The best of London Centric, so far
The investigations, exclusives, and intrigue you might have missed.
Happy new year. London Centric published its first edition just three months ago with a mission to bring you exclusive, ambitious, and interesting news stories about the capital that weren’t being reported by other outlets.
Since then our stories have been followed up by every national newspaper from the Daily Star to the Financial Times, discussed on television and radio stations ranging from the BBC to LBC, and referenced in parliament on multiple occasions. I’ve received legal threats, bought a problematic amount of Harry Potter merchandise in the pursuit of journalism, confronted a masked bike thief in the act, and been barred from buying ice creams on Westminster Bridge.
If you’re one of the dozens of people who received London Centric for your Christmas present (I was up pre-dawn on 24 December doing a 40-mile dash across the capital to hand deliver the final gift cards!) then thank you. You probably weren’t expecting this in your stocking, so let me quickly explain what London Centric is all about.
Most corporate-owned local newspapers are in a death spiral, desperately trying to make pennies from online advertising by pushing their journalists to write eight stories a day with headlines such as “What is in the middle aisle at Lidl this week?”. Alternatively, in the case of London’s (formerly) Evening Standard, its staff have to give space to its oligarch owner’s obsession with living forever. (One trick to eternal youth, as Lord Lebedev has realised, is using a mysteriously airbrushed profile picture at the top of your articles.)
London Centric operates on a different back-to-basics approach: What if there was a London local news outlet that just told you new, interesting things about the capital? An outlet that only publishes articles when they’re ready and doesn’t spam your inbox? A place that holds institutions to account, without being tediously political? And all mixed with some little titbits of information about the capital that make you go “oh so THAT is the deal with THAT, I’d always wondered what was going on THERE”.
One reader asked if it’s annoying that other news outlets are regularly ripping-off London Centric stories. It’s not — it’s a compliment. London Centric’s business model doesn’t rely on chasing traffic and tricking you into clicking links, it relies on building a word-of-mouth reputation for high-quality journalism. (There’s even a referral scheme if you want to spread the word and be rewarded in the process.)
Some of London Centric is free. But if you want the really good stuff, you’re going to have to pay. If you want to poke around, a seven-day free trial is available, or you can take the plunge with an introductory offer today.
In return for your financial support, I promise to continue to bust a gut to deliver you fascinating stories about the capital. The more people who pay to subscribe, the more original journalism I can publish about London, and the better the general quality of information about London becomes. It’s a virtuous circle.
Since London Centric launched I’ve been working seven days a week, often until the early hours of the morning, to break news. Unlike most news outlets, I’m easy to reach and immediately accountable to readers. You can send a WhatsApp direct to my phone by clicking this link or get in touch via email. Some of London Centric’s best stories have come from readers sending in their tips and asking me to look into them.
In the last three months London Centric stories have been read more than a million times. There’s now 15,000 people who receive London Centric direct to their inboxes, with a growing number supporting the project by opting-in to the paid version. All of this has been achieved with no PR budget, no investors, and just word-of-mouth recommendations.
I’m hugely grateful to those of you who joined this ride early on. But many readers have only learned about London Centric in recent weeks and may not have seen some of the earlier stories. So, as a new year begins, here’s a few highlights of what you might have missed.
Jim.
P.S. London Centric will be back next week with more original and intriguing stories about the capital.
The best of London Centric’s first three months.
Drag queens, secret votes, and the £4m battle for Bethnal Green Working Men's Club
“Somebody gave us that club, it was in a state, but they gave it to us. The people who are using it now are the same as us, human beings. It’s not ours to sell”
One of my favourite investigations that London Centric has published is a look at one of the East End’s best-known late night venues. The battle for Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club is part of a wider debate over who should own the capital’s cultural assets — and which group of Londoners should benefit from rising property prices. The club’s owners sent legal threats ahead of the publication of this article and have since gone incommunicado, although it is believed the venue could soon be on the market.
The secret plan to charge London’s drivers by the mile
The internal case for the controversial change was a dramatic cut in carbon emissions, rapidly improved air quality for Londoners, reduced congestion enabling buses to travel faster across the capital, and a massive improvement in road safety, cutting the number of deaths and injuries caused by cars.
In an alternate world, Londoners would be spending 2025 getting ready for a city-wide road pricing regime where all drivers would be charged by the mile to drive their vehicle. London Centric was leaked a batch of top-secret Transport for London documents which laid out how Sadiq Khan was planning for this to be centrepiece of his final term — only to drop the plan under political pressure. The mayor was cross-examined about this story by James O’Brien on LBC, while the transport secretary was asked about it in the House of Commons.
How to catch a London bike thief
“Is it a block of flats? We do not attend when it’s a block of flats,” the operator said, explaining the police could not spare the time trying to retrieve stolen goods in a building with multiple floors. The conclusion was clear: If you’re going to have your bike stolen with a tracker attached, and want the police to intervene to help retrieve it, then make sure the thief lives in a detached house with its own front door.
Bike theft, along with phone theft, has essentially been legalised in London. While working on this investigation, I had my own bike nicked, so this became the story of what happened when I tracked down and confronted the thief. But this is really a piece about the wider issue of an overstretched police force and criminals who know they can operate without worrying about the law. The response to this piece was enormous, with hundreds of readers sharing their own experiences of bike theft.
