Not for self, but for all: Creating a truly inclusive economy

Words by Patrick Jones, Business Growth Manager at London Borough of Camden.

Embedding value in local growth

Camden is on an ambitious journey to create an inclusive economy.

As Camden 2025 sets out, we have a shared vision for the borough that Camden is a place where everyone’s voice is heard, and no one is left behind. We want this to be true of our local economy. This means moving beyond the previous orthodoxy of redistributing the benefits of growth down to communities, and instead pursuing ‘ground-up’ participation in shaping and growing Camden’s economy from across our communities.

This comes off the back of a strong record of growth, in traditional terms.

Camden’s economy, particularly around King’s Cross and what has become known as the Knowledge Quarter area has grown significantly, creating around 40,000 new jobs in the science and technology sectors in the last decade. Read any literature about Camden and it will undoubtedly reference global leading research and investment in life sciences, artificial intelligence and tech.

Against common measures of growth, this seems to be a clear success story, but residents living in the areas surrounding King’s Cross and Euston consistently tell us that they feel detached from the benefits of growth and often describe the alienation of new development on their doorsteps.

Why is this the case? Why are local residents not prospering commensurate to the scale of investment into Camden, and King’s Cross in particular?

We already know part of the answer: poor health and wellbeing, skills and job readiness, the flexibility of job roles and inaccessible recruitment processes. Responding to problems such as these has been the meat and drink of local authority Economic Development teams for decades — and will continue to be a crucial role we play, innovating and iterating our services as we go.

But in the main this has led to incremental change, with some shining examples of best practice. Some people’s lives and careers have been transformed — last year, local employment services supported 520 people into work, and we’ve built great partnerships with employers to achieve these outcomes. But being incremental isn’t going to stand up to the scale of the challenge. According to the latest figures from the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, 10% of the lowest earners in Camden earn less than £9.34 per hour - more than £1 less than the minimum London living wage. A figure that is even worse for part-time workers.

Our task is to provoke a sea change in behaviour and outcomes in how our economy grows.

Over the last year we have been renewing our covenant with businesses and employers in Camden to achieve this. We started the year by publishing a refreshed Business Charter — produced in partnership with our Strategic Business Board — making the case for responding to a series of calls to action on good work, skills, climate change and placemaking as a shared endeavour. This set the tone for a series of planned, partnership interventions, now set in motion:

• An Inclusive Business Network

Firstly, we’re setting up an Inclusive Business Network that sets a standard for inclusive employment practice that employers should aspire to in Camden — informed by the Mayor’s Good Work Standard, and going further to create opportunities linked to specific employability needs in Camden.

We know that setting a standard on its own won’t create the change we seek — we’re going to be prototyping the types of support we might offer to businesses to help them adapt their employment practice to be more inclusive.

Some of this work is about getting the basics right, including our own ability to secure and manage social value outcomes in planning and procurement.

• Aligning with our key anchor institutions

Secondly, we’re aligning key partners within our local public sector and knowledge economy around our vision for an inclusive economy, and creating powerful partnerships that take active steps together to deliver on this — recognising that we alone cannot deliver the transformational change we seek.

We envisage a broad conversation covering; Good Work standards across employers,

supporting local wealth building activity, leveraging the extensive collective spending power to create diverse and resilient local supply chains, tackling the Climate Crisis and maximising the use of public assets for community benefit.

• A spatial strategy for the Knowledge Quarter

Thirdly, we’re developing a strategic framework for the knowledge quarter area (the one-mile radius from King’s Cross), to support planners and developers to bring forward major regeneration schemes that are not just acknowledging local priorities but saturated with and built on local voices. This KQ2050 strategy (working title!) will bring residents, investors, developers and local institutions together in a deliberative process to map out how value will be better captured and shared locally.

We believe we are pushing at an open door and that investors and developers in Camden want to rise to the challenge but are looking to us as a local authority to act as a convenor to help define and clarify expectations. In the coming year we will be working with extraordinary partners and stakeholders in the knowledge quarter to realise this and will be sharing the outcomes through this blog.