Is the great London exodus really ‘over’?

Dear Londoners — we’re edging tantalisingly close to the end of winter, and with it you can almost feel the clarion call of beer gardens and being able to leave the house in less than three layers.

But to tide you over until the spring dawns, we’ve got some great stories to share this week. From deep dive investigations into collapsing construction projects to the frustrating world of London singles events that can’t seem to source any single men, we pride ourselves on the ability to cover everything, all at once.

We’re also getting tantalisingly close to hitting our target for paying subscribers this month. If you’ve been enjoying our journalism thus far but are yet to become a full member, we’d urge you to take the plunge. This reporting takes time and resources, especially in a city like London. We don’t have billionaire backers or advertisers, hence the lack of clickbait stories. We rely solely on your support. So sign up now for less than £9 a month – with a seven day free trial to boot. 

Now, on with your Monday briefing.

Big story: Is the great London exodus really ‘over’?

Topline: This morning, an article in The Spectator made a bold claim: that the tide is beginning to turn on a wave of emigration from London. In the past year, writes Ruth Bloomfield, “the number of Londoners leaving the city has dwindled dramatically. Research by estate agent Hamptons found that during 2024, Londoners purchased just 5.7 per cent of all homes sold beyond the city limits”. 

Don’t dream it’s over: That number might still seem pretty hefty but it’s the lowest percentage for a decade, and significantly decreased from a peak of 8.2% in 2022, when Londoners fled the city post-Covid for pastures, if not greener, then supposedly cheaper. 

Now, reports Bloomfield, daydreams of snagging a Grade II Listed Yorkshire manor house for a steal are over. Mortgage rates have gone up – and apparently while some Londoners might want to swap their living costs, they would like to keep their London-weighted salaries thank you very much — which means factoring in the price of a regular commute (as FT research recently showed that while there may be cheaper housing outside the capital, wages decrease beyond the M25 – meaning savings can be minimal). 

• Add to that the spiralling cost of moving – now averaging almost £14,000 per move, apparently, and attempts to push people back to the office and you have a recipe for staying put. 

Except… Or do you? Because just two hours after The Spectator piece was published, The Telegraph gave their two pence. ‘London is richer than anywhere else in Britain,’ opined the headline,‘but the city is dying’. Why? Because soaring house prices and a falling birth rate means that London is ageing twice as quickly as the rest of England. Between 2001 and 2022, The Telegraph’s data shows, the average age of a Londoner rose from just under 34 years old, to 36. 

“The city is becoming increasingly a place for middle-aged homeowners, and that is both posing a problem for public services and transforming London’s housing stock,” state co-authors Szu Ping Chan and Tim Wallace. Plus, they note, most Londoners don’t own their homes. Young, propertyless people are being forced out, while waves of youthful migration have slowed post Brexit. 

Think of the children: The Telegraph piece also highlights the decline in primary school pupils in inner London. It attaches this pattern to falling birth rates, but as Andrew Kersley neatly illustrated last week, in a piece for this very paper, extortionate property prices have got more to do with the worrying trend, with only wealthy families insulated from the flit. 

Bottom line: Although The Telegraph and Spectator’s reporting ostensibly seems at odds, actually, they perfectly align. The group of Londoners The Spectator is examining are middle-aged property owners; 40 year-old Alex, their staple interviewee, owns a successful property consulting business — and a family home in Wandsworth. He belongs to the group of wealthier London-dwellers who weigh up the costs and find staying put is a viable option. But for those belonging to increasingly squeezed lower middle and low-income economic groups, the sums are not working out quite as well.

Are you still planning to leave London? Or plotting a return? Let us know in the comments.

Your news briefing

🚂 Over the weekend, catastrophising headlines about a £23m budget shortfall at TfL hit newspapers. The apparent cause? The government’s new National Insurance hike, which Conservatives in City Hall told the BBC is “hammering” TfL. Amid scaremongering, it may be worth mentioning that TfL’s annual revenue is over £9.1bn — meaning the shortfall, while potentially frustrating for leadership, represents 0.25% of their annual revenue.

🚨 An insulation firm involved in the 2015 redevelopment of Grenfell Tower is taking Kensington Council to court for trying to ban its use as a contractor following the 2017 fire that killed 72 people. While the Grenfell Inquiry concluded there was no evidence of direct dishonesty or culpability on the part of Siderise Insulation, which produced cavity barriers used on the building, it found the firm omitted key information about the product from marketing materials. The BBC spoke to survivors of the fire who were floored by the news: “My first thoughts were 'they can't be serious’,” said one.

