A Lot More to Do - Fairer Environment - Westminster Labour Councillors

Westminster Labour is committed to creating a cleaner, greener city that takes climate and biodiversity seriously. We will protect and seek to improve the efficient street cleansing and regular waste collections that keep our streets clean. We will continue our work to improve road safety and make Westminster easier and more pleasant to get around.

Climate and Ecology

Under Labour, Westminster has become one of the highest ranked local authorities for climate action, significantly improving the council’s performance in cutting carbon emissions, embedding climate principles across the council and driving change in the private sector. In 2023, we joined councils across the country by announcing an Ecological Emergency, to improve greening and biodiversity in our city, and capture the health and other benefits that come with this. The Conservatives under Kemi Badenoch are rejecting the need to take meaningful climate action. In opposition, we promised to fight these crises. In power, we have delivered on those promises. Don’t let the progress we have made be reversed. We will:

Continue to progress towards our 2030 council and 2040 City net-zero targets, ensuring residents feel the benefits associated with this.
Support residents to upgrade their homes, lower their energy bills and live in healthier homes.
Deliver new rounds of the Westminster Climate Fund. We want to continue to empower local organisations and businesses to decarbonise, reduce pollution and deliver sustainable projects in the city through this fund.
Build on the work of the Citizens Climate Action Committee. We want to promote inclusive community supported and community driven climate action. We want to ensure ongoing close engagement with residents in the implementation of our environment plans and accountability.
Empower climate champions to deliver behaviour change projects and campaigns in the borough, and we want to continue our Sustainable Schools programme to inspire sustainable behaviours.
Run more funding rounds of the Westminster Green Investment Programme. The already successful investment will continue to help fund projects that will create a cleaner, greener and fairer borough.
Use more neighbourhood approaches to retrofitting and tackling climate change locally. We will build on the Queen’s Park Healthy Homes pilot and expand this to other areas of the borough.
Promote community energy and local control of energy production, paying back into our community.
Accelerate rollout of rooftop solar across Westminster buildings, both residential and non-residential, to reduce energy bills.
Build on the recommendations of the Green Infrastructure Audit to develop a management plan to enhance and improve biodiversity value. Work to improve the current evidence base and continue to identify priority habitats and interventions.
Build green corridors and biodiverse stepping stones to connect our green spaces and SINCs. Work more collaboratively with the Canal and Rivers Trust (CRT) to enhance biodiversity in areas near the canal.
Implement nature-based solutions and other green infrastructure interventions to enhance climate resilience, including providing access to natural shade through the Cool Neighbourhoods Programme.
Expand our tree planting programme inline with commitments in our biodiversity strategy to increase tree canopy cover by 10% or more. We will ensure tree planting is prioritised across different areas of the council including our place-shaping schemes.
Improve greening and biodiversity on our housing estates, and pursue green flags and excellence in even more of our housing estate green spaces, council parks and open spaces.
Continue the successful Greening Westminster programme of grants for community gardening projects.
Identify opportunities for greening and food growing initiatives in vacant and/or ‘meanwhile use’ spaces across Westminster.
Make the city greener and more biodiverse by harnessing opportunities from the SuDS programme for flood resilience.
Deliver the North Paddington Green School Infrastructure Project across 2 schools and scope out funding options to expand this work across the city.
Expand the Forest Schools programme to the south of the borough.
Design and promote ‘how-to’ guides for residents on taking action to improve biodiversity in their own gardens and outdoor spaces, including the use of bug hotels and bird boxes, building on the North Paddington Greener Living programme.
Build upon our new partnership with National Park City to build community capacity to protect nature and improve biodiversity, including by recruiting local champions to the Westminster Ranger Programme.
Grow our Wilder Westminster initiative with new partnerships across the city.

