TfL's taxi licence fiasco

Dear Londoners — we're calling it: spring is here. Last week's plentiful sunshine saw al fresco park lunches, iced lattes aplenty and crowds outside pretty much every pub The Londoner team passed (side note: what's the deal with the Harp now drawing festival-level crowds?). And with the clocks having gone forward and temperature meant to reach 18 degrees this Thursday, we expect this week to be a barnstormer too. After all, London in the sunshine is easily the best city in the world — as we're sure you'll agree.

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Big story: TfL licensing crisis leaves cab drivers in the lurch

Topline: According to the IWGB, private hire drivers for apps such as Uber and Bolt have reported “devastating financial and emotional consequences”, because delays at TfL have left them unable to renew their licences. Some have been unable to work for months at a time.

What is happening?: Every four years, private hire drivers in London (which include employees of mainstream ride-sharing companies as well as chauffeuring and minicab companies) have to renew their licenses. If this process extends beyond the expiry of their old licence, drivers won’t be allowed to work. However, some drivers who began this process four months in advance are currently still waiting to be allowed back on the roads. 

What effect is this having? IWGB say they’ve already heard from over 500 drivers affected by the delays, many of whom are running out of options to support their families. Drivers are reporting that they’ve taken out loans and missed mortgage payments, and many, the union say, have been suffering from serious stress-related mental health conditions.  

Drivers say: One driver of 12 years wrote, “I’ve paid £1800 for my license renewal so far (medical tests, the DBS check and the TfL fee), yet I haven’t been able to work for over a month. With no income I’ve had to borrow more and more money to keep up with my mortgage payments, my car installments, my insurance, etc. It’s so hard. I can’t sleep for more than four hours a night at the moment…” 

TfL says: In a recent statement, TfL have pointed to their new licensing system, which is currently facing “issues”. TfL maintains that "vast majority of drivers" are unaffected, and that drivers who have been are “mainly those where we had requested that the driver provide missing or additional information”. They also say they have increased the number of licensing staff in response to this. 

Your news briefing

🚨 The Met is facing condemnation over its arrest of six young activists after a police raid on a Quaker meeting house. Campaign group Youth Demand were holding a meeting at the Westminster house to discuss potential “non-violent civil resistance actions” they may take in relation to the ongoing war in Gaza. A representative for the Quakers told the BBC the move “clearly shows what happens when a society criminalises protest”, and said it was the first arrest at a meeting house in living memory. 

⁉️ The Sun reported last week, pretty speculatively, that actor Idris Elba is currently a favourite in Labour circles to replace London mayor Sadiq Khan once he steps down. Labour insiders told reporters they were impressed by Elba’s anti-knife crime advocacy work, saying optimistically that as a mayoral candidate he would have both “star appeal” and was a “thoughtful political campaigner”. More realistic candidates discussed by insiders included MP Rosena Allin-Khan, Dragon’s Den star Deborah Meaden and foreign secretary David Lammy.

⚽ Ex-football star Wayne Rooney was caught peeing against a wall during a night out in Marylebone with friends this weekend, reports the Metro. The star's antics will only add to the growing headache for Westminster Council, which says it's now spending a shocking £950,000 a year cleaning up public urination (and has even introduced “anti-pee” paint).

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Catch-up 

• On Wednesday, we covered London’s hottest trend: literary reading series. Far from the fusty events of yore, these New York-inspired parties are glamorous, sexy — and always sold-out. But does the capital’s literature scene need to be hot? Writer James Greig went to find out. Sample line: “‘One person who has been to quite a few of mine said that my event is the only one that ‘fucks’. Believe me, those bathrooms have seen a lot.’”
• Ever wondered what it’s like for the teams of actors who work at the immersive experience venues that are slowly taking over London, like Shrek’s Adventure or Monopoly Lifesized? Turns out it’s an insane world of ogre costumes too dangerous to wear, coked-up financiers playing Monopoly and staff starting Shrek-themed OnlyFans accounts.
• What’s the polar opposite of Shrek’s Adventure, you ask? Probably the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Last week, Miles Ellingham spoke to Dermot Hudson, a British man who dedicated his life to becoming London’s biggest mouthpiece for the autocratic nation. Why did he do it?

Your tips

Really to spill? Come slip your secrets into our new gossip box: the horrible boss at the bar you work at, the beef brewing at your law firm, the spat in the WhatsApp group for your kids' school. And don't worry, it's strictly confidential.

One more thing... are you from Walthamstow and did you or anyone you know attend Higham Park School during the 1980s? Get in touch with andrew@the-londoner.co.uk if so. 

