Social/Economic Situation

Housing

Newham currently has over 96,000 homes, which is made up of approximately one fifth Local Authority accommodation, one fifth private rented, 13% owned by a Registered Social Landlord and 46% owner occupied (Newham Council: Feb 2006).

There is a need to both renew existing housing stock and provide new and suitable homes to meet the projected increase in population. The Local Development Framework Core Strategy Preferred Options is centred on the potential for the release of vacant ex-industrial and under-used land for residential and mixed use development. Across Newham the preferred option is currently an increase of 50,000 new homes by 2020,with over 15,800 of these to come from the Stratford area.

Employment

Currently, the Borough’s employment rate of 59.4% is considerably below the national average of 74.4% (Office of National Statistics: Jan2007), which is the third lowest in the country, behind neighbours Hackney and Tower Hamlets.

However, Newham Council’s forecasts indicate that by 2020 there could be up to 56,700 new jobs in Newham, with 23,900 of them coming from the Stratford area. A key challenge will to ensure a significant proportion of these job opportunities are taken by local residents.

Other Socio-economic Indicators

There have been dramatic improvements across Newham and trends suggest this is set to continue. Clearly the anticipated growth across Newham and Stratford will have a huge impact and this must be harnessed to good effect so as to continue the area’s strong recovery.

Indeed, there are still significant areas for improvement. The latest available figures show life expectancy for men in Newham is 2.1 years below the London average, while for women the figures stands at 2.3 years (Office of National Statistics 2003). Moreover, the most up to date statistics show that in education those pupils achieving 5+ A*- C in Newham schools is approximately 4% below the London average (Office of National Statistics 2005).

Therefore, it is critical that the growth predicted by Newham Council up until 2020 is effectively managed, to ensure these key indicators and many others and impacted upon positively and that the economic and social prosperity that redevelopment should bring is felt across the whole community.