Tory defector Andrew Rosindell was met with rapturous applause when he promised his Romford constituents a referendum to leave Greater London and rejoin Essex at the Reform UK rally.
Just 20 minutes from the centre of London, Romford, in the borough of Havering, was part of the county of Essex until 1965 – a decision that still sparks debate 46 years later.
“You will know in your heart that Romford is Essex”, he said. “Yet decisions affecting your streets, your transport, your policing, your housing are decided miles away by a Greater London Authority that neither understands our community nor represents the people of this area.”
Mr Rosindell’s argument for leaving the capital sounded eerily similar to points made during the Brexit referendum, when almost 70 per cent of his constituents voted in favour of leaving the European Union.
Romford resident Colin, who has lived in Havering for 45 years, identifies the town as a part of London, but sees no issue with it rejoining Essex – so long as he doesn’t lose the benefits that come with being part of the capital.
“As long as we’ve got the benefits of coming out of the Ultra Low Emission Zone (Ulez), but not losing the Freedom Bus pass, I think it’d be a good job, yeah,” he says.
While the centre of the capital may be bustling with workers on a Tuesday morning, Romford is quieter, with pensioners and pram pushers strolling around its multiple shopping centres or stopping in greasy spoon cafes on the high street.
Other parts of east London are now hot spots for the trendy pubs and coffee shops associated with gentrification, but Havering clings to remnants of old east London – there’s still a thriving pie and mash shop in the centre of Romford, an increasingly rare sight across the city.
It is also the second-least diverse borough in the capital. Nearby Newham and Redbridge both have non-white populations of more than 60 per cent, according to the 2021 Census. In Havering, the non-white population stands at just 24.7 per cent.
The area is known for its bustling market on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, although the number of licensed traders has gradually dropped over the years.
Linda, 71, who has lived in Havering for 60 years, said: “It’s like a ghost town sometimes, and even the market – how busy the market used to be here. My goodness it’s gone down [hill].
“If you come up tomorrow on a market day, the stalls aren’t like they used to be, she said. “The difference is the people, the shops, I mean, the towns are just shutting down.”
As far as she’s concerned, Romford is still a part of Essex – and she was particularly critical of the Ulez, which prompted a furious backlash on the fringes of the capital after mayor of London, Sir Sadiq Khan, extended the scheme out to the M25 boundary in 2023.
“When [Sir Sadiq] brought that Ulez thing we had to get rid of our car,” she says: “So that turned us against him.”
But not all residents supported a return to Essex. Hope Cafe worker Mark said: “I hope we don’t leave London because we get loads out of it.
“I think it’s just people still wishing it was the 1970s,” they added. “Romford voted quite overwhelmingly for Brexit and like Brexit, everyone voted for it, and then afterwards people are like surprised that it didn’t work out the way they said. It just kind of strikes me as like the same kind of populism of that, but just targeted more locally, which is kind of sad, really.”
Robert Wilkinson, who has lived in Romford for 13 years, said that despite being pro-Brexit, he didn’t think the borough should leave London.
“This idea of having a referendum to separate ourselves from London, for all intents and purposes doesn’t make much sense to me,” he said. “I think that being a part of London… it’s an important part of what Havering is.
“I remember when I first came here and I asked people what the most important hallmark about Romford is, and I was told at the time, and this is not necessarily a good thing, but it was the party capital of London.”
He added: “London’s always going to have a say in what happens in your neighbourhood.”
Ediz Sahin, who manages Cafe Bueno on the High Street, thought leaving the capital might boost local businesses. “I think it might be a good thing to escape the taxes from London,” he said.
“If it reduces the business rates, good, why not?… If it helps to reduce the area of Ulez … I know for sure there will definitely be more footfall in Romford.”
Mr Rosindell told The Independent that if Havering left the Greater London Authority and became a unitary authority, he believed the borough could buy into services such as the Freedom Pass, which provides free public transport to people of state pension age or with certain disabilities.
“We would only pay for what we get. We wouldn’t be paying exorbitant sums of money for it then to be used in Lambeth and Southwark and Harringay, we’re going to end all that. So we would buy the service that we would require, so we would no longer be subsidising inner London.”
Reflecting on the parallels with Brexit, he said: “Some people have called it ‘Hexit’, which is ‘Havering Exit’.
“In many ways I think it is different than the European Union, but there are parallels because at the moment we are part of a thing called the Greater London Authority which is very opaque, no one can really know who runs it and what’s going on. We don’t have any real say over it.
“The Greater London Assembly is a waste of time, they have no power.”
Keith Darvill, lead councillor for Havering’s Labour group and former MP for Upminster, called the idea of leaving Greater London: “nonsense”.
“It can’t just happen overnight. There would have to be a change in legislation from the first point,” he said.
On whether the Freedom Bus Pass could be retained, he adds: “I don’t think [Mr Rosindell] understands how that works. That’s an agreement between London councils collectively. So each borough pays into the pool to enable that to happen, but you’d have to get that cooperation from all the other London boroughs.”
He said not only would the government and London councils have to approve the decision, but Havering Council, which no party has held overall control of since 2014, would have to approve a referendum. “I don’t know anyone, even in the Conservative Party locally, that would want to do that.”
A spokesperson for the Mayor of London, said: “Sadiq was re-elected for a historic third term as Mayor for all Londoners and has vowed to work tirelessly to deliver for each and every one of London’s boroughs, including Havering.
“Residents in Havering benefit from the 60+ Transport for London Oyster card, which provides free travel for those who are 60 and over, and families in Havering also save £500 per child per year thanks to the Mayor’s free school meal programme for all state primary school children in London.
“The mayor will continue to work closely with local government across London to improve the lives of communities and build a fairer, safer and greener London for everyone.”
Professor Colin Copus, visiting fellow of local politics think tank Localis, described the idea of Havering leaving Greater London as “unusual”, given local government has a history of getting bigger, not smaller.
“I can already see ‘Roxit – take back control from Sadiq Khan’ being a slogan,” he joked. “The difference would be very much that once we came out of the European Union, the idea was that all of those rules, regulations, laws, all of the strictures of the EU would no longer apply.
“That idea was pretty soon dumped by governments afterwards, but if you create another council, it’s still bound by all of the restrictions, all of the legislation that controls what local government can do.”
But he said the idea of bringing local government closer to communities was not without merit.
“We’ve been conned by this sort of technocratic idea that bigger is always better, more efficient, more effective, and cheaper and it simply isn’t,” he added.
“From the research I’ve done, anything that takes local government closer to the people, makes it more geographically compact, based on real, genuine localities that people have an affinity with is ultimately better than creating huge new unitary councils that nobody will identify with.”
