The Chancellor and the Mayor of London this week set out their six-point long term economic plan for London, showing what has been delivered, what is underway, and what more can be done to make the city prosperous in the long term.
In speeches at the Tate Modern, the Chancellor and the Mayor set out the detailed plan to:
- Secure London’s strong economic future by setting the ambition to outpace the growth of New York City, adding £6.4bn to the London economy by 2030. This is equivalent to £600 more per person if London’s productivity grows at the same pace projected for New York.
- Create over half a million extra jobs in London by 2020 by backing businesses, attracting world wide investment and continuing to raise standards in schools.
- Solve London’s acute housing problem, the number one challenge facing the city, by building over 400,000 new homes – including through a London Land Commission to identify and support development of brownfield and public sector land.
- Deliver £10 billion of new investment in London’s transport over the next Parliament including new tube improvements, better roads, more buses and cycle lanes and identifying the next big infrastructure investment after Crossrail.
- Make London a centre of the world’s creative and commercial life, with new investment in science, finance, technology and culture. This will include a new feasibility study to develop a world class concert hall for London which will be led by the Barbican Centre.
- Give more power to Londoners to control their city’s future, with new powers for the Mayor of London to support economic growth, boost skills in the capital and have more control over planning powers.
There are no quick fixes for achieving these important goals, so the Chancellor and the Mayor of London are also setting out a specific timetable to deliver the key concepts of this plan over the five years of the next Parliament, and the following decade.
Chelsea and Fulham MP, Greg Hands, commented: “Our long-term economic plan is turning London around with 615,000 new jobs in the private sector since the election and thousands of new businesses springing up across the skyline. Step by step we are securing a better future for our capital city.
“This plan will help create half a million extra jobs in the next five years – and is part of our commitment to bringing security and prosperity to families across our capital city. I look forward to us rising to the challenge for London to outpace the growth of New York– this is the equivalent of making people £600 better off by 2030.
“However our best chance of meeting the aims of this plan is to elect a Conservative government at the next General Election. The choice at the next election – between competence and chaos; between our long-term economic plan and Labour’s Ed Miliband, who is just not up to the job. Labour don’t have a plan for Britain’s future. They would put all the progress we have made at risk with their call for more spending and more borrowing.”
The Chancellor and Mayor also announced a number of new specific measures to improve transport links. These include:
· announcing an extension to the 24-hour tube routes to include the London Overground in 2017. The Mayor has also committed to buying 200 additional new Routemaster buses this year, and 800 per year from 2016,
· asking Transport for London to come forward with prioritised proposals for exciting new infrastructure projects including Crossrail 2, the Bakerloo Line extension, the Old Oak Common redevelopment and the next phase of Underground upgrades.