Innovacion

Croydon and Gatwick: Competitive Opportunities and Risk

For Croydon Council Innovacion is considering the strategic options and issues in developing the functional relationship between Croydon and Gatwick including its economic hinterland. Risks to Croydon’s attraction and retention of firms were considered along with its sectoral strengths and the required supporting infrastructure.

Innovacion investigate business impacts of congestion at Blackwall Tunnel

Innovacion is helping to assess and review the business impacts of traffic congestion at the Blackwall Tunnel as part of Transport for London’s short listing appraisal of proposed river crossings in east London. Evidence was brought together from a range of literature and secondary sources as well as through a roadside survey and selected business case studies.

TCPA Sustainable Communities and Planning Conference: 1 Dec 2009

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.

Download TCPA Annual Conference 1 Dec 2009 Brochure

People or Proximity: Where does growth come from in outer London?

As a successful retail centre in a great location on the Thames, Kingston is the desirable home for highly skilled workers. Access to high quality environments (parks, river) and the transport network (Heathrow, Gatwick, roads) also add to the attractive locational mix. And Kingston has the high house prices and waiting lists for good state and private schools to prove it.  

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.