Is The Port of London Authority Seeking Unchecked Powers?
6 min read
The Port of London Authority manages the Thames, but residents along the river say it is seeking further, unchecked powers. Sophie Church reports on the ongoing fight
It was, it says, created to bring order out of chaos: from Teddington Lock to the Isle of Sheppey, the Port of London Authority (PLA) rules the tidal Thames. Nothing moves along the river without its permission: it is responsible for every aspect, from safety to pollution prevention, ferries, wharves, barges and all.
But the institution conceived by David Lloyd George finds itself in the crosshairs of campaigners who say, already unaccountable, it is now grabbing yet further powers for itself.
The catalyst for this backlash is an unlikely one: the balcony. Or, to be specific, the charges the PLA demands of those riverside homes lucky enough to have a balcony overhanging the Old Father.
We are at senior levels much more accessible to our local stakeholders than other organisations
Some have claimed the authority has increased its licence fee by as much as £10,000 in recent years, with charging rates varying wildly between residents. Others have said residents with balconies are now paying more per square metre than their flats are worth.
Now, in a win of sorts for balcony owners, the PLA’s chief executive officer Robin Mortimer tells The House the authority is launching a review of its charging practices.
“We have asked the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (Rics) to carry out an
independent review of our approach to balcony charging to try and reach more of a consensus with the balcony owners,” says Mortimer, sitting in the PLA’s offices on the aptly named Seething Lane.
“Things haven’t gone as well as we’d hoped, in the sense that we don’t like to have unhappy residents and people who are paying us fees. We’d like to reach a point where there’s a general acceptance that the fees are fair and reasonable, and everybody accepts them. That’s the reason, partly, we wanted to go to Rics.”
But beyond balconies, residents accuse the PLA of being an opaque organisation trying to shore up its powers by strengthening the legislation that governs it.
The PLA is governed by the Port of London Act 1968, itself an amended version of the original 1908 Act. In 2020, the PLA submitted a Harbour Revision Order (HRO) which, if granted, would allow it to change its own act without parliamentary approval.
The PLA says the HRO would enable it to improve navigational lighting, ensure life-saving grab chains and escape ladders are available along the river, and to intervene if boats are found to be overcrowded.
Robin Mortimer (Credit: Port of London Authority)
But river users and environmental and community groups have objected to these proposals. In a public inquiry which wound up in March, residents accused the PLA of failing to include any provisions to tackle pollution in the river, neglecting to prevent speeding which erodes the shoreline and damages the homes of boat-dwellers, and of increasing the number of cruise ships allowed into central London.
“The PLA has been abusing its considerable powers unchecked for decades,” one resident said. The PLA is an “opaque organisation with vast powers but remarkably little accountability”, added another.
“The PLA, the self-styled ‘custodian’ of the Thames, too often seeks to delegate climate action to other bodies – though retaining the near exclusive right to harvest income from the river,” a press release from the River Residents Group concluded.
The Marine Management Organisation is now deciding whether to pass the order unchanged, to amend it, or to reject it. As the PLA awaits its fate, what would Mortimer say to those who accuse the authority of power-grabbing?
“I never really understood that argument, in all honesty,” he says. “If you look at what the HRO actually says, most of it covers things which most people would have absolutely no issue with.”
He adds: “For example, the grab chains along the river, which are there to provide a means for somebody to hold on if they end up in the water, and reduce the risk of drowning – we would like the power to require the owner of the land to keep those maintained. Quite a lot of [the order] are things which are safety related and really quite uncontentious.”
Currently, the PLA does not have to consult third parties on planning applications. But the HRO would make this a requirement. “That’s an improvement in transparency and consultation,” says Mortimer. “It seemed quite ironic, in that context, for the issue to be raised.”
Similarly, the HRO would grant the PLA the power to, for example, remove rusting ships along the water’s edge.
“There are quite a few old hulks along the river which we’d quite like to have the ability to remove. Again, it doesn’t feel like that’s in the category of infringing upon other people’s rights.”
The PLA has also proposed changing the way it reports to Parliament in the HRO. Under the act, the PLA must place an advert in The Times to advertise the publication of its accounts and annual reports. Mortimer’s team has suggested making its accounts available on its website instead.
“We saw that as a really quite innocuous thing, but it was then perceived as being that we were trying to make ourselves less accountable.”
Still, the PLA does not have to answer to Freedom of Information requests. It does not answer to an independent regulator or ombudsman, and is instead accountable to the Secretary of State.
“I think the accountability argument is not a strong one. We do have a national accountability system already,” Mortimer says. “We have public meetings up and down the river, and we are at senior levels much more accessible to our local stakeholders than other organisations.”
With the Thames crossing through multiple boroughs, answering to local authorities would be challenging. Mortimer says the PLA is considering working with mayors with jurisdictions along the river – in London for the time being, and in Essex and Kent when they are elected.
“Could we have a system where we seek nominations for board appointments, for example, from the mayors as a way of feeding into the process?” he says. “We’re open to some ideas along those lines.”
Asked if there are any projects coming down the track, Mortimer says the PLA is considering a proposal from Cory Group to use the Thames to ship 700,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year to the North Sea for storage: “If we could use the river to decarbonise that, wouldn’t that be fantastic?”
While the PLA is looking to make some changes to how it operates, Mortimer says residents must also understand the Thames is a working river.
“One of the things we do have to say sometimes to people is that it is a working river, and it has actually been a working river since Roman times,” he says.
“It’s the busiest waterway in the country. It’s used for four to five million tonnes of freight on the waterway, not even the 50 million tonnes in the port, but on barges taking waste from west London to east London. Every barge on the river takes 40 lorries off the road.”
“There is a social benefit in that activity happening, and therefore we should be making the case for that.”
