Inequality

London needs a new story for the levelling up era

This article originally appeared in the Local Government Chronicle.

The capital should be at the heart of the debate about what it means for a local economy to be successful.

February’s levelling up white paper represented a long-overdue admission from the government that our economic model does not work for the majority of our country. Unfortunately, this important recognition does not seem to have translated into a prescription that reflects the scale of change that needs to take place. The government’s remedy, sadly, is for more of the same: ‘growing the pie, everywhere, for everyone’.
“On conventional measures of ‘economic success’, London could be understood as doing well”
As London has a pretty large slice of that pie, it could be assumed that, to deliver on levelling up, the government is seeking to mirror the regions to the capital’s success. On conventional measures of ‘economic success’, London could be understood as doing well.

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Levelling up needs to get real – but so does our response to it

This article originally appeared in The Municipal Journal

Levelling up is the latest buzz phrase being bandied about to address the stark divisions and variations in economic performance across the country. Whilst it is welcome that the government seems to be concerned by this unacceptable state of affairs, we must view with some scepticism a new phrase landing upon a problem which has deep and longstanding roots.

We have indeed fallen far – research undertaken by CLES has shown that many of the regions and nations of the UK have spent time in recession through recent years. We need to get real about levelling up – the scale of the challenge facing us, and the structural factors that underpin the problem.

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We need to talk about nightlife   

The creative sector represents a huge employer in the UK. It contributes billions to the economy, employs thousands, and is a key export of our economy. Yet the sector faces enormous challenges in UK cities. The cost of rent, poor connectivity, and licencing problems resulting from city centre residential developments are just some of the issues cultural operators face.

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The Rich List reveals that we need wealth for all

The spectacle of this year’s Sunday Times Rich List has revealed, yet again, that Britain’s richest are getting richer still. Published yesterday, the list shows that Britain’s 1,000 richest individuals and families are sitting on record wealth of £771.3bn, up £47.8bn in a year. The UK’s billionaire count has climbed to 151, up six on last year. The threshold at which the super-rich make the list has risen £5m to £120m.[1]

In other news (from the same paper on the same day) we learn that an emergency food bank has been set up in the Whitehall offices of a government department, after cleaners and other support staff became the victims of a payroll blunder by one of Britain’s biggest outsourcing companies.[2] The human cost of this incident adds to the growing number of people in the UK who cannot afford basic needs such as food.[3]

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We need a society which is on the up

The Social Mobility Commission has confirmed what many have long known – governments have failed to significantly reduce inequalities. The Brexit vote and the subsequent soul searching has finally brought many of these issues to the fore. The growing sense of disenfranchisement in the country and increasing gap between “haves and have nots” is now penetrating mainstream discourse, prompting a political rhetoric of an ‘economy that works for all’ where the benefits of growth are shared among the ‘many, not the few’.

What we have been doing has clearly not worked

The UK economy has not worked for all for a long time. Indeed our economic models for decades have tolerated, and been somewhat unconcerned, by high levels of socio-economic inequality. What we have been doing collectively to address challenges of poverty and inequality over the past two decades have clearly not worked. In its report Social mobility policies between 1997 and 2017: time for change, the Commission argues that successive governments have failed to make social mobility the cornerstone of domestic policy, and that long-term progress has too often been sacrificed to short-term change. A piecemeal approach has bought some advances, but a failure to develop a holistic policy approach has meant that gains have been lost as efforts have waxed and waned.

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The Spring Budget: Robin Hood in Reverse?

In the Budget, wealthy businesses in thriving parts of the country were granted a smoother transition to their new higher business rates bill. This easing-in period for successful businesses will be subsidised by a “fair” increase in National Insurance Contributions by 1% to 10% for the self-employed – raising £145m a year by 2021/22.

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We must accelerate the alternatives

The economic crisis has turned into a social crisis and local economic policy is failing.  Poverty, inequality, affordability of housing, low wages, insecure work are now ingrained in our cities.  We need a new radical urbanism so that we address these issues and deliver better social outcomes at scale.

However, there is an irony.  There is no shortage of wealth in our cities.  Whilst a few people and areas enjoy the huge benefits of economic success, many people and areas do not. Take a walk from any city centre.  Once you leave the global chain stores, buzzy restaurants, glorious public spaces, new urban living and high end retail, you will get to the district centres.  In these places, there is a different story.  You cannot always see the poverty and despair, as many areas have undergone a physical regeneration, but the signs are there.  Speak to people or an NGO and the daily hardship of surviving on low wages, youth unemployment and increasing housing costs, become evident.  This is not acceptable.  The future has to be about making existing and new wealth work better for local people and communities.

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An economy for the many, not the few: the focus for inclusive growth?

In recent months, there has been a global recognition that we must make growth more ‘inclusive’. In the UK, this has culminated in the RSA announcing an inclusive growth commission.

This is welcome. There is no doubt that in recent years we have neglected what we have known for decades – namely that economic growth does not guarantee poverty reduction and that inequality hampers growth. Indeed, high levels of welfare and low levels of spending power is a shaky basis to a local economy. An inclusive local economy needs the poor to not be poor.

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Time for home: lessons learned from the US

I have spent the last three weeks in Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and Providence exploring how those cities have responded to economic decline and indeed economic opportunity. I have been fascinated by the levels of collaboration, the role of anchor institutions, the scale of foundation resource, and the ability to raise and redistribute taxation as means of enabling that response. While I have seen lots of good work in those localities, I have also been amazed by the scale of the remaining challenge, particularly in terms of addressing inequality.

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A manifesto for local economies

In recent years there has been no shortage of reports about how bad austerity is and how it is affecting the poorest the most. However, while much of this is well meaning, it is short on what we need to do differently. In the new manifesto for local economies, the Centre for Local Economic Strategies (Cles) sets out ideas which breaks out of this austerity narrative and the present timidity of some proposed alternatives. For us, decent public services and fairness work with and for prosperity and against poverty and inequality. Cles draws on a range of experiences to reclaim a local economics which work for social justice.

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Public health cannot be separated from economic development

Ill health is not just a social problem, says the chief executive of the Centre for Local Economic Strategies. For the past four months an independent inquiry has been sifting through evidence to examine why health inequalities are growing both within the north of England and between the north and the rest of the country.

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  • RESEARCH

    Due North: Report of the Inquiry on Health Equity for the North

    15th September 2014
    89.3kB     .pdf
    The report details evidence on trends in health inequalities and flowing from this provides a set of recommendations – based on...