11 minute read
Supporting Local Economy
Cllr Shantanu Rajawat meeting with Sally Smith, Chief Operating Officer of Hounslow Chamber of Commerce at the Verdict, one of Hounslow’s and Brentford’s most popular bakeries.
Our borough is vibrant and cosmopolitan with over 250,000 residents and 175,000 jobs. Before Covid-19 we had the second fastest-growing economy in London. However, Covid-19 hit the borough hard. Prior to the pandemic, there were 13,300 active business in Hounslow and we know from a sample survey that an estimated 12,000 have suffered a negative impact from the crisis; 8,000 suspended their operations during lockdown and 3,000 are at risk and anxious about their ability to keep trading.
These impacts are also being felt unevenly across the borough. Those who are lower skilled and lower paid are more likely to lose their jobs, with a major disproportionate impact in the west of the borough, felt heavily by small businesses, those with links to Heathrow and people from BAME communities.
With Challenges comes Opportunity
As the old saying goes; with challenges come opportunities. We know the borough has strengths that we can build on: Hounslow is home to many multinational ICT and media-production companies; historically companies based in Hounslow are significantly more productive than the London average; and there are opportunities for growth, particularly in professional services and the Green Economy.
New openings have arisen and we are ready to embrace them. Besides the obvious environmental benefits, bought about by the general reduction in travel and much greater prevalence of home working, there are a range of prospects that we will be taking advantage of as part of our recovery plans. We continue to be ambitious for our borough setting out our vision to: renew Hounslow’s economy;, design a place where clean, productive businesses can be created and thrive; and support existing businesses, to fully participate in new markets.
This is a pivotal moment for the borough and its residents. The continuous negative impacts of Covid-19 on our local businesses, who are struggling to survive, is producing an increasing number of people claiming unemployment benefits. So far, over 15,000 additional persons in Hounslow have applied for Universal Credit, since the beginning of Lockdown in March, with more expected due to the prevalence of our residents’ jobs in high-risk sectors.
Our response to these devastating effects has to start with building resilience, developing an inclusive recovery approach that allows our residents and businesses to recover and thrive. We will use our recovery from Covid-19 to reimagine our borough as a place with a better long-term prospects for our residents, a future that not only improves their quality of life but our local economy, growth and regeneration across our borough.
The power of keeping it local
The Council along with local businesses form a significant part of the local economy and together we can play a key role in economic recovery for the borough. We will therefore seek to maximise our positive impact by investing in projects that also have a social as well as economic return and ensuring that council contracts result in business, employment and training opportunities for local people.
Equally, we know that by unlocking the power of our local communities, commissioning can create better, more responsive services that reduce long-term costs and invest in the local economy. Whilst we know that not all services and works can be delivered locally, we recognise that our local businesses and communities play a unique role in the local service landscape - in particular, where this relates to working with people, including the most vulnerable, who find themselves a long way away from the labour market, or who face loneliness or social exclusion.
From homelessness to employment support, children’s services to adult social care, we acknowledge that community organisations are also vital key partners in our recovery plans.
Keeping it Local in Hounslow
The Council is a key player in the local economy and has a central role in supporting local businesses and residents, especially in these changing and difficult times. During the last months our focus has been on preparing our strategic recovery plan, which will be published in November. This will set out our key priorities for creating and protecting jobs, our proposals for supporting the local economy and how we continue to mitigate the adverse economic impacts of Covid-19.
Our approach to supporting local businesses will initially focus on improving the links between them and larger companies, increasing the profile and awareness of local markets, and encourage large anchor firms and organisations to make use of the local supply chain. This, in turn, will help us to protect residents’ jobs, begin to tackle some of the inequalities laid bare by Covid-19, and to build pride in the reputation of the borough and its workforce. Research tells us that for every £1 spent in local businesses, £2 more is spent in Hounslow before it leaves the local economy.
As part of our recovery plans to support local business we aim to:
firstly, to implement Progressive Procurement polices across all the council and our Lampton Group of trading companies’ tendering, to prioritise awarding of work to local companies;
secondly, to take a more proactive approach, engage and increase our register of local businesses, encouraging local businesses to sign up and join our register of local providers, supported through the roll-out of our boroughwide advertising campaign – Keeping it Local
In taking forward our proposals, we have looked at the opportunities that we can provide to local businesses, to ensure the Hounslow £ stays in the borough and brings the greatest benefit to our local economy. We will spend nearly £1 billion over the next six years, between 2022 and 2026 and will aim to keep as much of this money within the borough, as far as possible, using it to maximise the skills and employment opportunities that it can provide to local residents. By breaking down the work that we require into smaller parcels, this enables local businesses to step in, register on the London Tender Portal and bid for the work. These registrations will also be used to create a preferred list of local contractors for one-off jobs, initially for construction work such as placing scaffolding or skip hire, but eventually to cover all council services and activities.
To ensure that we also continue to realise the benefits of our progressive procurement efforts for the community in Hounslow, we are also asking all major contractors bidding for larger items of work to break down their work and employee requirements, then commit to creating sub-contract, apprenticeship and job opportunities for local companies and local people. The measure of our success will be monitored and we expect these will continue to realise in terms of tangible outcomes for local businesses and residents :
an identifiable number of local business opportunities created;
a fair distribution of amongst companies or groups; and
number jobs benefitting Hounslow residents.
