Services

Key points

Low-paid workers tend to depend more on the bus for travel than any other form of public transport.

The level of childcare provision in London is lower than the England average. In London, there are 4.3 children per childcare place, compared to an England average of 3.8.

There are on average more children per childcare place in Inner London than Outer London. Newham has less than half the level of childcare provision that Bromley or Richmond has.

The cuts to Local Authority budgets have been much greater in Inner London than Outer London. All Inner London boroughs received cuts above the London average. Hackney, Tower Hamlets and Newham received the maximum possible cut of 8.9% and the six highest cuts were all in the Inner East & South.

The number of GPs and school places per head of population varies hugely between boroughs. In both cases, though, there appears to be slightly more provision in Inner than Outer London. 8 of the 10 Primary Care Trusts with the fewest GPs per population are in Outer London. 19% of Inner London secondary schools are overcrowded, compared to 35% in Outer London.

Housing benefit changes mean that many parts of Inner London, particularly the Inner West, may become unaffordable for low-income families renting privately. If such families were to move to Outer London, this would exacerbate the pattern of access to public services such as GPs and schools.

Many boroughs in London are falling short of their targeted numbers for affordable housing. Most of the shortfall is in the social rented sector. 17 boroughs met or exceeded their targets for affordable intermediate housing, compared to only three meeting the target for social housing.

Find out more about Services by visiting the indicators in this section, listed on the right.

This section looks at public services across London. The measures used are generally quite simple counts of provision expressed in terms of population size. There are three reasons for doing this:

Firstly, the provision of public services is set to change substantially over the course of this parliament. In the medium term, the Government plans to open up delivery of education and health to a range of providers, be they public, private or third sector. In the shorter term, cuts to local authority budgets will inevitably affect provision of services.

Secondly, we identified how the population of London moves and churns year on year. This turnover will be exacerbated by changes to Local Housing Allowance. As Inner London becomes increasingly unaffordable, any increased movement to Outer London will impact on demand for services.

Thirdly, have highlighted the increasing problem of in-work poverty. While the cause of in-work poverty may be low wages and limited working hours, it is exacerbated by poor services. It is the low paid in work who are least able to take time off to go to the doctor, or who are most burdened by high transport costs.

Services

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