Focus on London

Throughout our work, we took a specific focus on London, funded by the Trust for London. We pulled out London’s position, and variations within London wherever data allowed.  This included:

• Evidence on the distribution of economic outcomes in London, and how these are changing, broken down by age, gender, ethnicity (and country of birth where available), occupational social class, disability status, sub-region and housing tenure.
• Analysis of the ways in which central government policy is designed to impact differently in London, and how it could be expected to produce different outcomes.
• Analysis of changes in spending on services by London local authorities.
• Evidence on policy outputs in London, compared with other areas, in selected areas such as changes in school provision, affordable house-building, numbers of housing benefit claims.
• A breakdown where possible of policy impacts for London compared with other areas (for example trends in school attainment, differences in poverty rates before and after housing costs).
• Analysis of trends in neighbourhood deprivation in London.

The report Prosperity, Poverty and Inequality in London 2000/01-2010/11 contains our initial analysis of changes in London, this is supplemented by The Changing Anatomy of Economic Inequality in London (2007-2013) as well as an associated paper on the changing nature of government housing subsidy and its impact on the spatial distribution of poverty.

In addition, we conducted some local case studies to provide a close up picture of how the recession, austerity measures and social policy reforms are combining to impact specific groups and specific neighbourhoods.  In particular, we are considering the different approaches that local authorities are taking in order to try and address the burden of these challenges. An interim report Hard Times, New Directions? The Impact of Local Government Spending Cuts in London on this local work was published in December 2013. A final report on neighbourhood-level impacts was published in summer 2014.