I spotted this poster on the platform at Theydon Bois station.
It's a message from the Mayor of London bigging up his achievements over the last ten years and thanking Londoners for the opportunity.
And fair enough, all three of London's Mayors have used TfL posters to promote themselves and what they've done, that's how the job works. But Theydon Bois is in Essex, not London, so nobody here gets to vote for him because he's not their Mayor. It wouldn't be so bad if the poster was merely informative but the wording implicitly assumes it's speaking to London residents.
These are just some of the things we've achieved together. Thank you.
I also spotted these posters on the platforms at Debden, Loughton and Buckhurst Hill, suggesting no thought had been given to the tone deaf action of placing them in Essex. It's not an uncommon issue, indeed last year I spotted a poster saying "You are Loved & Wanted in London" in the waiting room at Croxley station. If you are the minion in TfL's advertising team who decides where Mayoral propaganda posters go, perhaps read the content first before despatching them to a station outside London.
Anyway, let's look at the five things the Mayor has selected as highlights of his ten year tenure.
1) Air pollution cut by 54% in Central London thanks to ULEZ
"In 2024, compared to a scenario without the ULEZ, harmful NO2 concentrations were estimated to be 54% lower in Central London. Source London-wide ULEZ One Year Report."
That is a hefty healthy decrease.
Check: Did Sadiq do this?
The earliest Low Emission Zone (LEZ) was in fact introduced across London in 2008 by Ken Livingstone who slapped a £200 daily charge on the most-polluting lorries, buses and coaches. Ken also proposed extending charges to high-polluting cars and vans but Boris Johnson put that firmly on hold. Sadiq introduced the ULEZ in central London in April 2019, expanded it to inner London in October 2021 and then London-wide in August 2023. ULEZ is thus all Sadiq's doing and the data-span in the report does not extend before his tenure.
Check: What does the data actually say?
It says a heck of a lot across a 221 page report but the Mayor has chosen to focus on roadside NO2. Here he had four statistics to pick from...
In 2024, compared to a scenario without the ULEZ, harmful roadside NO2 concentrations are estimated to be:
• 27% lower across the whole of London...
• 54% lower in central London...
• 29% lower in inner London...
• 24% lower in outer London...
...than they would have been without the ULEZ and its expansions.
Naturally he picked the best one for the poster (54% rather than mid-twenties), but these are still impressive clean-ups across the capital. Politically ULEZ was a very bold move with many electoral downsides, boiling over only when outer London was brought into the mix in 2023, but Sadiq still managed to get re-elected in 2024 so I'm not surprised he's crowing about cleaner air as his proudest achievement.
2) 120 million free state primary school meals delivered
Check: Did Sadiq do this?
Introduced September 2023, so yes.
Check: What does the data actually say?
The smallprint is lengthy here because Sadiq doesn't know how many meals he's funded, he's had to estimate. Pupil numbers come from the Department of Education's school census and are adjusted for uptake of meals (which in the first year was 85%). Also between September 2023 and May 2026 no pupil could have had more than 520 free lunches, and then you multiply all that together. The Mayor funds school meals at £3 a time, so this sounds like a commitment that's cost upwards of £360m.
3) Boosted public transport, including the Night Tube, Elizabeth line, Hopper fare and Superloop bus network
Check: Did Sadiq do this? Night Tube: Boris did all the legwork in establishing the Night Tube but couldn't get it over the line before his tenure ended due to disputes with the rail unions. With that settled the start date then was then set three months into Sadiq's tenure - so none of the effort, all of the glory. Elizabeth line: Likewise Crossrail was a project pushed by previous Mayors. Ken was in charge when Gordon Brown agreed funding, Boris was a year into the role when construction began and a few weeks from departure when he named it after Her Majesty. Sadiq merely picked up a project that was fully underway and kept very quiet about how incredibly late it would be delivered. However, given he was in charge for the six years before it finally opened he's perfectly entitled to be very proud of it. Hopper fare: A 1-hour London bus ticket was originally a Lib Dem policy - it appeared in Brian Paddick's 2012 Mayoral manifesto and was long pushed by Assembly member Caroline Pidgeon. But they never had any power so Sadiq stole the policy and implemented it as his own in his very first year. As Caroline said at the time, "imitation sometimes is the greatest form of flattery". Superloop: This is all Sadiq's. Plans for ten branded express routes emerged out of the blue in March 2023 and we now have twelve, with four more in the works. However a network of orbital routes has been on the drawing board since Boris Johnson's first Mayoral election, just never acted upon, so I suspect it's been on TfL's wishlist for longer than Sadiq lets on.
