Sadiq Khan's London is NOT safe, locals admit while Mayor rages at 'hate and disinformation'

Londoners have admitted the capital is getting less safe - just as Sir Sadiq Khan introduced a huge campaign against "hate and disinformation" about crime in the city.

A new poll, conducted by JL Partners for the London School of Economics, found the majority of Londoners believe safety is on the decline.

The survey, shared with the Standard, asked adults two main questions related to safety.

First, it asked if London had become more or less safe generally, then if living in London had become more or less safe for them personally.

For the first question, 61 per cent of women and 46 per cent of men said the capital had become less safe generally - representing 54 per cent of all London residents.

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Just 17 per cent of Londoners said the capital was now safer, including 22 per cent of men and 13 per cent of women.

In terms of personal safety, 47 per cent of London residents felt the city had become less safe for them personally.

This represented 40 per cent of men and 53 per cent of women.

Just 16 per cent of adults feel the capital is now safer for them personally - representing 11 per cent of women and 22 per cent of men.

Tom Lubbock, the co-founder of JL Partners, said: "When a majority of women in London feel the city is getting less safe then that is a blow for Sadiq Khan.

"No amount of crime stats can outdo that lived experience and the effects that it has on how people feel and live their lives."

While Jenevieve Treadwell, a London politics fellow at LSE, said the figures showed responding to crime was "of the utmost importance to Londoners and needs to be taken seriously by London's newly-formed councils".

When asked to pick two issues for their own council to focus on, 39 per cent named crime and anti-social behaviour, 38 per cent housing affordability and 25 per cent said wasting taxpayers' money.

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Sir Sadiq, on Monday, unveiled a £7million campaign to tackle so-called "disinformation" about London which was damaging the tourism industry.

The Mayor of London is currently in Singapore at the World Cities Summit, a meeting between political leaders, planners, and business executives.

He has used the visit to raise concerns about global disinformation, having previously slammed politicians who paint a "dystopian" picture of London as a "fallen city".

"We know social media has been used as a platform by bad state actors, whether that's in China, Russia, or the Make America Great Again actors in the USA," Sir Sadiq told the BBC.

Disinformation was also being spread by people in southeast Asia, including China and Japan, he added.

City Hall's Tory leader Susan Hall questioned the decision to spend public money to tackle "disinformation" - and told him to get back from Singapore and actually sort out crime.

She said: "He's putting millions into looking at online disinformation... I don't want anonymous trolls obviously to make up lies about the city, but the Mayor can't try and suggest that anyone critical of his failure or record of failure is among those ranks.

"He just should be at home sorting issues out," she added.

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