UK
Homeless families evicted as landlords quit London emergency housing sector

Sammy Gecsoyler
Tue, 29 August 2023 at 10:00 am GMT-6·4-min rea


Homeless families are being evicted from emergency accommodation to be replaced by private tenants as the number of landlords quitting the temporary housing sector in London more than doubled in eight months.

A survey by London Councils, the cross-party organisation representing the capital’s local authorities, found that between September 2022 and April 2023, 15 boroughs reported receiving a notice to quit, a legal document requesting the return of a property, from landlords for 3,531 properties in use as temporary accommodation.

This is a 120% increase on the 1,601 notices received over the same period in 2021-22 and is equivalent to a loss of 6% of London’s total temporary accommodation stock. All 32 London boroughs were asked to contribute to the voluntary survey but 17 did not respond to London Councils’ request to provide data for each month.

Temporary accommodation is used by local authorities to provide homeless families and individuals with a place to live short-term while a suitable permanent home is found locally.

Related: Number of households in temporary accommodation in England at highest level

Many of these properties are now either being sold or rented out on the more lucrative private market. Housing campaigners say landlords and letting agencies who lease temporary accommodation are trying to evict their tenants, sometimes in intimidating ways.

The Guardian spoke to the mother of a family living in temporary accommodation in north London. She said they were first served a notice to quit in person last July and soon received repeated letters and knocks at the door from their letting agent telling them to leave the property. She said the agency told her they wanted them evicted “because the landlord wanted more rent money”.

The letting agent also repeatedly called the house where the only person who could speak English was her 12-year-old daughter. Her mother said: “They would ask her to tell her parents that they need to leave the property right now. It was so aggressive.”

The family approached a local campaign group, Housing Action Southwark and Lambeth (HASL), which put them in contact with legal aid lawyers. After the letting agency was taken to court, eviction proceedings were halted and the harassment ended.

Elizabeth Wyatt, a member of HASL, said the group had “supported a number of members who have been given eviction notices from the private landlords of their temporary accommodation. It has been an extremely stressful experience for them.”

The loss of temporary accommodation stock in London is worsening an already dire situation in the capital. Research commissioned by London Councils and carried out by the London School of Economics and Savills shows there has been a 41% reduction in the number of London properties available for private rent since 2020.

Their research also estimates that one in 50 Londoners are now homeless, including one in 23 children, and that councils in the capital are spending £60m a month on temporary accommodation.

This has been driven by a sharp increase in people declaring themselves homeless to local authorities, in large part due to a swift rise in no-fault eviction notices being issued, and a reliance on expensive hotels and B&Bs as the availability of other forms of temporary accommodation dries up. In the past year, there has been a 781% increase in families being housed in hotels and B&Bs in London beyond the six-week legal limit.

Sue Edmonds, the chief executive of Capital Letters, a not-for-profit company that works with councils and landlords to provide homeless families with permanent homes, said there were “a lot of drivers leading to what is happening”.

“Many landlords are themselves struggling with the cost of living crisis, especially with the mortgage interest rates going up. In some cases, the rental income they get from being a temporary accommodation provider is insufficient to cover their costs,” she said.

“We know that smaller buy-to-let landlords are tending to think about selling up. Some landlords, in fairness, can see that they can get more money on the private rental market. There’s a bidding war out there.”

Edmonds said most of these properties were probably being sold for home ownership or “disappear” in deals done privately, the outcome of which is hard to determine. “They’ve been taken out of the private rented sector which further reduces the number of properties available for people who need them.”

She added that frontline council staff were finding the situation difficult.

“It’s not just a financial cost, there’s an emotional cost as well to those made homeless and also the staff trying to sort it out when there is nowhere to put them.”

Darren Rodwell, London Councils’ executive member for regeneration, housing and planning, said: “Across London we see landlords withdrawing their properties from use as temporary accommodation, meaning that boroughs run out of alternatives and place families with children in unsuitable B&Bs. The homelessness situation in London is becoming unmanageable. We need the government to work with us in reversing the numbers relying on temporary accommodation.”

Polly Neate, the chief excutive of Shelter, said: “A cramped emergency hotel or grim B&B is no home. Councils cannot keep picking up the pieces of this national crisis. It’s now beyond urgent the government fixes this mess by immediately unfreezing housing benefit and investing in truly affordable, good quality social homes.”

