Walk through central London with your phone out, and it might not be yours for much longer. Theft in the capital has surged in recent years. So has shoplifting, with almost 90,000 incidents recorded in London last year, up roughly 54 per cent from the previous period. Meanwhile, fare dodging on London’s transport network has soared. The joke is on law-abiding Londoners who bother to buy a ticket.

Over 2,200 TfL employees earn more than £100,000

The sums of money lost to crime in London are far from trivial: the £190 million cost of fare dodging would pay the annual salaries of 3,000 frontline police officers. But it’s not just phone snatchers and those who refuse to buy a train ticket that are costing Londoners a packet: City Hall is doing so too. As Metropolitan Police and British Transport Police recruitment tumbles, the administrative arm of City Hall has been expanding rapidly. When Sadiq Khan entered office in 2016, the Greater London Authority (GLA) employed about 900 full-time staff. By 2020, this figure had risen to a little under 1,200, a 33 per cent increase. More recent GLA workforce reports show further growth: 1,303 employees in March 2023, 1,396 in March 2024, and 1,525 by March 2025.

The top jobs continue to pay........

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