Shaping London’s economic future

London's young really need to be prioritized.  Investment in their mental wellbeing: City Hall, schools and local authorities working together with NHS CAMHS.  London's young would also benefit immensely from Britain reentering the Erasmus programme and with greater school exchanges with: the US, France, Germany, Sweden, Spain, South Korea, India and other countries.  

The major limiting factor to almost all of our economic problems seems to be a massively overbearing planning burden blocking new housing, placating the NIMBYs who can’t stand high density housing. Reducing the rent cost everyone spends on housing/commercial space means individuals and businesses have more disposable income to invest in themselves. If I weren’t so worried about saving for a modest house to start a family, I would absolutely be pausing my career to do a PhD, which would ultimately make me far more productive. However, biological clocks exist and I don’t have time for 4 years of near poverty wages. 

Some policies I am in favour of:

Major overhaul of planning process: we should simplify rules to allow developers/private home improvers to almost never require a case worker. The rules should be clear and allow automatic permission for as much as possible.

 
Expand the rights of those who own flats to be able to extend their property. We need to incentivise high density living to meet the housing supply shortfall, yet leaseholders of flats have almost no power and are left at the whims of functionally unaccountable building management companies. I say this as a private renter who has a great landlord but an absolutely useless building management agency that has legal power to forbid the landlord from performing basic repairs, instead contracting out to the cheapest most ineffective agency they could find, leaving my flat actively leaking for eight months. 

6-story minimum for all but exceptional cases of new housing development. I want the density of Kensington all over London. This keeps commute times low, is far more carbon efficient, and allows businesses to thrive with the huge local consumer base. 

Finally, air conditioning should be standard in housing. We should invest in solar power to meet this need, but the productivity loss from lack of sleep is only going to worsen with climate change. We should prepare now. 

I don't think this survey provides meaningful information for those intending to make change to the London landscape, whether in terms of housing, transport, education, entertainment. In fact, it is very difficult to see just what information the survey is intended to elicit from respondents. If, as I suspect, it is about the Mayor's plans to enlarge the population of London, the survey does not address this matter directly. I think it will be disastrous for London, to grow beyond its present size. It will also be disastrous for London if the Mayor is allowed to continue with his plans to build 100s of tower blocks all in and around the city. If anything, London's daytime and nightime population needs to come down by about 2 million. The city is overcrowded, transport facilities are inadequate to meet the needs of residents and visitors, the water and sewage systems are already overloaded, the streets are clogged with cars (why do private cars need to come into central London at all!), skip lorries, concrete pump lorries, all sorts of vehicles connected with the building industry. London is short of doctors' surgeries, dentists, hospital beds, schools, libraries. We have lost our night sky. We are lacking green spaces. The Mayor should copy Paris, where building heights are strictly controlled and, gradually, 15-minute 'cities' are being created so people can do almost everything they want within a 15-minute walk. London is, slowly but surely, becoming unlivable. As for the idea of creating a 'hub' with Oxford and Cambridge, that is a ludicrous idea. 

Grow the solidarity economy in London!

Including but not limited to:

• organising the economy to meet our needs rather than generate profits for the rich
• cooperatives, owned and run by and for the community and the workers
• ecological and just creation / production / exchange / use / surplus allocation of goods and services
• shorter working hours
• equal pay and/or social waging
• end landlordism, right to permanent housing for all

Mental Health Support for Work

Unemployment ruins mental health. Economies need roles to be created and filled that support the mental health of would be workers and possible business starters, regardless of age. To engage with these people requires investment through the hardest part - the beginning- of any endeavour regarding work, business and finances.

Rules and attitudes tend to block progress; if you are sick, you’re discouraged from trying to start a business. But if you START feeling better you’re forced to enter the work market before you’re really ready, thus health relapses ensue. Causing  a loss to the economy and increasing tax burdens via the benefits resumption to those whose business or job fails.

Support is needed!

My local high street isn’t very local at all—I live in an neighbourhood that sees lots of people flocking to on the weekends (which is great for the economy). But the businesses on the high street cater to the visitors, not the residents:  4 gelato shops, 2 creperies, 1 chain bookstore, more designer labels than I can count. Not one of those things are local or independent—and not one of those things actually help me in my day-to-day. 

The traffic in my neighbourhood is also atrocious.  The wealthy residents are not fazed at all by the expensive cost of parking and drive 5 minutes from home to pick up their children from school, clogging the streets. Local busses can barely get down the road sometimes because of the parked cars and traffic. It makes going to businesses difficult and ruins the ambience and is horrible for the environment. 

The main issue with the economy in London is that even if you have a decent job, which would allow you to support a family and have a normal living condition and work life balance anywhere else, you never earn enough in London because transport and rent are unaffordable. Rent and home prices are out of control. Everyone excuses this with demand and supply, but it is clear that prices are artificially inflated. It is not possible that rents go up so much every year without regulation, even if you have lived in the same home for a long while. This shouldn’t be allowed by law. I would understand a small contribution for higher expenses, but rents that go up with fake inflation data that only benefit landlords is criminal.

The public transport is a total scam. I would understand the current prices if all the lines were like the Elizabeth line, but apart from the Elizabeth line, the prices of the tube and buses are unjustified. How is it possible that a monthly travel card costs the same as taking the transport by paying trip by trip, and in certain circumstances even more if you don’t travel every day? It’s a total scam. Everywhere in the world, a monthly subscription would reduce the cost to at least half the price, which would benefit residents, and tourists would still pay the full price because they don’t stay a month.