🎒Islington Council have decided to press ahead with plans to shutter two London primary schools in the area after a catastrophic drop in pupils, despite pleas from parents and local politicians to stop the move, reports the Islington Gazette. As we mentioned earlier, Andrew dug into the epidemic of school closures last week, so check out that piece to understand what’s going on. 

Got a story for us to look into? Please get in touch.

Did you catch our piece on the alt-right rave?

Across the pond, an ascendant American right is boasting they’ve managed to make conservatism cool again, complete with lots of glittery parties. Is the same true of parallel UK movements? 

On Saturday, we published Josiah Gogarty’s undercover expedition into the raucous after-party that followed the recent Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference, an event that "summoned the nationalist international to London” for three days last week.

Amid chats about racial lineage and running into journalists from The Spectator and The Sunday Times, Josiah takes the temperature of the cultural momentum behind the UK’s right. Read it here.

From dawn till dusk 

We all know London can be unbearably huge. So every week we’ll take you through an ideal day across the city using our little black book of the best London venues. We hope it’ll be equal parts glitz to spit and Tube-dust.

Breakfast: The Old Kent Road will always be defined by its operative adjective and no amount of new builds can possibly change that. Either by architectural conformity, heavy load congestion or blunt self-fulfilling prophecy, everything that springs up there is immediately caught in a time warp: it becomes ‘old’ too. A good example of this is Chef’s Delight, a worn builders’ caff about a third of the way up before you get to Burgess Park. It’s easy to dismiss Chef’s Delight, but do so at your peril; you’ll be missing a very decent Turkish Breakfast spread.  

Lunch: London blogs are bulging with lists attempting to define and rank the best shawarmas on the Edgware Road. This is a glutton’s errand. However, an honourable contender is definitely Abu Afif Restaurant, which prices its meals reasonably well compared to some of the surrounding eateries and also serves its shawarma as Iraqi-style ‘samoon’, sandwiched in light fluffy baguette. 

Drinks: The Southampton Arms is sort of the perfect pub. The only problem is that more and more people wise up to this every year and it’s increasingly packed. However, it still excels as somewhere to mainline alcohol after a long walk on the Heath. There’s plenty of guest beers on offer and a large, convivial outside area to enjoy once the weather begins picking up. 

Dinner: If you’re looking for dinner and a drink on a Monday night, go to the Tommyfield in Kennington and claim a pie and a pint for £35. Yes this may sound like a lot. Indeed, it is a lot. But you don’t understand how delicious these pies are. They’re the perfect consistency, the filling is well balanced. It’s a great evening.

Later: If you enjoy sticky floors, cheap shots and dancing to Sean Paul, try The Tiger in Camberwell. It’s not for everyone, and could easily be dismissed as a failed experiment amounting to ‘what happens if we do a Year Seven disco, but for adults?’ However, it’s actually a real hub for the community and not just the downwardly mobile graduates who’ve recently settled there. You get a proper variety of stories and languages in The Tiger, not that you’ll be able to hear what anyone is saying. 

Our favourite reads

My life as a prison officer: ‘It wasn’t just the smell that hit you. It was the noise’ — Alex South, The Guardian
Alex South spent ten years working as a prison officer. In this piece for The Guardian she documents the dysfunction happening behind the scenes at the London prison she worked in, where mentally ill inmates were forced to live in their segregation cells and their own filth rather than receiving healthcare. 

 My brother, the NHS and the inquest into a needless death — Madison Marriage, FT Magazine
Madison Marriage wrote this heart-wrenching piece about the inquest in Southwark Coroner’s Court into the sudden death of her brother Charlie, who died during an epileptic seizure. What ensued was a story that not only documents a tragic healthcare failure, but one that exposes algorithms secretly dictating whose care gets prioritised.

To Do List

This week

📷 If you’re yet to make your way to East London’s Raven Row gallery, and their current retrospective of American photographer, Peter Hujar, don’t delay. Coinciding with a new Ben Whishaw-led dramatisation of Hujar’s life, this startling set of pictures range from the erotic to the deeply moving. Yes, there’s full frontal nudity, so decide whether you want the kids in tow, but this is an unmissable journey into the depths of human vulnerability. Plus: completely free. Runs until 6 April 2025.

🐶 Hampstead might be being hampered by a slight panic around cruisers and life drawing right now, but there’s still plenty of culture to be found. One such example is this Keats House evening talk on 27 February, examining the animal rights movement that emerged amid the metallic thrust of the Industrial Revolution. Tickets are from £6.50 and you can bring a friend for free. 

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