by Callum McGoldrick, researcher
London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, has just accepted a £5,281 pay rise. This brings his total salary up to £170,282. Khan is now paid more than the prime minister and is Britain’s highest paid politician.
First elected in 2016, Khan became London’s third mayor and in 2024 became the first to be elected for a third term. Over the nine years Khan has been in office he has seen his base salary increase by £26,371, just shy of the £27,000 London living wage. City Hall has also seen an expansion in senior level staff with nine deputy mayors under Khan.
It now takes 347 band D London council taxpayers to fund Khan’s new salary and 2,772 to fund his deputy mayors. Combined, Khan, his nine deputy mayors and six top aides cost £2 million per year. That is equivalent to 232,282 daily capped tube fares in zones 1-3 or 193,437 ULEZ charges. It is no wonder that City Hall is keen to keep the gravy train scheme going.
All of this raises the question; are Khan and his senior staff worth it?
Despite Khan claiming last month that there is a fall in some crime, the mayor is being highly selective with his statistics. Between April and June 2024 and the same period in 2025, the amount of reported knife crimes, residential burglaries and personal thefts fell. Khan omitted that possession of weapons, rape and drug trafficing all increased.
According to the ONS, recorded crime has increased by 31.5 per cent with violent crime increasing by 40 per cent from 2015, the last full year Khan was not in office, to 2025, within the Metropolitan Police’s area.
CrimeRate show that theft from the person offences are 22 times higher than the national average in London in 2025 and the rate at which the crime is increasing is 12 times the national average over the last three years. Robbery and shoplifting are also trending upwards at a faster pace than the national average, showing this to be a London specific problem. This is without accounting for the widespread and growing problem of underreporting due to the shrinking probability of crimes being even investigated, let alone solved. Even the London Assembly is acknowledging this as an issue.
Beyond Khan’s poor performance on crime is his abysmal record with Transport for London (TfL). In his 2016 manifesto, Khan pledged to “reduce the number of days lost to strike action.” His latest pay rise comes just days after yet another round of strikes lasting from the 7th September through to the 12th.
London’s first mayor, Ken Livingstone oversaw 16 strike days and Boris Johnson, the second mayor, oversaw 35 strike days, across eight years each. Sadiq Khan has now overseen 151 days of strikes with previous ones only averted after offering out costly pay rises. Khan called the strikes under Johnson, “a sign of failure.” What exactly would he call the ones under himself, given there have been four times as many?
Sadiq Khan's new salary and the expanding payroll at City Hall raise a simple but urgent question for London's taxpayers: what are they getting for their money? While the mayor and his senior staff enjoy significant pay packets, their performance on key issues has left much to be desired.
The crime statistics are a damning indictment of the mayor's time in office, with violent crime and theft soaring, despite selective spin from City Hall. Meanwhile, his transport legacy is one of broken promises and more than four times the number of strike days of his predecessor, repeatedly holding London to ransom.
Londoners are being asked to fund a lavish gravy train at City Hall while facing a less safe city and a less reliable transport network. The evidence is clear, the current leadership is a costly failure. It is high time for accountability, not another pay rise.