Air Quality

Under Labour Westminster launched a leading Air Quality Action Plan, co-developed with our residents and businesses, committing us to meet World Health Organisation targets and if re-elected we will:

Expand our air quality monitoring network in Westminster, supporting residents to recommend areas for new monitors.
Reduce inequalities linked to air quality in Westminster, leveraging our Environmental Justice Measure and air quality monitor network to ensure benefits are felt by communities disproportionately impacted by poor air quality.
Deliver our Clean Air Fund, as part of our Westminster Climate Fund, further extending access to schools, nurseries (early years settings), and other eligible community settings.
Annually report progress on air quality improvements on the council website, to ensure residents can see and feel the actions being pursued by the council.
Build a residential indoor air quality monitoring project.
Embed air quality in housing and corporate property retrofit through cross-team working.
Use the new City Plan to embed policies that improve air quality.
Run a public awareness campaign on the impact of woodburning, in collaboration with the London Wood Burning Campaign to enhance public understanding.
Expand work to support commercial cooking establishments to transition to clean cooking options.
Lobby the GLA and UK Government to adopt tighter WHO air quality Guidelines, and for increased funding to support local air quality initiatives in Westminster.
Find more ways to promote and expand direct pollution alert services, such as AirText, to inform vulnerable groups of high pollution episodes.
Raise awareness about air pollution through community-based initiatives such as the Westminster’s Citizens Climate Action Committee and local Climate Champions and in partnership with the NHS. Continue to engage communities directly in air quality decision-making, empowering communities to reduce their personal exposure day-to-day.
Develop pollution and emissions reduction guidance for market traders and events, targeting electricity generation, cooking emissions and vehicle emissions in permitting processes.
Monitor and expand our new Clean Air Walking Route tool and associated marketing campaign, actively encouraging community participation and uptake of environmentally friendly routes.

Climate Adaptation and Flooding

Labour has established actions to support climate adaptation, including London’s first ever strategy (Cool Neighbourhoods) to deal with heat risk, and a large focus on combatting flooding through a range of community level interventions. If we are re-elected we will:

Update emergency response plans to manage heatwaves, ensuring coordination and support for vulnerable populations, working with local community champions.
Work towards Westminster’s public spaces and infrastructure being heat-resilient and provide cool outdoor environments.
Expand our network of free-to-access Cool Spaces in Westminster, already grown from 1 to 24 last year, and publicise this list to our residents.
Improve the availability of public water sources.
Help ensure health and care staff are equipped to support vulnerable individuals in hot weather. We will also expand the successful cool kits programme, rolled out in Church Street in 2025, to other parts of the City, supporting vulnerable residents to stay cool at home.
Launch a long-term public education campaign on heat risk to inform residents, visitors and workers in Westminster, and where to access cooling resources.
Speed up the roll-out of sustainable urban drainage systems (SUDS) and include them in forthcoming public realm projects and, where appropriate, as part of planned preventative maintenance (PPM).
Investigate innovative water storage ideas such as vacant underground spaces and work with the Royal Parks to see whether the Serpentine can be remodelled to retain rainwater. We will Include rainwater storage as part of the Sustainable City Charter and add to the work programme for Westminster’s own buildings.
Work with neighbouring boroughs and across London to ensure a joined-up approach to managing flood risk and make the case to Thames Water that it needs to invest in Westminster.
Support local residents to work together in Local Flood Forums (following successful set up of the Maida Vale Flood Forum).

Transport and Public Realm

The first Westminster Labour administration has made huge progress in making the streets of the city safer and more pleasant to live and travel in for everyone, but much more work is needed – Westminster has the highest number of people killed and seriously injured in road collisions of any London borough; children in every school want to walk, scoot and cycle to school and can’t because of a lack of safe and comfortable routes; speeding and rat-running on what should be quiet residential streets is common; too many pavements are narrow, cluttered or inaccessible; congestion is a problem for buses and for the people and goods that need to use a car or van. We will deliver against the Labour administration’s Transport Strategy 2026-2036. We will:

