Key information
Decision type: Assistant Director
Reference code: ADD363
Date signed:
Decision by: Andrew Collinge, Assistant Director of Intelligence
Executive summary
Approval of expenditure of up to £30,000 is sought to procure by competitive tender a set of transport accessibility and usable capacity employment projections for London. The tender includes provision of projections and supporting documentation by March 2016 and updated projections and supporting documentation by March 2017. The projections will support the development of the Evidence Base for the next full review of the London Plan and inform wider policy development and business planning in the GLA.
Decision
The Assistant Director approves expenditure of up to £30,000 to procure by competitive tender a set of transport accessibility and usable capacity employment projections for London.
Part 1: Non-confidential facts and advice
1.1 The GLA Group requires projections of employment in Greater London and for London’s 33 boroughs through to 2041 for a variety of purposes including for planning policy and business planning. The transport accessibility and usable capacity employment projections will support the development of the Evidence Base for the next full review of the London Plan and inform wider policy development and programmes in the GLA.
1.2 The distribution of employment across London by borough is in principle influenced by a myriad of different factors. Research has been undertaken by GLA Economics into the influence of three principal factors:
A. Historical trends – reflecting the past revealed preference of employers for locating jobs in particular boroughs.
B. Site capacity – reflecting the availability of business sites for jobs to locate in and across London (the London Employment Sites Database).
C. Transport accessibility and usable capacity – reflecting the changes in accessibility across London expected to flow from various improvements in London’s transport infrastructure.
1.3 These three pieces of research will then be combined to provide a single unified set of employment projections at a borough level. The transport accessibility and usable capacity employment projections will address part C above. Part A will be undertaken in-house by GLA Economics and Part B will be the subject of a separate approval and commission.
1.4 This consultancy updates research in 2012/3 which cost under £20,000, per DD866 signed in August 2012. This was to support the development of the adopted 2015 London Plan. It differed from this proposal in two respects. It was a single piece of research, and did not have an update the following year. Also it covered only transport accessibility, and did not consider usable capacity.
1.5 The study will be led and project managed by GLA Economics and the financial contribution contained in this Assistant Director Decision (ADD), with TfL staff resource to support the project. The estimated total cost of the transport accessibility and employment capacity employment projections is up to £30,000. The costs will be met from the Intelligence Unit Budget.
1.6 GLA Economics has consulted TfL about this consultancy who support it. This consultancy will support analysis of the allocation of expected labour demand across boroughs in the light of likely transport infrastructure plans. TfL will use this modelling in its models rather than the reverse of GLA Economics making use of TfL models. TfL has declined to contribute as it already provides funds for GLA Economics services.
2.1 The transport accessibility and usable capacity employment projections will:
• generate accessibility and usable capacity employment projections for the ‘funded transport system’ (as set out in the TfL business plan), and probable transport projects
• support the development of the Evidence Base for the next full review of the London Plan
• inform wider policy development and business planning in the GLA.
2.2 The study output will include:
• an electronic copy of the database in Excel and
• an accompanying technical report describing its compilation, quality assurance processes, health warnings associated with the data and setting out the results based on the findings.
2.3 The tender has two components:
• Provision of projections and supporting documentation by March 2016 to feed into the London Plan full review evidence base
• Updated projections and supporting documentation by March 2017 to inform the London Plan Examination in Public.
3.1 No adverse equalities impacts are identified. The study supports the equalities objectives of the London Plan and the Greater London Authority relating to employment in London. It will provide evidence to inform the employment projections that will underpin the next full review of the London Plan. The research will support policies and implementation of programmes to improve London’s economic base, sustainability and access to a range of employment opportunities. The evidence assembled in this study will therefore contribute to wider equalities issues relating to employment.
4.1 The contract will be managed in line with standard GLA risk management procedures.
4.2 If the study were not carried out it would:
• undermine the Mayor’s evidence base to support the full review of the London Plan including associated policy and research related to the triangulated employment projections; assessments of transport accessibility and usable capacity employment projections; and assessments of the potential capacity of areas across London to accommodate growth in employment
• undermine the evidence base that supports the implementation of wider GLA programmes and plans to improve London’s economic base, sustainability and access to a range of employment opportunities.
b) links to Mayoral strategies and priorities
4.3 The study will inform the next full review of the London Plan and support a wide range of Mayoral strategies and priorities including business and economy, planning, regeneration, transport, equalities, housing and land, arts and culture and the environment. It will also support the London boroughs in the preparation of Local Plans and partnership working by the GLA, boroughs and others across a range of economic and planning matters.
c) impact assessments and consultations
4.4 Impact assessments are carried out as part of the preparation of reviews and alterations to the London Plan. A separate impact assessment is not required for this research study. Consultation on the project specification has taken place within the GLA and with Transport for London (TfL).