Not to mention the yearly subscription that has a ridiculous price, but it’s clear that this is a tax, literally robbery from a left wing administration that says it does things for the people. What a shame. And all this, you go out and it seems to be like living in a third world country due to the low standards of everything from cleaning conditions to safety, crime, and antisocial behavior. What a mess London is. Shame on you for administering so badly.

Improving the infrastructure of the economy through these innovative ideas

logistics software that finds the quickest routes, reorder from suppliers easily access all of them, and automate processes and repetitive work in bulk. Better designed automations in factories that require less attendance with a device using software connected to the machines to do work and check when things are going wrong.

remote IT diagnostics can stop people from being disrupted at work.

automation of administration tasks using machine learning and ai in bulk.

I feel there should be more fairness for those of us who live in the south east outer London boroughs where we face the prospect of having , very soon, to pay to cross the Thames at Blackwall and the new Silvertown tunnel with charges already for the Dartford crossing too. Why do those on the west side of London not have to pay for crossing the river? There are plenty of bridges for them which will also cost a lot to maintain.  Let's have more equality. 

I am worried about the simplistic "creating jobs" idea in the manifesto.  It will only encourage more people to move here.  I hope some analysis has been done as to why unemployed people can't get jobs.  If you create "good jobs" and "well-paid jobs", it is unlikely that the average unemployed person will be able to do them.  I don't know if training opportunities are adequate.
Also I worry that creating jobs by supporting a new company is likely to put out of business an existing company in the same industry.

And growing the economy is the last thing we need in the light of climate change.

Housing.  Remember the old maxim -- repeating the same actions expecting different results is crazy.  So far what I've heard from Labour is the same thing I heard from the Tories:  set targets for housing; make planning easier; build in the green belt.

This will not solve the problem.  1) The majority of homes are built by only 6 companies.  Why would they be willing to build so many houses so fast that prices will come down -- and so will their profits?  They are already sitting on more than 900,000 sites they've not yet built on.  And they are building fewer houses because they are not seeing the market demand. 2) If land has to be bought at a price including "hope value" (i.e., the value of the land with permission for housing vs the value of the land without such permission), it will always make building too expensive for affordable housing.  I thought Labour were going to address hope value, but if they only claim a part of the increase, it will still not be financially viable to build affordable housing.  3) We are completely schizophrenic about house prices -- homeowners go nuts if prices don't keep rising.  In short, we need a different model for building affordable housing and different organisations to do it.  And then we need more skilled workers to be able actually to ramp up the number of home completions.

A successful economy should be safe- my family used to spend a fortune -restaurants -theatre-concerts etc etc etc current spend £0-it is no longer safe for women. 

I want growth but I also want green -- very disappointed to read that Labour will not necessarily oppose a 3rd runway at Heathrow.  Growing aviation is the wrong way to go.  We should stop subsidizing the airline industry for a start -- stop the VAT exemption of aviation fuel.  That would also help the country's finances.

Rent control now! My age group (20-30olds) is not benefitting from the economy AT ALL. Our wages have been squeezed for years now, we pay average of 70% of our salaries to private landlords and utility bills, we have no prospects of owning a home unless you've got some inheritance money from relatives and joined income with your partner and you can forget about it if you want to do it on your own. Tax system in this country needs to change, there is plenty of money in London and in the UK but in the hands of the wealthy. Wealth tax and public ownership of utilities is crucial to allow other groups to thrive also. 

I'd recommend everyone reads Gary Stevenson The Trading Game and especially economists working to shape London's economic future!

There needs to be a careful review of road speed limits. While 20mph is good on residential streets it should be 30mph on 'main' or 'through' routes. Also endless changes of the speed limit, even in a short distance, is very confusing - I can think of several places where the limit changes several times in a short distance for no logical reason. Fining drivers for every minor error (such as not turning right from a right turning lane, is draconian), and creating illogical road changes (ie. no left turn) and collecting vast sums in fines from drivers who fail to understand the strange rule. Money from these fines is money not spent in local businesses - and takes no account of ability to pay.

Enfield has gone steadily down hill in the thirty plus years I have been living here, with loss of quality independent shops and business and replacement with fast food outlets, mobile phone shops estate agents and shoe shops. It's a fundamentally unattractive retail environment.

Taxes are utterly ludicrous now - it's just theft at this point. We get poor/no services in return. Dealing with any form of local government is a Kafkaesque nightmare. It seems all government employees treat the public as a nuisance. Crime is ridiculous. I am a woman and in the last few years the number of times I have been harassed, hissed at, and even followed has increased massively. I have to take taxi's home after a night out for my safety which are very expensive. The Mayor is an utter berk who accuses anyone who challenges him as being "Islamophobic". He even branded people who disagreed with him on traffic issues "Nazis". Mental. He's a joke and this city has becoming completely dysfunctional. 

Working in partnership can be key in getting improvements to our High Streets. Local organisation in East Finchley have come together to create a Town team to work with the Council. Plans have been drawn up by local architects to create a new Town square. The Council are engaged but there is little investment available, Until we can get some more investment our High road could continue in steady decline. Some investment is required in the basic maintenance of street cleaning, tackling litter, fly tipping and graffiti. Increasing the population density of town centres can bring more people and spending power in but needs to address rubbish storage (not just put more bins on the street increasing  clutter) Other Council policies such as agreeing more advertising to get EV chargers on the High Road adds more clutter and creates unattractive, less accessible environments for blind and less able members of the community. Elsewhere EV chargers are placed unobtrusively underground.

Landlords are increasing rents and forcing many independent traders out of business. 

Do we need to rethink London's Edwardian Town centres? 

Green, attractive centres with spaces to dwell, for events to take place, where active travel to both get to and around with improving air quality and natural, playable spaces are provided. People will come to centres where the retail and food offer is good and the place attractive and you can meet other people.