Regeneration. It's all about changes in local areas, right? New homes, boosted jobs, hopefully some new local assets. On this basis, it might seem reasonable that words like ‘development' and ‘planning' rarely make it into general election campaigning.
But in fact, decisions made by the next national parliament will heavily affect local regeneration. Most obviously: by changing grant funding levels – which have been cut by 39% over the last parliament – central government can create huge financial incentives for local government to change the local tax base. It's clear that these incentives will remain, whichever party wins next week.
A commonly-observed response to this financial conundrum is to significantly speed-up of the pace of regeneration. Like many other places, Community Links's patch in East London is undergoing extremely rapid change. Newham Council – facing some of the most severe cuts in the country – hopes to attract £22bn in private investment by 2027, dwarfing the council's total budget over the same period. They estimate that the investment will create more than 35,000 new homes and 100,000 new jobs—this is a scale of change that our area may never see again.