Wining and dining

With endless offerings and non-stop openings, we all know that deciding where to eat and drink in the capital can be fraught. We want to make it easy — so every week we’ll give you our insider guide to the city’s best spots. 

One perfect meal: The best pizza in London is a fraught debate, a matter of a thousand different styles and a thousand different preferences. You have your reliable small-scale chain options, of course: your Rudy’s and your Pizza Pilgrims, and your pub-based pop-ups, like Dough Hands (Spurstowe Arms and the Old Nun's Head) and Ace Pizza (Five Points Brewing). You have your buzzy, TikTok-favourites, like the Chicago deep-dish, death-by-cheese style at Japes, or endless queues and New York-inspired “pies” of Crisp. And then you have what you might call your neighbourhood pizzerias, the kind of places where you know you’re going to have both a good slice and a good time.

Bar D4100, in Nunhead, is the latter. The pizzas are excellent: the tomato base soupy and pooling, the fior di latte elastic, the crust pillowy. And although the options can verge on the baroque — their signature MacGuyver pizza features chorizo, hot honey, whipped feta and crushed fennel seeds — they always, somehow, work (although for those who prefer their pizza stripped back, their marinara is also a delight). But aside from their culinary delights, D4100 is just fun. It’s £5 Campari spritzes and elbow-to-elbow seating and sauce-slicked smiles, it’s messy hands and full bellies and tealights on the table. A word to the wise: book before you go on a Friday or Saturday, or make friends in the queue.

One perfect pint: Let’s face it, there’s a dearth of decent pubs in business-centred districts of London. Controlled totally by the oppressive weekday schedules of its itinerant office worker populations, most of the pubs are rammed during the week, shut at the weekend and charge £8 for warm Madri to workers too tired and lacking in alternative choices to care. 

But if you find yourself parched in the desert of mostly mediocre pubs around St Paul’s and Farringdon, head towards the Sutton Arms. Tucked away on a quiet side street, it tends to be less rammed than its neighbours, despite the fact it offers much nicer beers at much cheaper prices than elsewhere. Beyond the jovial, cherry red frontage, the interior is the platonic ideal of a traditional, hard-working boozer: carpeted floor, brass fittings, a chalkboard of guest brews. The bar snacks are also of note: a range of homemade pies and sausage rolls that sit on the counter. But beware: make sure to go to the Sutton Arms at 16 Great Sutton Street rather than the decidedly worse pub with the same name just around the corner.

Our favourite reads

Neil Basu on racism, riots and quitting the Met: ‘When policing is bad, it’s the worst’ — Steve Rose, The Guardian

Once tipped to be its next commissioner of the Met, Neil Basu was its most senior Asian officer. But after scandals broke over the force’s institutional racism, homophobia and misogyny, he began to speak out about what needed to be done — a move which cost him his career. His profile in the Guardian gives a unique and interesting inside take on the UK’s most criticised police force.

The war on the London pied-à-terre — Ysenda Maxtone Graham, Spectator

Who are the real struggling oppressed class in London? Delivery drivers on zero hours contracts? Underpaid, overworked nurses? The hundreds of thousands of people living in mould-ridden homeless accommodation? No, according to the Spectator, it’s the landed gentry from Devon forced to label their flats in Islington as second homes. This piece qualifies as a favourite read only insofar as we think it managed to perfectly refine into one article the single worst opinion you could have on London.

To Do List

📷 Peter Mitchell: Nothing Lasts Forever 
The Photographer’s Gallery, until Sun 15 Jun 2025

If all photographs are, in some way, hauntings, Peter Mitchell’s scenes of 1970s Leeds are more ghostly than most: half-decayed factories, derelict newsagents, boarded-up houses.  It’d be easier to give into nostalgia, to decry modernity — as many followers of his wildly successful Instagram page, @strangelyfamiliar.co.uk, seem to — but the uncanniness at the heart of Mitchell’s work resists such easy readings. The result is eerie, spectral and utterly beautiful.

🎭 The Glass Menagerie
Yard Theatre, until 10 May 2025

It’s fitting that the final production at the Yard before its current home, an old warehouse, is demolished to make way for its new, purpose-built theatre venue, is Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie. With its emphasis on the fallibility of memory, the ecstasy and despair of nostalgia, it’s an ode to the things we say goodbye to — and those we can’t quite shake. Highlights include Eva Morgan in her stage debut, terrific as the pathologically shy Laura, and sumptuous costumes by Lambdog1066. 

From the archive

A glimpse into an era where Oxford Street had restaurants, underground swing clubs and teens in zoot suits, this Pathé newsreel shows a 1950s night out at Mack’s restaurant — now the famed 100 Club.