Innovacion

Innovacion study for Outer London Commission published

Innovacion's analysis of eight key locations in outer London produced for the LDA has been published by the Mayor of London's Outer London Commission. Using a range of information sources the study considered various economic characteristics of Croydon, Stratford, the Heathrow Area, Brent Cross, Wembley, Kingston, Woolwich and the Upper Lee Valley. These included economic scale, economic profile and performance, business and skills base, property (current supply), planning (future supply) and economic catchments.

View the study on the Outer London Commission website

Download Key Locations in Outer London Published Version

How 7,500 residents are improving their lifestyles in Sunderland

With significant health inequalities occurring in eleven of its 25 wards, Sunderland City Council and Sunderland Teaching Primary Care Trust have created a comprehensive city-wide Wellness Service to positively improve lifestyles and encourage physical activity.  Delivery occurs through six Wellness Centres, often with other co-located services, and at other community locations which specifically target the deprived areas of the city.  Over 7,500 residents are now members of these centres and there are over 300,000 visits each year.

Read more in Innovacion's case study in IDeA's Partnership and Places library

Andy Rumfitt appointed to the TCPA Policy Council

At last night's AGM Andy Rumfitt was elected to the Town and Country Planning Association's Policy Council.

The TCPA campaigns for the reform of the UK’s planning system to make it more responsive to people’s needs and aspirations and to promote sustainable development.

The TCPA occupies a unique position, overlapping with those involved in the development industry, the environmental movement and those concerned with social justice. The Association prides itself on leading-edge, radical thinking and problem-solving.

Its objectives are to:

• Secure a decent, well designed home for everyone, in a human-scale environment combining the best features of town and country
• Empower people and communities to influence decisions that affect them
• Improve the planning system in accordance with the principles of sustainable development

Innovacion to research public attitudes about dairy products

For the third year running Innovacion and Swift Research have been appointed to complete the Dairy Council's annual Consumer Survey. The survey gauges public opinion and attitudes about food, dairy products and current nutritional issues for a nationally representative sample of the general public from across the UK.  The survey forms part of the Dairy Council’s attitudinal research programme and informs their marketing, PR and communications strategies.

When a hub is not a hub

Launched yesterday the Mayor's proposals for the London Plan give an indication how the Spatial Development Strategy for London is likely to develop in the future. Economically this comes at a tricky time when it would be easy to be distracted while getting used to the "new normal" - as Lee Shostak has correctly termed where we are now.

The sub-regional conundrum continues.  Despite abandoning a rather peculiar sub-regional division of London that removed central London (the so called pizza slices and about as memorable) the new sub-regional split puts Tower Hamlets and therefore Canary Wharf in East London.  I'm not sure any of the occupiers of Canary Wharf, which is more Manhattan than anywhere else in London, see themselves as anything else but a (better) part of the Central Activity Zone.

The proposals also give some indication of the emerging policy for Outer London and the impact of the Mayor's Commission in getting a greater a better deal for the suburbs.  The mooted hubs (and at one point super hubs) have become "strategic Outer London development centres".  This is probably due to the existence of the fairly elaborate town centre hierarchy in London and how different the four suggested potential hubs locations are.  

The loosely defined Heathrow area is a very specialised and enormous airport economy. It is also congested so there is little appetite for increased development. Brent Cross is currently a regional shopping centre that if bolted together with Cricklewood could, on paper at least, become a Metropolitan Centre. Despite being a "pillar" of the London economy and touted as the seventh largest "city" in the UK, Croydon has been losing employment for the last 15 to 20 years to growing centres outside the Green Belt and has a mediocre office stock. Which leaves Stratford. With its vast development potential and planned investment, Stratford probably is closest to having the capacity to become a hub, genuinely grow jobs on the back of its proximity to the Central Activity Zone and have a real "polycentric" or spatial economic impact on the London economy.  By avoiding a "one size fits all" approach to developing these strategic Outer London development centres the Mayor is accepting the extent of these differences.  Though, on the flip side, the danger of allowing limitless local flexibility could leave people asking exactly what the plans are.  It is a tricky balance.