White House laughs off report Biden wants to limit Americans beer consumption

The Independent

Aug 29, 2023

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre laughed off a report that the White House wants to limit Americans to having two beers per week.

Fox News’s Peter Doocy asked the press secretary the question after George Koob, the Director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, toldThe Daily Mail that the United States Department of Agriculture could revise its alcohol advice to match Canada’s.

But the press secretary brushed off the question. 

AUSTRALIA

Too hot to handle: climate crisis report so secret Albanese government won’t even reveal date it was completed

Daniel Hurst
Tue, 29 August 2023 

Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP

The Australian government is not only refusing to release its secret report on how the climate crisis will fuel national security threats – it won’t even say when it was completed.

The government insists the date, too, is classified. The approach has sparked claims of a “cult of secrecy in Canberra”.

Anthony Albanese ordered the Office of National Intelligence (ONI) last year to investigate national security threats posed by global heating, in line with an election promise.


Related: Former ADF chief calls for release of secret report into security threat posed by climate crisis

When it notified the United Nations of Australia’s stronger 2030 emissions reduction target, the government trumpeted its commitment to “an urgent climate risk assessment of the implications of climate change for national security”.

So far, however, the government has rebuffed calls to release the assessment – or even a sanitised public version, as it did with the defence strategic review.

In a new response to Senate questions on notice, the prime minister confirmed the ONI’s climate assessment was finalised “within the last 12 months”. But Albanese added: “The specific timing of the assessment board is classified.”

Five other questions from the Greens’ defence spokesperson, David Shoebridge, were answered with an identical response: “The content and judgments of the assessment are classified.”

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

Shoebridge also asked the direct question: “Will the government make a declassified version of the assessment public? If not, why not?”

Albanese responded that the report “contains classified material” but the government continued to consider the issue.

“Along with the government’s climate statement, tabled in parliament on 1 December 2022, there is already considerable material available in the public domain discussing national security threats from climate change,” he said.

A single page of that 80-page climate statement was devoted to national security, saying global heating would “increasingly exacerbate risks” as “geopolitical tensions mount about how to respond”.

The same statement mentioned the ONI’s work in future tense, saying it “will inform how the government considers climate risk”.

Shoebridge said it was “bizarre that the government won’t even reveal the date the climate risk assessment was completed”.

“When you can’t even get the date of a high-profile, publicly acknowledged report then you know that something’s gone wrong with the cult of secrecy in Canberra,” the NSW senator said.

Related: The intergenerational report says climate is a ‘profound’ risk to Australia. But the full picture may be even worse

Shoebridge said transparency was less of a risk to national security than “not dealing with the threat of climate change in the first place”.

The independent ACT senator, David Pocock, said providing a declassified version of reports, including a climate risk assessment, was “not an unreasonable ask” and that some of our closest allies, including the US, had already done so.

“This is something I will continue to pursue.”

Both Pocock and Shoebridge proposed Senate motions to order the government to produce key documents, but the major parties combined to defeat them on 10 August.

Albanese has described the climate crisis as “a direct threat to global security” but has also defended the secrecy.

“We make no apologies for not releasing national security advice, which, appropriately, goes to the national security committee,” he told parliament this month.

“That is a position that we have had for a long period of time, and that will remain the position.”

In 2021, the US intelligence community released a report that warned: “Intensifying physical effects will exacerbate geopolitical flashpoints, particularly after 2030, and key countries and regions will face increasing risks of instability and need for humanitarian assistance.”

UK

Train strikes 2023: List of London rail services to be hit by September ASLEF and RMT action

Ben Lynch
Tue, 29 August 2023 

A RMT flag flies at a picket line outside Euston Station. Credit: Hollie Adams/Getty Images.

Londoners are set for more days of travel disruption in September due to two days of planned industrial action.

The ASLEF and RMT unions have announced they will be taking action due to ongoing disputes with the government and Rail Delivery Group over pay.

ASLEF has announced a strike on September 1 and an overtime ban on 16 train companies across the country on September 2, while 20,000 RMT members will also be striking on September 2.

ASLEF members will also be taking part in September action. Credit: Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty Images.


