Economy and Employment

North London has significant concentrations of worklessness. Ensuring our communities have the skills to access employment is a key strategic issue for North London and a major area of work for the NLSA.

Worklessness is a structural problem for the Upper Lee boroughs, but there are also significant pockets in Barnet and Redbridge. Whereas the majority of workless people are those with low skills or even no skills, the economic downturn has affected those with higher skills who have lost jobs. At the same time north London has low levels of inward investment and job creation.

Ensuring our communities have the skills to access employment is a key strategic issue for North London and a major area of work for the NLSA. Working with a wide range of partners from the private, public and voluntary sector NLSA is promoting employment in north London and building on our strengthens to drive job creation.

NLSA is working to

• Support greater coordination across the subregion on the delivery of employment and enterprise support;
• Lead subregional approaches for funding employment and enterprise projects;
• Prioritise and focus on key, high growth sectors, especially the green sector and develop a set of interventions to support their growth within the sub-region;
• Develop a joint approach to support energy from waste initiatives including pre-feasibility study into a Decentralised Energy Network;
• Develop a sustainable, business-led London Anglia Growth Partnership (LAGP) to promote private sector employment growth in the sub-region;
• Explore options for the development of a sub-regional apprenticeship scheme;
• Develop a clear statement to prime contractors on the Work Programme and ensure on-going engagement.