Whenever Sadiq Khan is questioned about London’s stratospheric violent crime rates on TV or radio, he regurgitates the same pre-scripted answers which Londoners have become all too familiar with.
In 2018 I launched a campaign Calling Time on Crime, demanding that the government put more resources into front-line policing and reverse the cuts in funding.
Amidst the fast-changing situation in Westminster as MPs debate our withdrawal from the EU, one of the crucial tasks for me and my parliamentary team has been to ensure that political developments do not crowd out progress on the issues that matter most to constituents.
Policing is a priority issue for constituents, and I have had successive meetings recently with the police minister, home secretary and prime minister herself to raise community safety at the very highest level.
Readers may not have heard of Sadiq Khan’s planned expansion of the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ), but it is set to have a detrimental impact on the hundreds of thousands of people who drive inside the North and South Circulars every day.
The discovery that a man who had been jailed for using his position as a police officer to prey on vulnerable women could have been allowed to work at Queen’s hospital without a compulsory background check is worrying both for staff and patients.
This week’s edition of the Recorder carries with it the sad news that the operators of The Retailery - a much loved shared space in Romford Market Place - will be closing the venue in January next year.
Vauxhall has completed its sport utility vehicle range with the third, and largest, Grandland X. We put the SUV, now available at Tony LeVoi in Romford, to the test.
“The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining,” so the saying goes. So if some warm weather is making your conservatory uninhabitable, think about replacing its roof with a flat one and adding a roof lantern instead.