Reduce to zero the children killed or seriously injured on Westminster roads by 2030 by designing for safer motor vehicle speeds, volumes and reduced rat-running routes. We’ll also make substantial (70%) progress towards the target of zero road deaths or serious injuries by 2041.
Make the school run safer and more enjoyable by increasing the number of school streets in the borough, improving the safety of routes to school, and ensure every family can access a cargo bike. Where it’s not practical to implement school streets, we will deliver alternative measures like better crossings, safer speeds and wider pavements.
Make it more accessible and safer to walk/wheel your neighbourhood by installing 1,000 additional ‘simple’ side road zebras or other crossing treatments, including accessible paving, to create safer city-wide routes.
Support more residents to live longer and happier lives by becoming physically active by providing new infrastructure, including shade and benches for rest at frequent intervals, and by offering free and discounted bikes.
Reduce lengthy roadworks by making utility companies pay for every day that they carry out roadworks on our busiest roads, to curb the length of disruptions through our lane rental plans.
Keep our pavements clear by continuing to enforce against all forms of pavement obstruction, including continuing to issue on-the-spot fines against badly parked cars, e-bikes and A-boards. We will provide more e-bike parking bays to match the demand for them, and work with the government and TfL to finally regulate shared e-bikes so they work better for everyone.
Improve late night transport to support the night time economy and travel needs including step-free access, better walking and cycling routes, wayfinding, and the good management of key transport hubs in the West End.
Enable people of all ages and abilities to safely access cycling by creating modern-standard routes designed using protected lanes or traffic filtered routes, so that the vast majority of residents (95% of homes) live within 400m of a high quality part of the cycle network. We will complete delivery of all in-construction routes across the city, all of which the Conservatives have opposed without any coherent alternatives.
Double the number of secure cycle hangars in Westminster, again. We’ll provide more secure parking for non-standard bikes so those with adapted cycles and cargo bikes can safely park their bikes too.
Breathe life back into car sharing in Westminster, following the closure of Zipcar UK, so that people don’t need to own a car or van to make use of one occasionally. We will execute a car sharing action plan through:
- Protecting Bays: Where parking spaces have been left vacant by the exit of Zipcar UK, we will protect the bays that were the most well utilised for future operators. Where operators are likely to have smaller fleets than Zipcar UK, or bays were poorly utilised, we will prioritise shared and sustainable transport alternatives uses for bays, such as cycle hangars or e-bike/e-scooter bays.
- Sustainable Fees: We will work with operators to establish parking fee structures that reflect the value of car sharing to our boroughs’ transport objectives, as well as the commercial value to the operators.
- Standardised Frameworks: Explore with other boroughs the potential of a common procurement and contract framework to avoid duplication of work and speed up the awarding of car sharing contracts.
Reduce harmful noise from motor traffic and delivery/servicing which impacts sleep, health and wellbeing, building on our enforcement against noisy, anti-social and dangerous driving of supercars and motorbikes.
Make our air cleaner to breathe by eliminating NOx and PM2.5 engine emissions from council vehicles and machinery by 2030, with a 75% reduction in contracted fleets and a city-wide 30% reduction in surface transport related PM2.5.
Support more freight and servicing which doesn’t clog up our lungs or our streets, building on the success of our walking/cycling delivery hubs in Pimlico and the West End, and supporting a central London Zero Emission Zone for freight vehicles. We will actively support efforts to deliver freight consolidation.
Deliver area-based transport plans that maximise benefits and consider neighbourhoods holistically – for example to bring together school street zones with wider traffic management, safer crossings, greening, shade, and seating provision, or developing local mobility hubs where transport modes and interchanges are improved.
Continue to evolve parking charges to better reflect the cost and benefits of different transport modes, making it cheaper to park the most space efficient vehicles, and look at ways to ensure bigger and heavier vehicles like large SUVs pay commensurately more.
Improve public transport including by extending the hours of operation of current bus lanes (which also improve journeys for cycles, taxis and motorcycles), introducing bus-only through routes, and enforcing existing restrictions. We will continue to resist attempts to reduce bus coverage and frequencies, while supporting TfL’s fleet electrification, bus stop improvements and step-free underground upgrades. On especially congested bus routes we will work with TfL to explore the potential of longer-term capacity upgrades, for example introducing trams.
Continue to fund the Freedom Pass, and alongside other Labour authorities resist the current attempt by other political parties to undermine free travel for the over-60s.
Make more diverse use of space at the kerbside for the two thirds of residents without cars, including child-friendly uses of street space, and to ensure every resident is within easy reach of a range of transport modes including secure bike parking, rental bikes/scooters, and car/van sharing.
Create more pedestrian or traffic free zones for people to enjoy the new space, local businesses and venues – at Regent Street St James’s (Lower Regent Street), London Street, Formosa Street and St Martin’s Lane, whilst protecting major transport routes.
Lobby for stronger and local enforcement powers on speeding, engine idling, workplace parking levy and to encourage simple side road zebras.
Complete the scheme at Warwick Avenue which includes a refurbished public realm, better pedestrian crossings, more greening and an improved bin store.
Support electric vehicle charging by delivering more EV charging at the best possible prices including rapid charging points, supporting electric car clubs, and lobbying for lowering VAT on public EV charging. We will expand the number of EV charging points on the council’s housing estates.

