Westminster Bridge is currently seen as resource and money maker for Content creators such as Youtubers who operate under the guise of a varirty of descriptions ranging from auditors to pickpocket activists.

For content creators it is akin to being a child in a sweet factory, there is so much to choose ranging from illegal trading to scammers such as the illegal gambling teams with cups and balls.

These issues have been going on for decades and a good place to start is with an article by Jim Waterson  from London Centric  who should take credit for an excellent piece of investigative jouralism.

When London Centric visited Westminster Bridge on a recent afternoon, a woman in a suit, rushing towards parliament, was overhead shouting into her phone as she squeezed passed a TikTok influencer dancing on a pedestal in front of a circling ring light.

“I just made the mistake of going across Westminster Bridge,” she explained into her mobile.

She had just walked past five illegal gambling operations spread out along both sides of the bridge, all featuring the age-old scammers’ act of the cup-and-ball trick, also known as the shell game.

It’s a fairly simple set-up: A man, often wearing shades and fake designer clothing, crouches over three cups and hides a ball under one of them. The cups are shuffled on a mat, while the man’s accomplices form a circle around him and place dummy bets on which contains the ball. Tourists, lured in by the sight of wadges of cash flying back and forth, watch the simple game play out, then try to gamble for themselves. The hapless tourist follows the correct cup only for the man to remove the ball at the last minute with a sleight of hand, revealing an empty cup. The ball then heads into a jacket pocket along with the tourist’s money and the hunt for a new victim continues.

I approached each of the gambling groups in turn requesting to see their gambling licenses. The response followed a typical pattern: Annoyance at being filmed, then an attempt to block the recording, before the exchange concluded with the gambling groups packing-up their kit and making a hasty escape on foot. Some dashed into the busy road to avoid my questions. Others rolled their eyes and expressed exasperation at the temporary disruption of their business. One of the illegal gambling operators was so keen to avoid the London Centric camera he ran off with a tourist’s fifty euro note. After pleading by her, he came back and returned it.

It also seemed there was no honour among thieves. One illegal gambling operator in a puffer jacket repeatedly brushed off my requests to see his gambling licence before suggesting I should instead film other people carrying out the same scam on the bridge.

Jim Waterson speaks to the police about the situation

The man tasked with maintaining law and order on Westminster Bridge is Sergeant Darren Watson, who runs the Metropolitan Police’s Waterloo and South Bank community policing operation.

“I hear you want to talk about my bridge!” he said, with the enthusiasm of a man who readily admits he is facing a never-ending task with limited resources.

Watson has been responsible for policing a large chunk of Lambeth next to the Thames for the last two years. His team of just five officers deals with day-to-day issues involving the area’s residents, as well as looking after one of the world’s most iconic tourist viewpoints. During this time he claims to have made significant progress on reducing the number of illegal operators on the bridge.

“Everyone looks at it and sees it as one problem, as opposed to a series of different problems,” he said. “The gamblers are very different to the street sellers, the peanut sellers, the hot dog sellers, the painting sellers.”

He said gangs like Westminster Bridge because it attracts tourists from areas of the world “that have a gambling culture”, such as India and east Asia: “What’s amazing is how many victims know it’s a scam but it’s a bit of an ego thing — they think they can outsmart the scammer and then they can’t. One was a police officer from the Middle East on holiday. He came up to me and said ‘I knew it was a scam but I thought I could beat it.’”

Watson said the vast majority of the illegal gambling operators on the bridge are Romanian nationals, although many of them have settled status in the UK. The problem of illegal gambling on the bridge has become so acute that Watson, a community policing sergeant in London, has established links with the Romanian authorities, who are happy to help track down the individuals scamming tourists and assisting with deportations: “They have been very good to us in identifying these people. It doesn’t look good for their country.”

During his time policing the bridge, Watson has become used to seeing the same faces again and again. He has also become a connoisseur of YouTube and TikTok videos of men carrying out the same gambling scams in tourist hotspots across Europe. To his surprise, he realised the groups — which he believes may have an organised crime element — shuffle their people across the continent: “If you watch some of the videos from Paris you will see the same people that you see in London. As soon as we start getting hold of them and arrest them they will move on. And they’re immediately replaced.”

One of the most pervasive features on Westminster Bridge is the illegal ice cream vans, which have been semi-permanently parked on the crossing for almost two decades. Their pitches, parked on a Transport for London red route (a version of double yellow lines where there are few justifications for stopping) are illegal. The operators themselves know they are illegal, because they are regularly prosecuted for parking there. The local council know they are illegal and do their best to enforce the law. But the economics make it all worthwhile. A queue of tourists paying vastly over the odds for an ice cream is worth more than the occasional court fine or impoundment of a vehicle.

