As a proud leader of a London borough, vice chair of London Councils, and a member of the London Assembly, I am dutybound to declare London the greatest city in the world.
However, the capital faces major challenges.
London is home to individuals with incredible wealth alongside some of the poorest in the UK. Around a third of children in London live in poverty – an appalling statistic.
We are also in the midst of a homelessness emergency, with one in 50 Londoners currently homeless and living in temporary accommodation arranged by their local borough.
And on top of all this, London’s economy is struggling. While the capital remains a key source of revenue for the Treasury, there is considerable evidence that London is underperforming economically and even holding back UK productivity rates.
These challenges clearly have a big impact on the lives of the Londoners I represent – but they also have implications for the rest of the country and for national policy.
Going for growth
The recently elected government has declared boosting economic growth its “most central mission of all”. Get the economy growing and we’ll be in a better position to do things like tackle poverty and homelessness. With growth, there will be more resources available to fix social ills and provide much-needed investment in public services.
To a large extent I agree with this analysis. London boroughs certainly support growth as part of our vision of a fairer, greener, as well as more prosperous city.
The problem is, of course, that it is not a simple matter of pressing a big red button labelled ‘growth’ and growth immediately occurring.
In fact, there are plenty of ways in which policy at a national level is failing to support local growth ambitions.
We need far more empowerment of local leadership to initiate and sustain the sort of economic growth we want to see in our communities.
Lib Dem boroughs’ proud record in the face of frustration
Let’s take as an example the three Liberal Democrat-led boroughs in London.
All have shown a steadfast commitment to growth. Backing the Twickenham Riverside development in Richmond, the new Unilever Campus in Kingston, and the London Cancer Hub in Sutton all exemplify the positive pro-growth role councils can play – delivering new homes, new jobs, and umpteen additional benefits for our residents.
But too often our ambitions are undermined by a lack of resources or decisions made by other levels of government.
For instance, although we want to attract investment and boost economic growth, our three boroughs receive the lowest level of transport spending per head in the capital. And without vital transport infrastructure, it becomes extremely difficult to secure large-scale investment for development projects.
Frustratingly, we find ourselves in a chicken and egg situation. At the moment, transport spending is massively skewed to areas with existing infrastructure. In London and elsewhere around the country we need more of a level playing field, with additional transport spending to address areas of low connectivity. This will in turn attract wider economic investment and stimulate the growth we are all aiming for.
Devolve locally to deliver on national ambitions
London boroughs are committed to working constructively with the new government. We share many of the same priorities – and turbocharging growth is central to achieving these.
The government rightfully recognises the contribution councils can make, and devolution – a ‘devolution revolution’, no less – is once again on the agenda.
This is welcome, and London boroughs are pushing to ensure that the capital gets included. London’s devolution settlement is more than two decades old and compared to many similarly sized cities around the world has very few devolved powers. Further devolution is vital for ensuring boroughs and the Mayor of London are fully equipped to work in partnership with the government in boosting economic growth.
A ‘one size fits all’ approach cannot work. So while, for example, we agree with the need for planning reform to help facilitate more housebuilding, communities still need a say in the process. Councils are crucial for making sure new housing is sustainable, built in the right places and with adequate provision of local infrastructure and services.
We’re in a new political era, but grappling with longstanding policy challenges. Addressing the UK’s sluggish economic performance requires much more focus on overcoming the barriers to growth. London boroughs are determined to play our part, and will continue to make the case for devolving to the local level and empowering communities to pursue the growth they need.
* Cllr Gareth Roberts is Leader of Richmond Council, Vice Chair of London Councils, and a London Assembly Member.
London Councils is hosting an event at Liberal Democrat part conference:
‘YIMBYs or NIMBYs: Where do the Liberal Democrats stand on growth in London?’
Monday 16 September, 11.30-12.30pm, Consort Room at The Grand Hotel, Brighton
Speakers:
- Cllr Gareth Roberts, Vice Chair of London Councils and Leader of the London Borough of Richmond (Chair)
- Cllr Luke Taylor, MP for Sutton and Cheam
- Hina Bokhari AM, London Assembly Member
- Muniya Barua, Deputy Chief Executive, BusinessLDN
- Antonia Jennings, Chief Executive, Centre for London
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10 Comments
Thank you for a really relevant article!