The combined action is expected to cause widespread disruption across the UK’s services.
Which train companies are going to be affected?

Most of the train companies due to be impacted by the action run services in and out of London. According to Network Rail, all of them will be affected on both days, September 1 and 2.

They are: Greater Anglia, Stansted Express, c2c, Great Western Railway, Chiltern Railways, Southeastern, Gatwick Express, Southern, Thameslink, Heathrow Express, Avanti West Coast, East Midlands Railway, South Western Railway, LNER and London Northwestern Railway.
What have the unions said?

Mick Whelan, ASLEF’s general secretary, said: “We don’t want to take this action but the train companies, and the government which stands behind them, have forced us into this place because they refuse to sit down and talk to us and have not made a fair and sensible pay offer to train drivers who have not had one for four years – since 2019 – while prices have soared in that time by more than 12%.

Mr Whelan accused the government of being “happy to let this drift on and on. But we are determined to get a fair pay rise for men and women who haven’t had one for four years while inflation has reached double figures. Our members, perfectly reasonably, want to be able to buy now what they could buy back in 2019.”

RMT general secretary Mick Lynch said: "The mood among our members remains solid and determined in our national dispute over pay, job security and working conditions.

“We have had to call further strike action as we have received no improved or revised offer from the Rail Delivery Group.

“The reason for this is the government has not allowed them a fresh mandate on which discussions could be held.

“Our members and our union will continue fighting until we can reach a negotiated and just settlement.”
What have the train companies said?

A Rail Delivery Group spokesperson previously told LondonWorld staff were offered a 13% pay rise which was “blocked without a convincing explanation” by the RMT executive.

“With further strike action the RMT are once again targeting customers looking to enjoy various sporting events, festivals, and the end of the summer holidays, disrupting their plans and forcing more cars onto the road,” the spokesperson said.

“We have now made three offers, the latest of which would have given staff pay rises of up to 13% as well as job security guarantees and the RMT executive have blocked this without a convincing explanation.

“We remain open to talks and we have said repeatedly that we want to give our people a pay rise, but until the union leadership and executive is united in what it wants and engages in good faith with the 30% shortfall in revenue the industry is continuing to grapple with post-Covid, it is difficult to move forward.

“Unfortunately, the repercussion of this impasse affects our staff, customers, and the communities across the country that rely on the railway.”
What has the government said?

A Department for Transport spokesperson said the government has facilitated “fair and reasonable pay offers.

“However, union bosses are opting to prolong this dispute by blocking their members from having a vote on these offers. We continue to urge that members are given their say and disruption is brought to an end.”

ABOLISH LESE MAJESTI

Saudi retired teacher sentenced to death for criticizing ruling family on social media


Edmund Bower
Tue, 29 August 2023 

Mohammed al-Ghamdi, a retired Saudi teacher, has been sentenced to death for his social media posts

A Saudi court has sentenced a retired teacher to death for criticising the ruling family in messages to his nine social media followers.

According to Human Rights Watch, 54-year-old Mohammed al-Ghamdi was sentenced to death on July 10 for various offences related to his activity on YouTube and X, formerly known as Twitter. The ruling may be the first death sentence for social media posts.

The charges reportedly levied against the retired teacher include “describing the King or the Crown Prince in a way that undermines religion or justice”, “supporting a terrorist ideology”, and disseminating fake news “with the intention of executing a terrorist crime”.


On Thursday, Mohammed’s brother, Saeed al-Ghamdi, tweeted that his brother’s sentencing may be an attempt “to spite me personally after failed attempts to return me to the country”. Saeed, an Islamic scholar, lives in self-imposed exile in London and is wanted by the Saudi authorities.

“I appeal to anybody who can help to save my brother from this unfair and unjust ruling,” he said.

Saudi Arabia has long faced criticism for its frequent use of the death penalty. In 2022, the kingdom performed 196 confirmed executions, according to Amnesty International, making it the third-most prolific executioner after China and Iran.
‘Silence its critics’

Saudi Arabia has also handed down numerous decades-long sentences for crimes related to social media posts.

Last August, a Leeds University doctoral student was sentenced to 34 years in prison when she returned home to Saudi Arabia for the summer holidays. Salma al-Shehab, a 34-year-old mother of two, was accused of “assisting those who seek to cause public unrest and destabilise civil and national security by following their Twitter accounts”.