Lack of enforcement

Amid the colourful world of rival ice cream sellers and Romanian gambling hoaxers, the lack of enforcement on Westminster Bridge seems to stem from a far more prosaic London problem: there is no single power with the responsibility to clean it up. Westminster Bridge is owned and maintained by Transport for London, ultimately under the control of mayor Sadiq Khan. The Metropolitan Police's Waterloo and South Bank neighbourhood policing team are responsible for policing it and stopping criminal offences on the bridge, setting priorities as they see fit with the resources they have. And the prosecution of illegal street trading is a matter for local authorities, which in this case requires the involvement of the licensing and trading standards teams from both Lambeth and Westminster councils — with the boundary between the two boroughs sitting in the middle of the Thames.

Another major problem is British planning laws, which make it very difficult to put CCTV cameras on the Grade II-listed bridge for aesthetic reasons. There is one camera at the Lambeth end, while some of the Westminster end is covered by cameras from the parliamentary estate. The end result is that brazenly illegal activity in the middle section can escape a lot of scrutiny.

Every so often the Sanli family, or another illegal trader, is targeted in a crackdown, in the hope that making an example of them will stop others. In 2012 Lambeth council publicly crushed an ice cream van, as well as obtaining an injunction against the Sanlis trading in the area. But each time they come back, with the lure of money outweighing the punishments available under the law.

Sergeant Watson said he tries to “think outside the box” to find new laws to charge them with. In July 2023 Elma Sanli, the ice cream van boss, was found guilty of trading without a licence on Westminster Bridge. She failed to turn up to court and was fined £1,845, while the court ordered the destruction of three card machines used by her. This January she was convicted at Bromley magistrates’ court of leaving a vehicle in a dangerous position on Westminster Bridge, receiving a fine of £220, costs of £110 and a victim surcharge of £88. Sometimes the police’s roads team will tow the ice cream vans away.

One Sanli employee told London Centric that the vans are driven into position then abandoned on Westminster Bridge without an insured driver inside the vehicle, making them harder to move and ensuring it is more difficult to put points on anyone’s driving licences.

Watson despaired at the lack of suitable punishment available through the legal system: “The money made selling ice creams to tourists far outweighs any penalties they get at court.”

Attention on the lawlessness and chaos on bridge ratcheted up this summer when Ned Donovan, an off-duty special constable, was violently assaulted while trying to stop a bag thief. The Met insists there’s been an uptick in police activity since then and there have been 17 arrests in the last five months for offences linked to Westminster Bridge, including a “significant increase in arrests for immigration offences”.

Watson said he had got to know many of the regular illegal traders by sight and they treated him with respect: “There’s that little bit of old-schoolness among those working on the bridge in the trading side of things. You’ve got a job to do, I’ve got a job to do, I don’t get any grief.”

He insisted that progress has been made and while he wished the councils could do more he knows they’re “as strapped for resources as the rest of us”.

Dr. Mahamed Hashi, Lambeth council cabinet member for safer communities, said his borough is working with Westminster on joint operations against illegal trading on the bridge, with a particular focus on the ice cream vans: “These unlicensed sellers take advantage of visitors, have none of the food hygiene certificates needed and obstruct cyclists on the bridge. We have taken actions including seizing illegally-operated ice cream vans on the bridge, and successfully prosecuted others involved in this trade.”

Transport for London has also been given new powers to crackdown on the rickshaws. But fundamentally it is matter of whether the authorities have the resources and desire to enforce the law.

Watson insisted his small team have made a big difference and reduced the amount of illegal behaviour on Westminster Bridge: “It’s a lot less than it was two years ago, from consistent and persistent enforcement. But if I put one of my cops on there then we don’t answer other things. I have five [police constables] on my team to cover the whole of Waterloo and the South Bank.”

In some ways, petty street crime and entrepreneurial lawlessness are as much a part of London’s historical traditions as the constant arrival of new visitors for criminals to target. The fact that this illegal behaviour still goes on in the shadow of parliament and New Scotland Yard only serves to underline the complexities of policing the capital – just as when the Met was formed almost 200 years ago.

As Watson puts it: “My challenge is trying to get people to understand the challenge we do face. It seems like a very simple problem to solve but it’s not.”

Comment

Street Safe London will in due course publish a follow up blog post focussing on the efforts of the police and local authorities in an attempt to deal with the issues on the bridge and how we may be able to help.