Katie Townsend shares key insights from our flagship event – the London Conference 2024.

A new Labour government. Sadiq Khan’s third term as Mayor. And a return of a former US president to office. 2030 will be a critical year in the political calendar, marking the end of each of these government administrations’ five-year terms.

The next five years will be both a period of challenges, as well as an opportunity for significant renewal. At our London Conference 2024, on Monday 11 November, we asked policymakers and experts within the third, public and private sectors to answer the questions – what is the London we want to see by 2030? And how do we get there?

Centre for London’s strategy 2025-2030

Recognising the significance of the next five years, Antonia Jennings, CEO at Centre for London, kicked started the Conference by launching our new strategy.

Reflecting on the need for innovative thinking, joined-up discourse and advocacy for the voice of Londoners, she outlined our three connected areas of focus over the next five years. These three areas – developing London, decarbonising London and governing London – laid the thematic framework for the discussion at our London Conference.

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“Housing was once a foundation for life, today it’s increasingly a barrier” – Sadiq Khan

London’s housing crisis has affected countless aspects of Londoners’ lives. Rising rents. Extortionate house prices. And, it’s creating a drag on our economy.

This was the central topic of the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan’s speech – an insightful fixture we were delighted to see continue at this years conference. Our delegates gained real insight into City Hall’s plans as he spoke candidly about the challenges facing the capital, directing his address to young Londoners, who are disproportionately affected by the housing crisis.

Stark statistics were at the forefront of the Mayor’s speech. The average price of a house in London is almost 14 times the typical household income. Meanwhile, these spiralling costs are resulting in an increasingly child free inner London. Pupil numbers are expected to fall by 22,000 by 2028 in the capital, double the national average.

Yet, there remains room for optimism. Khan recommitted to building 40,000 more council homes in the run up to 2030, as outlined in his manifesto. He went on to launch new research, which showed a 1% increase in housing affordability could yield a boost of over £7 billion to London’s economy over a ten-year period.

Developing London: panel discussion

Following on from the Mayor’s speech, we welcomed panellists onto the stage to continue the discussion on London’s housing crisis. The panel’s key message was clear: to tackle the housing crisis, we need to build houses. While this sounds simple, the ‘what’, ‘where’, ‘how’ and ‘for who’ complicates the matter. Within these questions, the ‘how’ was most prominent in the discussion – specifically, how do we pay for the tens of thousands of new homes the capital needs?

Across the panel, all agreed on one point. There simply is not enough money in housebuilding.

Deputy Mayor Jules Pipe, outlined that the tariffs set to calculate the affordable homes programme are just too low, not accounting for the skyrocketing costs of construction. Cllr Peter Mason firmly re-iterated insufficient funding was the root cause of the issue – where 10 years ago the build out rate for planning permissions was 25% of all planning applications, this is now close to 10%. Even if the planning system is fixed, the capital will still struggle to build.

We also need to be building the right homes in the right places. Russell Curtis explored his own work with small sites as an architect. His research highlights that suburban densification is the way to push forward on London’s housing crisis, with space for almost 90,000 new homes near transport centres unlocked through this approach. A national level small sites plan and sustained support for SMEs would be fundamental to plan for this suburban densification project.

Sharing her insight into the role community land trusts play in both building and managing affordable homes, highlighted the necessity to tie measures of affordability directly to income. In homes managed by the London Community Land Trust, rents are often as low as 60% below market rate, so they remain genuinely affordable for those living and working in the area.

Pipe concluded the discussion by saying “it is all about money – yet we expect housing associations and councils up and down the country to accept poor deals on housing”.  However, he seemed sceptical about whether this money would materialise – questioning whether Labour would deliver the 1.5 million homes promised in their manifesto. Clearly, getting Britain building is going to require a loosening of the treasury’s purse strings.

Decarbonising London: panel discussion

London’s net-zero target is fast approaching – we have 5 years to decarbonise the capital. Delivering net-zero is crucial, but it’s a major challenge. And Londoners agree: our polling with Savanta revealed 2 in 3 Londoners believe achieving our net-zero goals is important for themselves and their communities.

To do so will require a large-scale, coordinated effort. As Deputy Mayor for Environment and Energy, Mete Coban stated, there’s much that can and is being done at City Hall level, but we need to “share the benefits of transition with our communities” and bring Londoners along for the journey. Coban went on to share how net-zero environmental options are often viewed by the public as downgrades – he believes instead, government should aim to smooth the transition by making the environmental option the easier and more desirable choice for Londoners.

