Cllr Sabrina Francis (Lab, Bloomsbury)
- Credit: Camden Council
Camden Council has appointed its first Black woman mayor, Cllr Sabrina Francis.
The Bloomsbury councillor was sworn in on Tuesday at a meeting of the full council.
Cllr Francis succeeds outgoing mayor Cllr Maryam Eslamdoust (Kilburn). Cllr Lorna Russell has been appointed deputy mayor (Fortune Green).
The new mayor’s chosen charity is Gingerbread, which supports single parent families.
Cllr Francis said: “Coming from a single parent family, I have witnessed the strength and resilience it takes to raise children and deal with challenges alone.
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The Hoo building in Hampstead.
- Credit: Harry Taylor
Plans for three luxury family homes in the Royal Free s old mental health building in Lyndhurst Gardens were approved on Thursday.
Planning committee chair Cllr Heather Johnson used her casting vote to approve the scheme after the committee was deadlocked at four votes in favour, four against, and two abstentions.
Developer Jaga Developments is to convert the listed building - formerly known as The Hoo - into two five-bedroom homes and one four-bedroom home.
After disputes over the value of the land at the site, the developer said it accepted it would pay a higher community infrastructure levy (CIL) fee as part of the plans. But it said this and other rising costs meant providing an up-front affordable housing contribution was not viable .
GLL, which trades as Better, has lost £170m in revenue
- Credit: Greenwich Leisure Ltd
Camden Council says it will consider new ways of running leisure centres once the pandemic is over – including bringing sports facilities in-house.
The town hall signed a 10-year contract worth £18.9m with Greenwich Leisure Ltd (GLL) last January to run the borough’s gyms, but the council says it will reassess its leisure services once the full impact of Covid becomes clearer.
GLL, a not-for-profit which runs under the name Better, has relied on the government’s furlough scheme and received bailouts from local authorities – including in Islington – to manage more than 500 job cuts and £170m of lost revenue during the pandemic.