Mohammed al-Ghamdi has been held by Saudi security forces since last June when he was arrested outside his house in Mecca. Following his arrest, Human Rights Watch reports that he spent four months in solitary confinement and was denied access to a lawyer for over a year.

His trial was conducted in Saudi Arabia’s controversial Specialized Criminal Court (SCC) that was established in 2008 to deal with a backlog of terrorism cases but has since become notorious for handing heavy sentences to political prisoners.

In 2020, Heba Morayef, Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa director, said: “The Saudi Arabian government exploits the SCC to create a false aura of legality around its abuse of the counter-terror law to silence its critics. Every stage of the SCC’s judicial process is tainted with human rights abuses.”

UK

Taxpayers to foot bill for green schemes as Michael Gove rips up EU rules on new housing


Emma Gatten
Tue, 29 August 2023 

Ministers will give Natural England millions of pounds to reduce run-off from agriculture and to upgrade waste-water treatment works to protect rivers - Natural England/Environment Agency/SWNS

Taxpayers will foot the bill for green schemes to reduce water pollution from new homes, the Telegraph understands.

Michael Gove, the Levelling-Up Secretary, announced on Tuesday he will scrap rules imposed by Brussels which had forced housebuilders to pay for projects to reduce river pollution before homes could be built.

The rules are designed to limit the amount of harmful chemicals coming from new homes that make their way into rivers, affecting wildlife.

The government blames them for blocking the provision of new housing, even where planning permission is granted, and by scrapping them hopes to enable 100,000 more homes to be built by 2030.

To protect rivers, ministers will instead give the quango Natural England millions of pounds to reduce run-off from agriculture and upgrade waste-water treatment works.

Taxpayers will be expected to foot the bill for the extra £140 million funding, although the Government hopes to eventually claw it back from housebuilders.

A Government source said it would be “talking to developers about their contribution” but was not yet sure how much housebuilders would contribute.
Backtracking on its green pledges

The announcement was met with anger from environmental campaigners, who accused the Government of backtracking on its green pledges.

But the Government says the contribution made by new homes to the problem is very small compared to that from agriculture and existing sewage infrastructure.

Housebuilders are resisting calls for them to pay into the scheme, saying it would be yet another tax raid on big developers, following the £300 million fund to resolve the cladding crisis and the recent tax on residential property developers.

“The industry is not going to be happy about yet another tax bill from Gove,” one source said. “But at least now there is a solution to the nutrients problem.”

Mr Gove defended the plans to get rid of the so-called ‘nutrient neutrality’ rules on Tuesday following anger from green groups. He told the BBC: “After all the measures we’ve announced today have been enacted there will be fewer nutrients going into British rivers.”

He added: “The way in which we’ve been dealing with it, as a result of some sort of clunky EU laws, has meant that we haven’t secured the investment that we needed to improve our environment and we’ve also got a total block on housing in large parts of the country.”

Ministers hope the new plans will deliver an estimated £18 billion boost to the economy, with the construction of new homes, which would otherwise have been blocked in a matter of months.

New environmental measures

The move comes alongside new environmental measures designed to tackle pollution at source and restore habitats.

But nature groups said scrapping the rules would only increase harm to the country’s rivers, which are under significant pressure from sewage and agriculture.

Craig Bennett, chief executive of The Wildlife Trusts, said: “In May, June and July, the Government made promises to the British people and to Parliament that they would not lower environmental protections or standards

“But just a few weeks later they are planning to do precisely the opposite. They lied – this is a disgraceful move which undermines public trust in this Government.

“Make no mistake – this is a licence from the Government for the commercial housebuilding lobby to profit from the pollution of our rivers.”

Gabriel Connor-Streich, the chief executive of Greenshank Environmental, which develops river improvement projects for housebuilders to invest in, said many were likely to be cancelled in the wake of the announcement.

“They’re not going to continue now until they have certainty that there is actually going to be a market sell into,” he said.

Stewart Baseley, the executive chairman of the Home Builders Federation, said: “Today’s very welcome announcement has the potential to unlock housing delivery across the country, from Cornwall to the Tees Valley, where housebuilding has been blocked despite wide acknowledgement that occupants of new homes are responsible for only a tiny fraction of the wastewater finding its ways into rivers and streams.