If other companies based in Hounslow are inspired and commit to following our example, this will retain even greater money and jobs within the borough, building the wealth, wellbeing, health and sustainability of our communities.
Our Keeping it Local initiative is supported by our renewed commitment to keeping the Hounslow £ in Hounslow and whilst we know we can’t buy everything locally for a number of reasons, including Procurement Law and not all of our needs can be met by local businesses we are committed to working with our local businesses and maximise opportunities for them.
Our path to recovery
Our Keeping It Local campaign launched late this summer, is already demonstrating good results. We have seen over 400 new registrations of local companies on our tender portal, a 6% increase in all companies registered, and 140 opportunities have been made open to all suppliers, including local companies, of which 90 have completed tendering; with 20 contracts being awarded to local companies, worth £20 million to the local economy; and from these and the other 70 awards, we have secured 40 apprenticeships for local people.
It is encouraging to see that our local businesses are reaping the benefits of our renewed approach with more contracts being awarded to them than in previous years.
We see these successes as the council playing its part in stimulating good growth locally and making it an integral part of our recovery plan. There is no doubt that Covid-19 will continue to challenge us for the foreseeable future. The world in which we operate is also changing at break-neck speed, but our commitment to supporting our local businesses and residents will remain a key priority. Despite the challenges that may lie ahead and as we seek to recover from Covid-19 impacts, our ambition to being an outstanding council serving an outstanding borough remains constant and we call on local businesses to join us on our journey to recovery.
Leading a new era for the Golden Mile
St Edward, a joint venture company between Berkeley Group and M&G Investments, has submitted plans to redevelop the Tesco and Homebase sites on Syon Lane in partnership with Tesco, kick starting the regeneration of the Golden Mile.
The Great West Road was born out of large British and multinational industries investing into the area which shortly after became known as the Golden Mile. The large factories with their art deco design and brightly lit frontages signalled a period of growth for Hounslow. Many of these brands have now gone as times changed, and mostly been replaced by retail which itself is facing many difficult challenges now.
St Edward intend on helping to realise a new period of regeneration and investment that is envisioned for the Great West Corridor Opportunity Area. This policy designation includes the Tesco and Homebase sites, set by the London Borough of Hounslow and the Mayor of London. It aims to deliver thousands of homes and jobs to inject vibrancy, urban life and a new growth for all the community.
Delivered in partnership with Tesco, the proposals will see the conversion of two strategic, underutilised brownfield sites to deliver transformational growth. They will deliver:
A new state-of-the-art Tesco store, which will move to the former Homebase site
2,150 homes, 725 of which will be tenure-blind affordable homes
Generous public spaces with an amphitheatre and programmed performance area
Offices and co-working spaces
Allocation for new healthcare practice
Space for a new cafe and gastropub to eat, drink and socialise in a relaxed setting
Significant reduction in retail parking, meaning less traffic through Gillette Corner
Safe pedestrian and cyclist routes
Investment into a new bus service
Investment & Growth
This 15-year project will support 4,700 construction jobs, safeguard and create 650 permanent jobs and provide over £30 million of Community Infrastructure Levy and S106 payments which will also help enhance the local area and drive regeneration.
The brand new Tesco store will have the same offering as the existing store, but have a new home on the prominent Gillette Corner.
Together, the two sites will enhance local links to Syon Lane station, significantly reducing trafficgenerating retail parking spaces, whilst the Gillette corner junction has been redesigned to improve traffic flows on local roads.
Leading a new era for the Golden Mile
With these contributions and improvements secured, the masterplan will act as a huge economic stimulus for the area. In these particularly challenging times, growth and investment provided by development are fundamental to recovery and prosperity.
Community & Nature
These new homes will foster and create a mixed community with a variety of different types proposed, from studio apartments to family houses, across a number of different tenures, to offer homes for people at different stages of life with a range of needs and priorities.
Residents and neighbours will be encouraged to use green travel methods with new safer pedestrian and cycle routes, electric car charging and car clubs.
The sites are currently 81% hardstanding, with no ecological value. The Syon Lane proposals have a focus on re-greening with nature-led design supported by the London Wildlife Trust, seven acres of green space, over 400 trees and a restored and biologically rich water garden.
OSTERLEY PLACE (TESCO)
GREAT WEST ROAD
GILLETTE BUILDING SKY CAMPUS
Paul Vallone, Executive Chairman, St Edward, said: “By using St Edward’s placemaking expertise with help from the London Borough of Hounslow, the Greater London Authority and the local
community, we believe we can transform these underutilised sites into places for everyone to enjoy. There is a real opportunity to re-green the area and provide more social spaces for people to gather, play, learn and explore.”
Chamber Patron, St Edward will create a bespoke community plan co-written with local people that will bring residents together as well as draw in people from the surrounding area.
SYON LANE STATION SYON GARDENS (HOMEBASE)
Find out more at:
www.syonlanefuture.com
St Edward have a long track record of delivering high quality developments and creating welcoming, sustainable and nature-rich places where communities thrive and where people of all ages and backgrounds enjoy a great quality of life.
