Talk London’s 2022 – Year in overview

A safer London 

At the start of the year, 1,396 of you had your say on the draft Police and Crime Plan. It sets out the Mayor’s priorities for policing and community safety: to make London a safer city and for Londoners to feel safer. Following consultation with 4,000 Londoners, including here on Talk London, the Police and Crime Plan 2022-25 was published in March 2022.  

In May, 1,071 of you took our survey on the London Fire Brigade’s strategy and delivery plan to keep London safe – the first of its kind since the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017. The London Fire Brigade have now taken away your recommendations, and we’ll update you when the final plan is published in the new year.  

A greener capital 

In March, 1,459 of you shared your thoughts on reducing emissions from public transport. We shared your concerns about London’s air quality with our colleagues in the Transport and Environment teams, and with Transport for London (TFL). Following a TFL consultation, the Mayor has now announced that he will be expanding ULEZ (Ultra Low Emission Zone) across London from August 2023.  

In June, 1,364 of you shared your views on rewilding London. Your ideas on how parts of London can be restored back to nature were presented to City Hall’s policy teams working with the London Rewilding Taskforce (LTR) – an advisory group created by the Mayor to explore opportunities for rewilding. Your contributions helped the group draft a report recommending how London can move forward with rewilding. The report will be published in early 2023.  

“We are pleased to see that Talk London members are generally supportive of rewilding and had a deep understanding of its potential benefits” -  London Rewilding Taskforce 

A fairer and more inclusive city 

In June and July, 902 of you had your say on the prevalence of short-term lettings (such as Airbnbs) in London. Your responses shaped the Mayor’s call for a national register of short-term lets to help local authorities crack down on housing fraud and uncover breaches of London’s 90-night limits for short-term lets. 

In September we ran a survey on public toilets. It was the most popular survey we’ve hosted this year, with 2,366 of you sharing your experience of public toilets in London. Many of you told us that there was a need for more public toilets in London if maintained to a high standard. Your feedback helped the Royal College of Art’s Public Toilet Research Unit to draft recommendations on how organisations can work together to create better public toilets in London. 

“We are very grateful for everyone’s participation in the survey. Your responses give us the data needed to illustrate the scale of the [public toilet] problem to policymakers” - The Royal College of Art 

Last month, we launched a call to help shape a new cultural event to celebrate Black culture. This inclusive event is the first of its kind and will add to the variety of events that City Hall already organises for Londoners in celebration of the capital’s diversity, including Diwali, St George’s Day, Eid, St Patrick’s Day, Chanukah, Pride, Lunar New Year and Vaisakhi, amongst many others. Your responses are helping the Mayor’s Events Team plan the event for its Trafalgar Square launch in September 2023. Our consultation is still open for you to share your ideas for the celebration.   

Your Talk London 

Throughout the year, we’ve made some changes to the site. As always, your feedback and comments have been invaluable to help us identify what needed to be improved.  

• You wanted Talk London to be easier to browse. We’ve added a much-requested search bar and you can now also search individual discussions for keywords.  
• You wanted discussion threads to be easier to navigate so we’ve added a browsing feature. You can now sort comments within all discussions and you’ll see more of them displayed on a page. 
• You wanted to be able to look back at what you’ve taken part in previously. We’ve created Your Talk London with a history of the discussions, surveys and idea generations you’ve joined recently. 

Let us know what you think of these changes in our discussion, so that we can continue to improve the site. 

Thank you once again for being part of Talk London. 

There will be plenty of other opportunities to get involved next year. Please keep an eye out for our emails – our next consultation will focus on the Mayor’s draft budget for 2023-2024.