From the Mound to a Mega Casino: Westminster Conservatives go wild on £160m of wasteful projects
Boris Johnson’s flagship Conservative Westminster Council has a chaotic track record of spending public money on poorly thought through capital projects driven by a mix of their trademark blend of ideology and hubris. Their failures include:
- The £6 million Marble Arch Mound. Westminster taxpayers have had to fund this epitome of Conservative incompetence and largesse, which has made our city a laughing stock around the world. Even the council’s own internal review highlighted how the council’s political leadership failed to ask basic questions or check on what was going on.
- £2 million pumped into the Sir Simon Milton University Technical College, built despite local residents’ objections and closing after only a few years of operation.
- £20 million spent on Oxford Street District consultants so far without much to show for it.
- £315,000 wasted on plans for ‘temporary’ piazzas for Oxford Circus that were shelved at the last minute.
- £32 million being spent on Strand-Aldwich without asking for contributions from major landowners.
- £1.37m wasted by the council on its failed attempts to build a library at Luxborough Street.
- £1.7m on the unsightly resurfacing of Strutton Ground.
- Millions in Section 106 spending wasted on a new building at North Wharf Road in the Paddington Basin for the failed Minerva Free School championed by Michael Gove.
- Hundreds of thousands in consultants fees on the massively delayed regenerations at Ebury Bridge and Church Street. The Council’s original plans were put to residents in (successful) public votes in Spring 2013 only for years of dither and delay, before they went back to the drawing board (without giving residents a say) on new projects that will only be delivered from the mid-2020s onwards.
- And even now they are now planning to build a £100m mega casino with your money.
It’s clear this Conservative Council are completely out of touch.
Westminster faces huge problems – the climate crisis, an insane housing crisis, a lack of police on our streets and children needing help after the pandemic – where this money is sorely needed.
Instead, like Boris Johnson, Westminster Conservatives have wasted huge sums on consultants, pet projects, and bad management.
We can’t trust Westminster Conservatives with taxpayer money – but a vote for Labour in May 2022 is a vote to freeze your council tax.