Yes, unquestioned, historical and self- interested obstructions to initiatives and non-central agency need to be spotted, analysed and managed. (SpAM)
Change to the composition of the board of the B o E would help equitable growth. It is too heavily representative of the finance industry. It is demonstrably insufficiently representative of those who work in and use resources and resource services, other social groups, and the other three U K nations. (See Richard Murphy’s blog)
As the socio-economic policy/policies of past and present governments, possible influence/controlled by the B o E, is to reduce the amount of money in our economy by means of Austerity/Neoliberalism, especially for less advantaged/disadvantaged areas and groups, how is general growth to be securely achieved?
Devolution of economic policy to regions is certainly an essential element in generating growth and planning reform is a key component.
The issue of available resources is, however, a significant restraint. Chris Dillow argues A case for fiscal austerity
“that unemployment is close to a 50-year low, at just 3.8% of the workforce. Granted there are another 1.9 million people (equivalent to over 5% of the workforce) out of the labour market who say they’d like a job, but many of these are unwell or have caring commitments and so are available only for lighter or more flexible work. The question “where will the money come from?” is a stupid one. But “where will the workers come from?” is certainly not.
Yes, there are some answers: immigration; some early retirees could be tempted back to work by better working conditions; and cutting NHS waiting lists would also get some back to work.
Nevertheless, the fact is that the pool of available labour is small. Yes, there are some GPs out of work, but fewer builders and skilled workers than there were a few years ago.
Which means that any significant rise in public spending and hence demand for labour is likely to bid up wages. The Bank of England will see that as potentially inflationary and would raise interest rates. This wouldn’t wholly be disastrous: higher rates would help bring down house prices and reduce some of the more egregiously socially useless financial activities. But it does mean you could kiss goodbye to big housebuilding, as this is the most interest-sensitive sector of the economy.” (cont)
(Cont) Dillow concludes “Macroeconomic policy must not be a matter of ideology but of empirical fact: you should run a loose policy when there’s spare capacity in the economy and a tight one when there isn’t. Truss’s unforgivable error was to not appreciate this.
What’s more, a tight fiscal policy is entirely compatible with radical economic policies elsewhere: land value taxes, a basic income, a maximum wage, planning reform, economic democracy, proper regulation of monopolies and so on. And don’t think such measures don’t address the pressing need to improve public services. They do: anything that gets the economy growing will boost tax revenues.
One of the great failings of social democracy has been thinking of economic policy too much in terms of public spending and not enough about other policies to foster equality and efficiency. The big failing of Starmer’s Labour is not that it is offering fiscal austerity, but that it is offering nothing else.”
“Get the economy growing and we’ll be in a better position to do things like tackle poverty and homelessness. With growth, there will be more resources available to fix social ills and provide much-needed investment in public services.”
Step 1 : Steal underpants
Step 2: ????????
Step 3: Profit
I’d wander if some authorities should be enlarged before giving them extra powers. Otherwise you’re potential creating allot of duplication and they may not have the purchasing power for infrastructure projects.
In London perhaps it could look something like this:
https://londonist.com/2012/10/boroughs#disqus_thread
Did I miss the article on the Grenfell enquiry?
In. basic socio-economic terms, there are but two groups of people in our society. One is the borrowers and the other the lenders. Neoliberalism/Austerity presents bank rate rises as the only antidote to externally caused inflation when the secure reality is that it, inevitably, makes the borrowers and poor poorer and the lenders richer.
How does making the poor poorer and the rich richer address the causes of external inflation factors such as the so sad war in Ukraine?
Might a more widely informed and democratic B o E be able to develop better attitudes and approaches to inflation which, like the weather, is always with us and can be managed by using realism and equitable attitudes and practices instead of unkind ideologies?
LibDem administrations don’t always get practical projects right. The demolition of the Kingfisher leisure centre in Kingston was a bad mistake.
UK growth 2023 (economist) 0.7%
UK net immigration 2023 ~ 680k
UK population 20323 ~ 68M
growth in population ~1%
Net per capita growth 2023 minus 0.3%
Devolution if done right can create local growth. It needs a wide spectrum of powers and the funding to exercise them. We need a much less controlling centre that acts more like a redistribution and allocation centre than the present we know best one we currently have with a corresponding shift in resources.