Wednesday, May 20, 2009

London's Poverty Profile

Yesterday I attended the launch of a report documenting poverty in London. Produced by the City Parochial Foundation and the New Policy Institute the study provides a high level review right across the capital.

For the many people who claim that inner London has all the problems and outer London has all the money, this report contains a few surprises:

Since the late 1990s outer London has experienced a significant deterioration across a number of indicators including child and working age poverty. More of the capital's low income population now live in outer London than in inner London.

Since the mid 2000s inner London's unemployment rate has been falling but outer London's unemployment rate has been rising.

Havering is one of the worst four boroughs in London for low pay by place of work, the others being Bexley, Merton and Waltham Forest, all in outer London.

Redbridge is one of the worst eight London boroughs for households in temporary accommodation.

There is evidence here that the process of redistribution from outer to inner London which was a feature of the 2000-2008 mayoral terms has gone too far. I hope that Boris draws the same conclusion.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Being a resident of Redbridge and knowing that there are nearly 3000 people in temporary accomomdation.

There are nearly 12,000 people on the council housing waiting list, and according to Inside Housing Redbridge Council (a misnomer at the moment due to infighting within the Conservative group, so no leadership) have still yet to agree targets with the Mayor (Boris) over the numbers of units to be built.

Did someone in the council just think that the numbers of people needing housing would just dissappear?

All of the above, does not bode well for the provision of housing for the number of residents above.

Newbie.