Monitoring London's economy

GLA Economics and Transport for London (TfL) have analysed the implications of a forced move to a ‘managed decline’ scenario if the Government does not provide the emergency and long-term funding required to maintain the capital’s transport services.

This paper summarises the latest evidence and analysis on the impacts of COVID-19 on London’s economy so far and on the economic outlook so that key actors and stakeholders engaged in responding to the pandemic can have a readily available evidence base to inform policy responses.

Working paper 98 presents the new GLA Economics forecast models and evaluates their performance with respect to the previous methodology, a comparable independent forecaster, and outturn data.

Current Issues Note 60 looks at the case for continuing transport expenditure in London, and specifically in relation to transport investment. It considers the demand for transport services, the rationale for investment, and the levels of investment, who funds it and who pays.

This report summarises the evidence on the economic impacts of Brexit on the London and UK economies. It looks both at the impacts that have been already observed since the EU Referendum (e.g. impacts on investment and GDP) and at potential future impacts, both in the short and longer term.

This Working Paper (97) is the first set of published input-output tables for London, and is an important step towards economic accounts for the city.

Current Issues Note 57 shows that: In 2016, London’s total nominal GVA (as measured by GVA (I)) was under £396 billion (up 4.4 per cent on 2015). This represented 22.7 per cent of the UK’s total GVA (I) in 2016, up from 22.5 per cent in 2015 and 18.5 per cent when going even further back to 1997.

Working Paper 91 shows that in 2015 London exported £131.1 billion of goods and services. This was up from £126.4 billion in 2011. More than three-quarters (77 per cent) of this was exports of services.

Given the need to understand better the potential room requirements for disabled visitors, Working Paper 90 presents projections of the demand and supply of accessible hotel rooms in London up to 2041.

Current Issues Note 55 looks at GVA in London's local authorities in a London and UK context, 1997-2015.

Current Issues Note 54 sets out the rationale for investing in transport infrastructure and presents data on the current and planned levels of transport expenditure, with an emphasis on London.

Current Issues Note 52 presents the findings for London from the main GVA release (using the income approach) and then outlines the results from the experimental real GVA data.

Working Paper 87 provides estimates of GVA per workforce job for London, the regions and the UK, by industry section and division, through to 2015.

The purpose of Working Paper 85 is to describe the structure and make-up of London’s economy in different parts of the capital.

On 23 June 2016 the UK voted to leave the EU. Since then there has been a high demand for data on various aspects of London’s relationship with both the rest of the UK and Europe in light of the upcoming Article 50 negotiations.

Current Issues Note 51 sets out to summarise some of the extensive selection of data and surveys that cover this topic, helping to enlighten debate and decision making.

• As of yet no official measure of quarterly growth in London’s economy on either a nominal or real measure exists. At the annual level nominal GVA data is available (with a lag), but real GVA data remains experimental in nature and is not classified as a national statistic.
• GLA Economics has therefore undertaken analysis to calculate this data at the London level.
• Current issues note 50 sets out the methodology that has been used for this analysis and first estimates of quarterly real GVA for London.

Current Issues Note 49 looks at the accuracy of previous GLA Economics’ forecasts for the growth of total Gross Value Added, total employment, household expenditure and household income.

Revisions to the “historic data” had a significant impact on the performance of GLA Economics’ forecasts but nevertheless performed comparably with other forecasts produced of the London economy.

The note outlines some areas for improvement in the forecasting process in light of the evolving nature and understanding of London’s economy.

GLA Economics has produced five working papers (80-84) examining options for greater fiscal devolution to inform the London Finance Commission's work.