While the diverse nature of Outer London has been rightly highlighted in the new consultation draft of the London Plan, strategies for accelerating its economic growth in tough times will have to be carefully handled with care.
Rumfitt A; "Outer London - handle with care"; Town & Country Planning (December 2009)
Download Outer London - handle with care (TCPA December 2009)
Adding 40% to London’s rail transport capacity and opening in 2017, the £16 billion Crossrail scheme will be the largest transport project in the Greater South East for 50 years. With Regeneris and Cyril Sweett, Innovacion have been commissioned to help the LDA to identify and secure the wider regeneration benefits that Crossrail could provide around the location of the 29 London stations and their hinterlands and to identify where there are market failures that could benefit from public sector investment. The end product will be an investment plan outlining key milestones and timescales for specific interventions by the LDA.
This conference celebrates the Centenary of the Housing and Town Planning Act 1909 and addresses the planning challenges of today. As John Burns, President of the Local Government Board, said, the 1909 Act would ‘provide a domestic condition for the people in which their physical health, their morals, their character, and their whole social condition can be improved’. While ‘morals’ are now left to those outside the planning system, it is still through planning that housing and social conditions can be improved, and the new, big challenge is, of course, climate change.
Retail aside Kingston’s relative specialisation in business services aligns with a key international strength of London. Parts of this specialisation will be in providing local business services. In Kingston, the usual range of local accountants and solicitors will service the needs of the local business community and a burgeoning army of freelancers, many home based, as well as benefitting from a high level of passing trade. Other parts will be linked to London’s globally competitive strength in business and professional services. These are built on an extensive and deep labour market across the 21 million residents in the Greater South East.
Two thirds (64%) of the residential workforce in Kingston are managers and professionals compared to just 42% in Croydon. This is a non-trivial difference. Being able to source highly skilled local labour is a key comparative advantage for the firms in Kingston. And goes some way to explain the relatively low level of out commuting for such a residential part of outer London. The make-up of a local area’s population including its occupational profile has a big impact on long term economic development.
Over the other side of outer London different drivers are at work. Despite its relatively poor river crossing options, north Bexley has developed as a relatively (in a London context) cost effective location for a range of near market functions. As time really is money Michael Porter and others identified this proximity advantage many years ago. These locations offer potential as the profitable base for time sensitive activities. So in Belvedere we have a concentration of food logistics operations such as ASDA, Londis and Lidl, office support services such as Viking Direct, Iron Mountain and Office Depot plus construction and printing. Here the most important competitive advantage is proximity to a very large consumer market plus the central London concentration of office functions. Without this near market logic other economic activities which are exposed to international cost pressures such as the manufacture of cables are very much history.
Understanding the underlying drivers explains how a local economy got to where it is today. But it also sets parameters on where it can go tomorrow.
The LDA, SEEDA and EEDA have commissioned Innovacion to draft a prospectus for the Greater South East mega-region which is home to 21 million people and a £523 billion economy - 43% of the national economy. Drawing from wide range of internal research across the three RDAs, including new low carbon initiatives and New Industry New Jobs sectoral priorities, Innovacion will develop a top level narrative for the UK's only mega city-region that outlines what the Greater South East needs to secure its future economic competitiveness and respond to the UK's current economic challenges.
Andy Rumfitt has been appointed as a Delivering Design Quality Enabler for Transform South Yorkshire. Andy will bring his 18 years of economic development experience from many different areas and geographies to help the largest Housing Market Renewal area to champion design, build capacity, develop projects and disseminate best practice. Including Sheffield, Doncaster, Barnsley and Rotherham Transform South Yorkshire covers 130,000 dwellings and almost 300,000 residents.
As part of a Regeneris team Innovacion have been appointed by Merton Council to provide advice on the future economic development of Merton, the home borough for the world renown Wimbledon tennis championships. To help design the economic development strategy Innovacion's specialist inputs will cover town centre development within London's hierarchy of places, the role and functioning of the outer London economy, sectoral development options and the identification of endogenous sources of growth in the local economy.
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.
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.
Innovacion have been appointed to advise Transport for London on objective setting and the economic benefits of river crossings in the context the revised Mayor's Transport Strategy (MTS), the London Development Agency's draft Investment Plan and the revision process for the London Plan.
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