“The industry is eager to play its part in delivering mitigation and protecting our waterways. We look forward to engaging with Government on the right way to do so, now that ministers are acting upon the arguments that builders both large and small have been making for so long.”

Opinion
Biden is turning away from free trade – and that’s a great thing

Robert Reich
Tue, 29 August 2023 

Photograph: Carolyn Kaster/AP

President Joe Biden is making a break with decades of free trade deals and embarking on an industrial policy designed to revive American manufacturing.

This has caused consternation among free-traders, including some of my former colleagues from the Clinton and Obama administrations.

For example, Lawrence Summers, the former treasury secretary, last month called the president’s thinking “increasingly dangerous” and expressed concern about what he termed “manufacturing-centered economic nationalism that is increasingly being put forth as a general principle to guide policy”.

Well, this veteran of the Clinton administration – me – is delighted by what Biden is doing.

Clinton and Obama thought globalization inevitable and bought into the textbook view that trade benefits all parties. “Globalization is not something we can hold off or turn off,” Clinton explained in 2000. “It is the economic equivalent of a force of nature, like wind or water.”

But “globalization” is not a force of nature. How it works and whom it benefits or harms depends on specific, negotiated rules about which assets will be protected and which will not.

In most trade deals, the assets of US corporations (including intellectual property) have been protected. If another nation adopts strict climate regulations that reduce the value of US energy assets in that country, the country must compensate the US firms. Wall Street has been granted free rein to move financial assets into and out of our trading partners.

But the jobs and wages of US workers have not been protected. Why shouldn’t US corporations that profit from trade be required to compensate US workers for job losses due to trade?

Why shouldn’t US corporations that profit from trade be required to compensate US workers for job losses due to trade?

The age-old economic doctrine of “comparative advantage” assumes that more trade is good for all nations because each trading partner specializes in what it does best. But what if a country’s comparative advantage comes in allowing its workers to labor under dangerous or exploitative conditions?

Why shouldn’t the US’s trading partners be required to have the same level of worker safety as that of the United States or give their own workers the same rights to organize unions?

Globalization doesn’t answer these sorts of questions. Instead, the rules that emerge from trade negotiations reflect domestic politics and power.

The Clinton administration lobbied hard for the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta). In the end, Congress ratified it, with more Republican than Democratic votes. Additional trade agreements followed, along with the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the opening of trade relations with China, which joined the WTO in 2001.

Trade rose from 19% of the US economy in 1989 to 31% in 2011, according to the World Bank. By 2021, following the pandemic and Trump’s trade war with China, trade’s share of the US economy had drifted down to 25%.

These trade deals have benefited corporations, big investors, executives, Wall Street traders and other professionals.

The pharmaceutical industry has gotten extended drug patents in Mexico, China and elsewhere. Wall Street banks and investment firms have made sure they can move capital into and out of these countries despite local banking laws. US oil companies can seek compensation if a country adopts new environmental standards that hurt their bottom lines.

The stock market has responded favorably to free trade policies. In 1993, when Clinton took office, the Dow Jones industrial average peaked at 3,799 points. By the time he left office in 2001, it had topped 11,000.

Middle- and working-class Americans have benefited from these deals as consumers – gaining access to lower-priced goods from China, Mexico and other countries where wages are lower than those in the US.

But the trade deals also have caused millions of US jobs to be lost, and the wages of millions of Americans to stagnate or decline.

Between 2000 and 2017, a total of 5.5m manufacturing jobs vanished. Automation accounted for about half of the loss, and imports, mostly from China, the other half.

You can trace a direct line from these trade deals and the subsequent job losses to the rise of Donald Trump in 2016.

Economists have estimated that, if the US had imported half of what China exported to us during these years, four key states – Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and North Carolina – would have swung Democratic, delivering the presidency to Hillary Clinton.

Whether globalization is good or bad depends on who gets most of its benefits and who pays most of its costs. For too long, US workers have paid disproportionately.

The Biden administration is changing this. I say, it’s about time.

Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com.