5.1 The revenue cost of up to £30,000 will be funded from the 2015/16 Intelligence Unit Budget. Spend will continue into 2016/17.
5.2 A carry forward request will need to be submitted for approval as part of the year end closure of accounts process for any expenditure in 2016/17. All budget carry forward requests are subject to approval as part of the year end process and in the case that this is not approved will need to be contained within the 2016/17 approved budget.
Appendix 1: Specification
Invitation to Tender – Transport Accessibility and Usable Capacity Employment Projections for London
To procure by competitive tender a set of transport accessibility and usable capacity based employment projections for London and for the London Boroughs for the years 2021, 2026, 2031, 2036 and 2041. The projections should include numbers for both total employment and employees only.
The tender has two components:
- Provision of projections and supporting documentation by March 2016
- Updated projections and supporting documentation by March 2017
1. Background
The GLA Group requires projections of employment in Greater London and for London’s 33 boroughs through to 2041 for a variety of purposes including for planning policy and business planning.
GLA Economics intends to update its employment projections in both 2016 and 2017 to support the development of the Evidence Base for the next London Plan, and for the next London Plan.
The distribution of employment across London by borough is in principle influenced by a myriad of different factors. Research has been undertaken by GLA Economics into the influence of three principal factors:
- Historical trends – reflecting the past revealed preference of employers for locating jobs in particular boroughs.
- Site capacity – reflecting the availability of business sites for jobs to locate in across London.
- Transport accessibility/usable capacity – reflecting the changes in accessibility and capacity across London expected to flow from various improvements in London’s transport infrastructure. This should be in two parts, and cover the ‘funded transport system’ (as set out in the TfL business plan), and probable transport projects
These three pieces of research have then been combined to provide a single unified set of employment projections at a borough level. The three sets of documents to support the last London Plan can be viewed at:
/mayor-assembly/mayor/publications/gla-intelligence/london-labour-market-projections
Note: TfL will provide an updated set of future year transport assumptions to replace those in Table 3.1 of the accessibility publication. TfL will also advice on current levels of crowding to inform judgements of usable capacity.
The borough totals are constrained to equal the projections for Greater London.
This requirement is for transport accessibility and usable capacity projections.
As before GLA Economics intends to publish the transport and site capacity reports, and this time it will also provide the data supporting the employment projections in the London Data Store http://data.london.gov.uk/
2. Requirements
The projections should conform to the Mayor’s Transport strategy:
/priorities/transport/vision-strategy
The research should also consider how crowding and capacity constraints impacts on employment locations and in turn the accessibility and capacity based employment projections. TfL will supply Railplan and LTS data on crowding and journey times (national rail, underground network and DLR) for all forecast years to 2037. Highway journey times (from LTS) for all forecast years to 2037 will also be provided.
As private transport is to be included within the accessibility and capacity based employment projections and people are willing to travel for longer periods by private transport, a range of commuting time zones for employment will need to be considered by the consultants.
The research should also if possible take account of the accessibility and usable capacity to jobs in London of people resident outside London but within commuting distance / time of London.
The projections are required to give figures per borough, by London sub regional boundaries and for London as a whole, for both the employed and self-employed.
3. Data source for Transport Projections
The employment dataset used by GLA Economics was developed in-house and can be found on the London Data Store, alongside the accompanying methodology paper GLA Economics Working Paper 67, at http://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/gla-employment-projections .
This input data can be used to generate the projections of how future increases in transport capacity will impact on the distribution and level of future employment growth and the trend based employment projections will be forwarded so that these can be redistributed according to expected changes in accessibility and capacity.
4. Quality assurance
The tender must include details of the quality assurance processes that will be used to ensure the research is of a high quality.
5. Outputs
The study output will be an electronic copy of the London wide and borough level projections in Excel, for the employed and self-employed, and an accompanying report in Word detailing how the projections were generated. It should be in two parts, and cover the ‘funded transport system’ (as set out in the TfL business plan), and probable transport projects. This report should be of a quality and in a format suitable for publication as a GLA Economics Technical Paper.
6. Reporting and Management
The successful consultant will report to and liaise with Mike Hope or other designated officer in GLA Economics from time to time as necessary.
The successful consultant will work closely with TfL and GLA Economics to make full use of their expertise, and to establish an approach to the measurement of accessibility and usable capacity.
7. Evaluation Criteria
The bids will be evaluated and the contract will be awarded on the following criteria – please ensure that these are addressed within your proposal.
9.Proposed Timetable
Signed decision document
ADD363 Transport Accessibility (signed) PDF