Harry Potter and the unpaid tax bill
Asked who the real owner was, she deferred to her husband, who failed to answer. He also said that his wife did not speak English to a sufficient standard to answer our questions. His exasperation was clear, and he later had a question for London Centric in return: “Who are you to check all this?”
Unofficial Harry Potter shops selling merchandise relating to JK Rowling’s books have spread across the centre of London in the last few years, much to the bafflement of the capital’s residents.
London Centric looked at the business model behind the shops and what we found was a murky world involving complicated business transactions, questions over tax compliance, and a curious silence from Warner Bros.
Why is London’s phone signal so bad?
“The networks want to fix it,” said Howett. “Because you’re not going to give them money for something that doesn’t work. But they are not being helped to get the stuff done that they need to do. It’s become a government problem.”
The main issue, he said, are the challenges that networks face when it comes installing the telephone masts that enable you to send a WhatsApp, check your email, and refresh TikTok while on the go. It’s a combination of planning policy failure, opposition from local residents, and lack of backing from central government. And it’s going to take years to put right.
Why the signal bars on your phone don’t correspond to your ability to actually send a WhatsApp.
Merry Christmas, you're evicted
Vive Living, an apartment block Smith owns in Deptford, promised to help young professionals who could not afford to buy a property “join the new generation making London renting a lifestyle choice”. Instead, more than a hundred residents of the flats have been told, just before Christmas, that they have two months to vacate their properties. The residents believe their story is part of a wider wave of evictions as landlords across the capital rush to kick out existing tenants before renters gain new legal protections early next year.
Henry Smith, a self-styled East Ender made good, is one of London’s biggest property developers — and a man who continues to be of interest to London Centric for his other business interests, including an investment in a payday loan company that was found to write-off tens of millions of pounds after engaging in “unfair practices”.
Ice cream wars and illegal gambling: How Westminster Bridge became lawless
Inside the depot was a woman who identified herself as Jan Sanli, one of the third generation of Sanli ice cream sellers. She said video of me filming her company’s van on Westminster Bridge had already been circulated by their staff: “I can see you on the recording, you do realise that right? And you do realise you’re on a CCTV camera right now, right?”
In a common theme among the illegal traders on Westminster Bridge, she soon began complaining that I was unfairly focussing on her family’s law-breaking when there were other criminals operating in the area.
“I hope you’re also writing about the Albanians,” she said.
This investigation, about the lawlessness on a central London bridge within sight of both parliament and the Metropolitan police’s HQ, received a massive response.
It also led to an awkward situation when my young child recently demanded an ice cream in the area and I had to explain to a screaming and deeply sceptical toddler that “Daddy is banned from that ice cream van by the owners”.
Ageing, static and skint: Nine charts that explain what's going on with London transport
The problem for TfL is that younger Londoners were traditionally the people who travelled around the city a lot as they tend to be more physically active, have more hobbies, and go out for fun. But in 2024 these young people are too busy dealing with the cost of living crisis and paying their salaries to private landlordsto afford the cost of travel, one of many issues contributing to TfL’s shaky finances.
There are major societal implications here. If you stay at home in your overpriced flat then it’s harder to form relationships with other young Londoners, which in turn hits the capital’s birth rate, and ultimately — in a decade’s time — the number of children taking the bus to school.
Transport makes London work — and also reflects the ways the city is changing.
The document City Hall doesn't want you to read
London Centric was able to get hold of the full details of the £300m loan, the interest rate, and the concerns about poor management because the mayor’s team had, themselves, accidentally published it all.
A story of redaction, property development, and a massive public loan in London’s docklands.
"An utter shitshow": Inside the Transport for London cyberattack
“The vast majority of Londoners would not know this attack has happened,” the TfL commissioner told board members including mayor Sadiq Khan. Lord later added: “Because it’s been so well-managed people didn’t understand the scale and impact.”
One person who has definitely noticed the scale and the impact is Melford, a 16-year-old student at Havering Sixth Form College in east London. He told London Centric he has been walking miles to college every morning and skipping meals because the cyberattack removed TfL’s ability to issue him a new discount travel card — and stopped him spending the money he had already loaded on his old Oyster card.
While TfL was praising its response to the cyberattack, London Centric spoke to those affected — and those inside the organisation — for a different view. This article helped prompt a full day of coverage on BBC London and changed the narrative on the cyberattack.
The battle to replace Sadiq Khan
Ask London’s Labour establishment who will replace Sadiq Khan as the party’s mayoral candidate and you’ll be met with awkward mumbling. For a start, there isn’t any formal vacancy: the mayor has pledged to see out his full term and is busy announcing legacy-building policies. A source close to Khan said “his sole focus is on continuing to build a fairer, safer and greener London for everyone”.
But, quietly, the conversations are beginning to take place within the party about what comes next. One prominent London Labour figure said it is “incredibly” unlikely that Khan will run for a fourth term.
And if you’re an ambitious Labour politician who wants that nomination, you need to start planning now.
Politics never stands still — and one of the big stories over the next couple of years in London will be the battle for the next mayoral election.
All genuinely more important and engaging reads than anything I read in the 'traditional' London press for the entire year. Here's to your continued success in 2025, Jim.
Jim I just want to say how brave you are doing this. Running any kind of Substack can be a bit of a headf*ck but to create a news magazine as a one-man operation is something else. And to get picked up by other outlets with breaking stories - bravo. Am impressed.