What good will the London Growth Plan do?

If the headline’s question mark suggests a certain scepticism it is because we have passed this way before.

The Labour Party was talking about strengthening regional economies long before it won its huge general election victory, and when the then shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves joined Sadiq Khan during his re-election campaign in early April a “London growth plan” was promised. The following month, Keir Starmer held a meeting of Labour Mayors and spoke of developing a “gold standard” for increasing prosperity across the country.

In response, though, Paul Swinney of think tank Centre for Cities dug out some recent history, reminding us that the Conservatives said this sort of thing in 2010. Before that, there were regional regeneration bodies, including the London Development Agency, which, among other things, played a big part in assembling the land for the 2012 Olympic Park, but was done away with in the year of the Games themselves.

Swinney warned that putting such plans together can take up lots of time (and sometimes money) to no great effect. They also raise certain questions. Will they work in productive concert with national programmes, and how? Do we need such plans at all, given that plenty of deep thinking about the bespoke needs of different regions’ economies and deeper devolution has already been done?

Against this backdrop, London’s two layers of government, its local authorities and City Hall, have been working with others on putting the capital’s growth plan together. The process was formally kicked off on 1 August, with an introductory briefing to interested parties by Mayor of Croydon Jason Perry in his capacity as London Councils executive member for London’s future, covering business and growth, and Sadiq Khan’s Deputy Mayor for Business and Growth, Howard Dawber.

The starting point was the familiar two sides of London’s economic story since the global financial crisis of 2007-08: one the one hand, the capital has continued to be the UK’s economic powerhouse; on the other, it faces strong competition and is held back by high levels of inequality and productivity which, although higher than the rest of the country’s, has not been increasing of late.

The aims of the growth plan were defined as supporting London’s familiar high-performance sectors – financial services, leisure and tourism, hospitality, property development, and education and research – while maintaining its appeal as a place in which to live, work and study. The importance of the Central Activities Zone, covering the West End, the City and Canary Wharf, as “a gateway to the rest of London and the UK” was stressed.

But prominence was also given to the need to boost local economies outside of the CAZ. It was pointed out that “many parts of London suffer from under-investment and currently don’t meet their economic and social potential”. The growth plan will seek to set out for the government how boroughs, City Hall, various “anchor organisations” – such as universities, business groups and cultural as well as government bodies – and communities might collaborate to make the most of those areas’ potential.

There was, too, a warning that “London should not aim for growth at all costs” and a reminder that a lot of Londoners do not benefit from the city’s economic successes. Often, they lack the skills they need now and will need in the future to secure good work. The Reeves-Khan joint appearance in April floated the goal of creating an additional 150,000 high-quality, well-paid jobs in the capital by 2028. The growth plan will point to equipping more Londoners to secure them, if and when those jobs appear.

Dawber underlines for On London the importance of broad-based collaboration on the growth plan, embracing public and private sector organisations and unions too. An engagement period was set to continue until early October, and by the time of the 1 August briefing, proposals and priorities were already coming in: more devolution, including control of the spending of taxes raised in London to London government; a clear, long-term New Zero policy; an improved trading relationship with the European Union; planning system reform; action against retail crime.

“The growth plan will be ambitious, but practical,” Dawber says. “We are still open for good ideas and to identifying challenges and problems we need to tackle.” He also says it will be informed by the current London Plan, the Mayor’s master blueprint for London’s spatial development, and, he hopes, also inform the next one, which will need to be broadly consistent with national government’s revised National Planning Policy Framework. And he stresses that the London growth plan will meet the new government’s wish to form part of its national industrial strategy.

All the stars, local, regional and national, must be aligned. The aim is to complete the London growth plan before the end of the year.

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