4) Increased council housebuilding to its highest level since the 1970s
Check: What does the data actually say?
We need the smallprint here.
Council housing starts reached a peak of 8190 in 2022/23, higher than any number recorded since the 1970s. Source MHCLG Affordable House Supply statistics, compared with historical MHCLG and DoE statistical publications.
There are 3.8 million homes in London so I'm sorry but starting 8190 new council houses in one year feels like a pitifully small assault on the capital's housing crisis. It's the equivalent of 250 homes in every borough, so not really all that much. But these are just council homes, not necessarily affordable homes or homes for social rent because definition is all important here. What really concerns me is that the peak was in 2022/23 so numbers must have been in retreat since. Indeed I checked more recent MHCLG data and it says
4522 starts on site in London in 2024-25, a 51% increase compared to the previous year but considerably lower than the 26,386 starts on site in the region reported in 2022-23.
This is affordable housing, not just council housing, and yet 4522 is way below the 8190 total Sadiq achieved two years previously. It's also less than 20% of the 26,386 starts achieved in 2022-23 suggesting something has gone very (very) wrong with the provision of affordable housing in London. Sadiq does appear to have cherry-picked a single outdated claim for his poster and shouldn't perhaps be boasting about his most recent achievements on housing.
5) Lowest homicide rate since records began
Check: What does the data actually say?
Met Police homicide data is available online in a delightfully-named Homicide Dashboard, and is also fairly straightforward to tot up from annual murder counts. In 2025 the total across Greater London was 97, likely much lower than a lot of people assume whilst simultaneously still much too high. However it's only the lowest total since 2014, when 95 people were killed, so even if we take "since records began" as referring to a change of methodology in 2016 it looks a bit naughty.
However what Sadiq's actually claiming is the 'lowest homicide rate', not the lowest homicide total, and if you take into account population size he is indeed correct. London's murder rate is officially 1.1 per 100,000 people, lower than New York (2.8), Toronto (1.6) and Milan (1.6). It was 2.7 in London in 1997 so that's really quite a decrease.
Check: Did Sadiq do this?
You can't really tell with murders, each is a unique incident based on many factors. However the Mayor points towards his Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) "which has delivered more than 550,000 targeted interventions to prevent young people being drawn into gangs and violence", also the introduction of facial recognition technology. He's particularly proud that the number of homicides of young people in London is now a third of the total in 2019 when the VRU was set up.
Returning to the poster, there's a particularly optimistic exhortation in the bottom right hand corner to search for MAYOR OF LONDON 10 YEARS, like anyone on a station platform is ever going to do that. Searches lead to a bespoke webpage london.gov.uk/10-years-of-progress where even more achievements are set out. The Mayor's team have even gone to the effort of making a 3 minute YouTube video in which Sadiq walks round a chilly-looking Greenwich Park and showcases his extensive record. It's well made but has been up for a month and thus far only has 796 views, which just goes to show London's population aren't really interested.
However it is impressive that London's now had the same Mayor for ten years, succeeding in three successive elections... and all this self-promotion suggests Sadiq might just be positioning himself for a fourth term in 2028. If it genuinely is the best job in the world, why would you want to give it up?
