We need them to be able to open,” Robathan says.
“We’ve accepted that some things will work much better than others, but the point about it being a temporary strategy is that we can amend things. If something isn’t working or it’s having an unintended consequence of throwing traffic down residential roads, we can say ‘we’ll change this’.”
She adds that if some of the measures work well, they may be introduced on a permanent basis.
Next steps include placing tables and chairs on pavements and closed roads to aid the hospitality sector. This requires the government to make changes to the licensing act, something the council is lobbying for.
“With the current social distancing measures in place, it’s going to be extremely difficult for many in the hospitality industry to be able to safely reopen unless they can expand their tables and chairs outside,” Robathan says.
“I think our resident community, who we will need to engage very closely, understands that in order to help our hospitality sector get back up and running and off their knees, this is going to be important.”
The council is also consulting with a number of cultural institutions on creating an outdoor offering in places such as the north terrace of Trafalgar Square over the summer to showcase the areas and encourage visitors.
Robathan aims to have more council staff back in the office by the end of June, around 30 people per floor. And although the council leader has been eager to come to the office over recent weeks, she knows that some of her colleagues will have found their own rhythms during the lockdown to which the council will now need to adapt.
“We know that many of our officers commute from outer areas, many from out of London, so clearly there is an improvement in efficiency if you don’t have people spending a long time on a long commute. It can also reduce costs for them.
“It is all part of how we need to be flexible and responsive going forward.”
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