The Missing Links: Connecting Disadvantaged Neighbourhoods to New Economic Opportunities
The Independent Commission on Neighbourhood's new Policy Working Paper, The Missing Links: Connecting disadvantaged neighbourhoods to new economic opportunities.
The paper shows how economic isolation continues to shape outcomes in many disadvantaged neighbourhoods, limiting access to jobs, growth, and investment.
With supporting analysis from Growth and Reform Network, the paper follows the productivity trajectories of England’s neighbourhoods through the 2010s, and identifies what factors distinguished the places that escaped stagnation by the early 2020s from those that did not.
It identifies stronger social foundations - measured by a higher density of community assets and high social capital, as well as good transport connectivity, childcare access, and a lower share of local employment in low-productivity service sectors, as factors most commonly associated with productivity improvements in disadvantaged neighbourhoods.
The paper also presents a number of policy options - including a new Neighbourhood Jobs Guarantee, the creation of new Mayoral Investment Relief Budgets, a new community transport grant programme, and a new network of hyper-local training centres, that we hope will kickstart discussion on what initiatives may work to improve economic outcomes in the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods
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