Building on this point, Dr Afsheen Rashid emphasised the need to make discussions about climate change accessible to Londoners. Terminology such as “decarbonisation” does not hook people, “however” she continued “energy costs are a real thing for people”. Speaking to her work for community energy development organisation, Repowering London, she shared their work in collaboration with communities, making sure the benefits of net-zero are tangibly felt.

Collaboration and community support featured heavily throughout the discussion, with the Deputy Mayor, Rhianydd Griffith, and Christina Calderato all unpacking the necessity to unlock community support, while balancing with the need for rapid, bold and large-scale change. TfL’s Christina Calderato shared the difficulties the green transition faces in moving people away from private cars towards public transport, where “people don’t always like the solutions”.  To be able to effectively manage this shift, Christina called for coordinated investment in national transport networks, making public transport more convenient, cheaper (where possible) and desirable to initiate behaviour change.

Shifting the conversation towards retrofit, a huge task in the capital where we have a high proportion of leaky, poorly insulated buildings, Associate of LSE’s Just Transition Finance Lab, Rhianydd Griffith shared both the challenges and opportunities available in the decarbonisation space. In Westminster alone, £3bn capital investment is required for retrofitting existing properties to make them more energy efficient, including transforming significant heritage sites. While a tall order, this also has the capacity to unlock a huge number of jobs building towards greener economic growth.

Throughout the panel, we heard many examples of small-scale successful decarbonisation projects, but the sentiment was that these pockets of “positive activity” needed to be significantly scaled up if we’re to reach the net-zero target.

The final word from our panel came from Deputy Mayor Mete Coban, who teased an upcoming “retrofit revolution” from City Hall, telling delegates to “watch this space”.

Governing London: panel discussion

OECD analysis has shown that fiscal devolution enables productivity growth. London’s devolution deal is over two decades old, and still grants very limited fiscal devolution in comparison to other global cities. Our governing London panel took to the stage to unpack what devolution could, should and is likely to look like for the capital.

With a full panel of local government leaders, it’s unsurprising that the City of London’s Chris Hayward’s “local government do know best” stance was mirrored across our panellists. However, what came out most strongly was the sentiment that devolving power is meaningless unless city and local government are provided with the money to action change. Hina Bokari AM expanded on this point, highlighting that other global cities such as New York retain 50% of the taxes they raise, in comparison to the 7% retained in London.

Asking about methods of generating income for local government, chair of the panel, LSE’s Tony Travers, asked the group their perspectives on a “tourist tax” similar to those levied in Manchester or Liverpool. The panel represented the full political spectrum, and the response showed a cross-party consensus for the concept of a tourist tax. Chris Hayward stated this is something the city is currently looking into, while Cllr Claire Holland said she’d be “really keen” for national government to devolve the power to create a tourist tax. Despite being from the opposing party, Councillor Kim Taylor Smith agreed, saying a tourist tax is a “no-brainer”.

Caroline Russell and Hina Bokhari, Assembly Members, expanded on this discussion on how this tourist tax should be spent. Green Party Member Caroline Russell shared her experiences of talking to tour guides in the capital, where there are significant difficulties finding public toilets – the building of which could be paid for with the tourist tax. Hina Bokhari had other ideas, stating a tourism levy should be plugged into the nighttime economy, to enable the growth of an underperforming sector in the capital.

Claire Holland summarised the discussion perfectly by stating “the more we can devolve to local government, the better the outcome”.

“Donald Trump has a transactional view on the world” – Mark Sedwill on the US election

Next, we were delighted to welcome Baron Sedwill of Sherborne, former Cabinet Secretary and National Security Advisor, to give a keynote speech unpacking the effect of the US election on London and the wider UK.

There was a lot to explore here, so we’re looking forward to sharing a deep dive into this speech in our upcoming blog – what does Trumps’ presidency mean for London?

Conclusion

London has a lot to accomplish ahead of 2030 – a housing crisis to fix, a net-zero target to achieve, and a new, fit-for-purpose devolution deal to create.

Developing, decarbonising and governing London will be the three pillars on which we base our work at Centre for London in the run up to 2030.

We’d love you to join us as we strive to provide the essential insights the capital needs and bring the right people together to get us there.

Sign up to join The London Network today; to help shape the London policy agenda so we can meet the challenges and make the most of the opportunities ahead.