London's 300 year old Black Boy Lane to be renamed

Politically correct councillors are set to spend £186,000 of taxpayers’ cash renaming a 300-year-old road – despite no evidence it has racist connotations.

Labour-run Haringey Council decided to change the name of Black Boy Lane, in West Green, north London, last year after the Black Lives Matter protests but residents are firmly against it.

It will provide a ‘voluntary’ £300 payment to the 183 homes impacted by the proposal to call it La Rose Lane – after local poet John La Rose. 

The authority will also spend £50,000 on a salary for a support and administration officer to help the residents affected. Alongside other costs, such as replacing signage, the project will cost an estimated £186,000.

Haringey Council is unsure about the context of the street’s name and historians say it is likely to have come from a former pub nearby called the Black Boy, which was the nickname for King Charles II.

Some 72 per cent of the residents who responded to a consultation last month are firmly against the name change.

And 55 per cent of those in the St Ann’s ward, which Black Boy Lane is a part of, do not want the proposal to go ahead.