China overtakes Europe as world’s largest offshore wind provider


Howard Mustoe
Tue, 29 August 2023 

Key European projects like Vattenfall’s development off the Norfolk coast have ground to a halt amid rising costs - Vattenfall

Europe has lost its crown to China as the top builder of offshore wind power as UK developers battle higher costs and stagnant power prices.

The offshore wind market totalled 64.3 gigawatts of power globally last year, according to the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC), with China contributing about 49pc of that compared with Europe’s 47pc share.

Big manufacturers in wind “have faced a profitability crunch over the last few years, causing them to retrench and selectively withdraw from smaller or slower-moving markets,” the report said.


In its annual global offshore wind report, GWEC said by the mid-2020s “there may be supply chain bottlenecks in every region of the world except China”.

Rebecca Williams, head of global offshore wind at the GWEC, said: “Immediate investment and global cooperation will be needed to address these bottlenecks.”

In Europe the rate of installations last year was the lowest since 2016. Europe’s total offshore wind capacity reached 30 GW last year, 46pc of which was from the UK.

While the UK still dominates European wind power at sea, Britain’s ambitions to be an exporter of clean wind power risk being scuppered as the rest of Europe catches up.

A surge in supply chain costs has pushed up the price of wind turbines, while increases in global interest rates have raised refinancing costs substantially.

In July, Swedish energy giant Vattenfall halted development of a major 1.4 gigawatt wind farm off the coast of Norfolk after soaring inflation made the project unviable.

Wind farms in the UK are largely governed by contracts for difference (CfDs), which are 15-year subsidy agreements between the Government and power generation companies, designed to guarantee energy schemes stable revenues.

The UK is in the middle of another round of bidding for the contracts. In the current allocation round, which finishes next month, offshore wind is competing with solar and onshore wind, which are both cheaper to build.

Boris Johnson set a goal of transforming Britain into the “Saudi Arabia of wind” while he was Prime Minister in 2020 and the UK has a target to build 50GW of offshore wind power by 2030, from current levels of around 14GW.

However, the GWEC’s report showed that the UK’s share of new offshore wind projects is projected to fall from almost half today to around a fifth in a decade’s time as Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands and France gear up construction of their own wind farms.

The lobby group warned that investors keen to meet their environmental targets need wind farm projects with permits and predictable earnings from willing customers.

Ms Williams added: “Offshore wind projects have been delayed or indefinitely stalled by inadequate and inefficient permitting and licensing rules. These factors have created uncertainty and have forced developers to review the viability of their projects, in some cases even to stop developing.

“Such ineffective policies centred on a downward price competition and, where coupled with impractical and unattainable local content stipulations, will add to project costs and slow the pace of offshore wind deployment needed for the world to meet net zero.”

UK

Work from home has made Central London restaurants a three-day operation, says Itsu boss

Daniel Woolfson
Tue, 29 August 2023 

Itsu chief executive Julian Metcalfe said habitual home working has resulted in weekday footfall in central London remaining below pre-pandemic levels - Geoff Pugh

The rise of home working has forced Itsu to effectively run many of its Central London restaurants as three-day operations, its chief executive has said.

In latest accounts for the sushi chain, Julian Metcalfe said the performance of sites in the “traditional Itsu heartlands” of Central London and the West End had “changed fundamentally” because of post-pandemic hybrid working patterns.

The pandemic forced many office staff to work from home full-time, but since lockdown restrictions eased away many of these practices have remained, with a Tuesday to Thursday working week in the office becoming the new norm.


Mr Metcalfe said: “While the City performance has proved very resilient, some shops in worker locations are now three-day businesses, with Monday and Friday footfall materially below pre-pandemic levels, as work from home arrangements have become habitual.”

As a result, Itsu has begun opening up new sites in more suburban locations, such as Brixton, Bromley, Putney and Guildford. It opened a total of 15 new sites in 2022.

Mr Metcalfe added: “Shops outside of London saw sales outstrip pre-Covid levels, benefiting from commuters working at home alongside a transformed delivery business.”

Pret A Manger – which was also founded by Mr Metcalfe – has also been focusing its efforts on more suburban locations and opening larger stores in areas where people tend to work from home.

Pano Christou, chief executive at Pret A Manger, told The Telegraph last week: “I think there’ll still be opportunities coming up in London… [but] far fewer than we have in the past.

