Half Londoners want to go

Press, 6 July 1977, Page 9

Half Londoners want to go

London London, a vital, interesting city to the tourists, is a ionely, unfriendly, dirty place to its permanent inhabitants, a survey has revealed.

In a representative sampling of 1007 people from London’s population Of more than eight million, more than half those interviewed wanted to leave.

They found London dirty and lonely, and felt they would be better off elsewhere.

The survey, the "Evening Standard” reports, will come as a.shock to the Secretary for the Environment (Mr Peter Shore), who is heading a newly-launched Government campaign to bring people back to London — after successive Governments have for years tried to persuade London businesses to move away from the capital taking people with them. The survey found a widespread feeling that London was a bad place to bring up children — especially in the inner city — and that it was less friendly than "in the old days.” Dirty streets, a lack of proper amenities, too much noise, and too much traffic all figure prominently as reasons for people wanting to leave. There was dissatisfaction

with public transport and one in three interviewed said he travelled less frequently on buses and London's famed tube system than he used to.

While commuters struggling on to crowded buses and tubes at rush hours may find it hard to believe, the survey found that only 25 per cent of the city’s population use public transport daily. As for the swinging London of the sixties, those who helped it swing now list the city as a lonely place. The loneliness image was strongest amongst those now in their late twenties and early thirties, a view shared by 90 per cent of pensioners.

The survey’s release came as Thames Television began its two-day conference, “London Looks Forward.”

One central-city resident who presumably is not thinking of moving out permanently — the Duke of Edinburgh — opened the conference by emphasising the importance of people in planning. Honest opinions about the city’s future were worth more than objective clinical assessments, he said. The conference will make a contribution to London’s (future only if everyone taking part thinks and speaks ■as a citizen of London first sand an expert second.