Waste & Cleansing

Under Labour, Westminster’s streets are cleaner. Independent and robust surveys by Keep Britain Tidy, which the council has used as an objective measure of street cleanliness for decades, shows the number of streets falling below our high standards for litter have halved since we took power, with reductions in flytipping, detritus including old leaves, street staining including oil stains, and weed growth. Recycling rates are improving thanks to city-wide food waste recycling. Enforcement against flytipping is up. The number of complaints and requests about waste and cleansing are down. But our work is far from done. We want to keep reducing flytipping and litter, and increase our recycling rate even more. If re-elected we will:

Continue to improve on Westminster’s independently verified clean streets scores, building on the improvements made since Labour took control of the council from the Conservatives.
Maintain Labour’s improved jet washing of high streets and high footfall areas – up from 1 to 4 times per year – and enlarged graffiti removal fleet.
Secure the future of the council’s waste and cleansing service, ensuring the new contract delivers the high service levels and frequent collections which Westminster residents expect, at good value for money, with strong sustainability and social value outcomes, and introduce a city-wide garden waste collection service.
Keep improving the bulky waste service which has seen faster booking turnarounds, more free collections, and around 10,000 collections per year.
Make collections quieter and cleaner by completing the full electrification of the waste collection fleet. Meanwhile, Conservative Kensington and Chelsea has bought new diesel vehicles which will make the air dirtier for years to come.
Tackle flytipping by continuing to step up CCTV enforcement against serial dumpers, monitoring dumping hotspots, upgrading some problem big bins so they can only be accessed by residents through smart locking systems, and by removing inappropriately sited big bins.
Incentivise and help households to recycle food waste, especially those in blocks of flats.
Reduce barriers or unequal access to recycling and food waste including by making it easier to order and track orders of recycling and food waste bags.
Make it easier to dispose of sharps such as syringes, given these are often no longer accepted at pharmacies and hospitals.
Help residents get rid of unwanted and hard-to-recycle items by increasing the popular Mobile Community Recycling Centre days from once to twice per month.
Explore securing access for Westminster residents to Regis Road Reuse and Recycling Centre in Kentish Town, to add to the access Westminster residents already have to the facility in Wandsworth.
Help keep the canal and its towpaths clean, by mobilising Westminster contractors and volunteers to support, repeating the success of recent clean up and clearances carried out by our waste team.
Keep up high standards of street cleanliness at all hours by increasing the City Inspectors so that they cover evenings and weekends in busy high street areas.
Reduce dog poo left on the street by building on the work of our education and enforcement action campaign.

A Lot More to Do – Fairer Environment