“I think when we go out to regional towns what we realise is takeaway is probably a smaller proportion, dine in is probably a higher proportion. So you just have to have more seats to appeal to that customer base.”

Mr Metcalfe opened the first Pret in 1986, before founding Itsu in 1997. He is no longer involved with Pret, having sold his final stake in 2018 when the sandwich chain was bought by investment company JAB in a deal reported to be worth around £1.5bn.

Itsu currently runs around 80 restaurants across the UK and employs almost 1,000 people.

The company nearly collapsed during the first year of the pandemic and was forced to pursue a insolvency arrangement after months of closures.

Itsu returned to the black in 2022, posting a profit of £1.3m, compared to a loss of £7.9m in 2021, as sales jumped from £58.6m to £101.2m.

Investors urge UK firms to increase efforts on tackling slavery in supply chains

Rebecca Speare-Cole, PA sustainability reporter
Tue, 29 August 2023 



Investors are calling on UK-listed companies to increase efforts to tackle modern slavery, human trafficking and forced labour in their supply chains.

Sustainable investment firm CCLA, alongside a coalition of investors, has been engaging with companies as part of an initiative to combat modern slavery in their supply chain, strengthen public policy and develop better data.

The investors, which include Rathbones Group, Schroders and Church Commissioners for England, welcomed the steps taken by many UK businesses and the UK Government in recent years, including the passing of the Modern Slavery Act.


However, they said they are concerned that only a small number of firms have shared findings of modern slavery in their supply chains, making it difficult for investors to assess corporate actions on identifying and helping victims.

It comes as 86% of forced labour cases were found in the private sector, according to 2022 figures from the International Labour Organization, Walk Free and The International Organization for Migration.

In a report on the CCLA’s initiative released on Tuesday, the firm said it analysed the 2021 Modern Slavery Statements of FTSE 100 companies last year.

CCLA said it found the majority of the companies had published a modern slavery statement and average compliance with the Modern Slavery Act was 89%.

But it also said the number of firms publicly sharing that they had found, fixed or prevented modern slavery was much lower.

Only 20% reported action to find cases in their supply chain, 3% reported action to fix it and 18% reported action to prevent it, the CCLA said.

The coalition of investors working with CCLA are now calling on UK-listed companies to increase their efforts to identify human trafficking, forced labour, and modern slavery in their supply chain.

They are also urging firms to review, assess and disclose the effectiveness of their attempts to address the issues and to support the provision of remedy to victims of modern slavery within their supply chain.

The CCLA said it identified the hospitality and construction sectors for engagement in 2020 due to high risks of modern slavery and lower profile efforts to address them.

The work first saw “varied but positive results” in the hospitality sector after engagement with firms like Domino’s Pizza Group, Greggs, InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG), JD Wetherspoon, Marston’s and Tui group.

The coalition has now started engagement in the construction sector, including companies like Balfour Beatty, Bellway, Persimmon, Taylor Wimpey Plc, The Berkeley Group Holdings and Vistry Group.

Dr Martin Buttle, better work lead at CCLA, said: “It is heartening to see that investors have been able to take a number of the businesses we have engaged with on a journey to address modern slavery.

“While it is a long journey and slower than we would like, we recognise that finding, fixing and preventing modern slavery is very involved but absolutely vital if we are to meet Sustainable Development Goal 8.7 calling for its eradication by 2030.”

The initiative are also calling for the Government to strengthen the supply chains provisions of the Modern Slavery Act as well as mandating financial institutions to report on investing and lending portfolios.

Dame Sara Thornton, former UK Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner and CCLA consultant, said: “With 86% of the 27 million people in forced labour employed by the private sector, it is clear that businesses must take more action to identify and address slavery and trafficking in their operations and supply chains.

“Notably in the UK, we import an estimated $18 billion worth of goods that present a high slavery risk so we need our policymakers to step up legislation so that there is a level playing field and incentives for all companies to find, fix and prevent instances of modern slavery in their operations and global supply chains.”

Peter Hugh Smith, CCLA chief executive, said: “The investment industry can and should do more to address modern slavery.

“It is not right that investors profit from this crime and we need to do everything we can to engage with the companies we own so that they are active in addressing issues and providing remedy to those affected.”