Local elections. Concrete recommendations. And what can be promised to make actual change in your neighbourhood.

With Londoners heading to the polls in local elections this week, Centre for London has written to all the major political parties standing across the capital with a short set of practical, evidence-based policies that councils can use now to improve Londoners’ quality of life.

Across every letter, we started with the same premise. There is a widening gap between what Londoners expect from their councils and what they are currently empowered and funded to deliver.

This year, we’ve seen a shift in campaigning. National issues are dominating, while local issues are cast aside – not seen as ‘exciting’ enough to capture headlines. Yet, this jars with councils’ responsibilities, which lie in the delivery of services and creation of places that shape our everyday lives – the real campaign should be centred around housing, highstreets, safety, local air quality and tackling poverty.

We wanted to shift the conversation back to delivery at a local level. Real promises, for deliverable results. Drawing on 15 years of work with London boroughs, businesses, public services and civil society, we identified a focused set of clear, implementable recommendations that can realistically be included in borough manifestos and delivered within existing powers.

What unites our recommendations

While each letter is tailored to its audience, the themes are strikingly consistent. Together, they set out a shared agenda for local government that cuts across party lines.

1. Fixing the housing crisis

London boroughs are collectively spending over £5.5 million every day on temporary accommodation – money locked into short-term, often unsafe solutions rather than permanent homes. Children are growing up without stability, and councils are left with spiralling costs that crowd out other services.

Across the board, we have called for councils to:

• Reduce reliance on hotels and B&Bs by building or acquiring council-owned temporary or family-sized homes, including through responsible use of pension fund investment.
• Bring long-term homes back into use, making full use of local powers – whether through acquisition, enforcement or innovation – to tackle the most harmful forms of housing insecurity.
• Hold private landlords to account, ensuring every borough has a selective landlord licensing scheme, expanding existing schemes to clamp down on rogue landlords and strengthen enforcement across London.
• Expand housing choice for older Londoners by delivering Integrated Retirement Communities in every borough, enabling people to live independently for longer while freeing up family-sized homes.

These proposals focus on shifting spending from crisis response to durable assets – improving outcomes for residents and strengthening council balance sheets at the same time.

2. High streets that work for people and businesses

Town centres remain vital to London’s local economies and community life, particularly in outer London. Yet too many high streets suffer from persistent vacancy, cluttered pavements and poor-quality public space that deter footfall and undermine local business.

We have consistently pressed for councils to:

• Bring empty shops and buildings back into use, improving meanwhile-use programmes by creating clear portfolios of vacant units and streamlining licensing.
• Clean up and declutter high streets, aligning waste collection with business needs, working with dockless cycle and scooter providers to keep pavements clear, and removing redundant signage and poorly placed street furniture.

Well-managed high streets are not simply about economic vitality; they are about accessibility, safety and pride in place. These are changes councils can lead now, often at relatively low cost.

3. Safer streets and healthier, greener neighbourhoods

Local government has limited control over policing, but it has significant influence over the design and management of streets and neighbourhoods. Good design can be a powerful lever to pull for improving safety, confidence and wellbeing.

Alongside safety, London councils are at the frontline of the environmental emergency. Air pollution contributes to thousands of premature deaths each year, climate breakdown is accelerating, and the impacts of heat, flooding and poor housing quality are already being felt most acutely by the communities least able to adapt.

While councils cannot control national energy policy or major transport infrastructure, they do have clear and under-used means to drive change – from housing retrofit delivery and parking policy, to street design, green infrastructure and neighbourhood-level resilience.

Our letters therefore emphasise the importance of:

• Better street lighting, with borough-wide strategies to ensure estates, high streets and residential roads are well lit year-round.
• People-centred street management, including clear approaches to kerbside space, active travel and traffic reduction, where appropriate, designed based on evidence and prioritising community engagement.
• Practical action on the climate emergency, including borough-level strategies for home retrofitting, heat and flood preparedness, and treating trees, green space and waterways as essential infrastructure for cooling, drainage and public health.
• Healthier neighbourhoods, where street design, air quality, climate resilience and safety are treated as interconnected rather than siloed issues.

These are practical interventions that shape how safe, healthy and resilient places feel and function – day in, day out – for residents and businesses alike.

4. Local economies powered by local investment

London’s councils are major economic actors. They convene stakeholders, procure at scale and steward billions of pounds through local government pension funds. Yet this economic power is often underused.

Across the letters, we call for councils to:

• Create clear local investment portfolios that showcase priority sites, businesses and growth sectors to national and international investors.
• Use pension funds responsibly to invest locally, ensuring a proportion of assets support local businesses, jobs and long-term economic resilience.
• Make local money work harder for local people, strengthening the link between council finances and local economic success.

Taken together, these actions can unlock new revenue streams, support inclusive growth and help councils become more financially resilient, without increasing the tax burden on residents.

5. Tackling child poverty at borough level

After housing costs, more than one in three London children lives in poverty. This is not an issue for a single department; it cuts across housing, education, employment, planning and public health.

In every letter, we therefore urge councils to commit to a borough-wide Local Child Poverty Strategy – a clear framework that aligns services, focuses resources and turns national ambition into local action.

This is about recognising that councils cannot solve child poverty alone, but they can play a decisive, coordinating role in reducing its impact on children’s lives.

The bigger picture: power, funding and credibility

Running through all our correspondence is a frank message about the limits of the current system. England remains one of the most centralised countries in the OECD. Boroughs face short-term, fragmented funding settlements, while unavoidable pressures – especially adult social care and temporary accommodation – continue to rise, after a decade of real-terms cuts.

This creates a structural mismatch: councils are expected to improve outcomes without the powers or financial certainty to do so at scale. Voters, in turn, are left with expectations that local government is not currently set up to meet.

That is why, alongside immediate, deliverable policies, we also make the case for greater local power and long-term funding, including fiscal devolution that better aligns council finances with local economic growth. Without this, the gap between responsibility and resource will only widen.

In her Mais Lecture, Chancellor Rachel Reeves promised a ‘roadmap to fiscal devolution’ at the Autumn Budget, hinting at local retention of income tax. Done properly in London, this could revitalise our economy by incentivising councils to stimulate local growth – reinvesting money generated into local issues and services. But this roadmap must be a fully formed plan, not another piecemeal conversation starter. With London’s tax powers lagging far behind those of its global peers, action is needed now.

A credible offer to Londoners

Taken together, these recommendations outline a credible agenda that voters rarely hear in local elections. They are realistic about what councils can do now and grounded in evidence from across the capital.

As Londoners prepare to vote, our message is simple: local government matters. With the right priorities – and the right support from national government – councils can deliver safer streets, better homes, stronger local economies and fairer life chances for children across the capital.

Find out how and where you can vote here, and more information about local manifestos in your area here.

We look forward to continuing this conversation with councillors, candidates and communities across London in the weeks ahead.