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| Campaigners call on mayoral candidates to fight London child poverty | Campaigners call on mayoral candidates to fight London child poverty |
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| One of London’s more damaging malfunctions is the gap between the opportunities it offers and the difficulties many Londoners and their families have taking advantage of them. A sign and an effect of this is around 700,000 of the capital’s under-18s being members of households being officially defined as poor. That’s an astonishing 37% of them, the highest child poverty rate of any region in the country. | One of London’s more damaging malfunctions is the gap between the opportunities it offers and the difficulties many Londoners and their families have taking advantage of them. A sign and an effect of this is around 700,000 of the capital’s under-18s being members of households being officially defined as poor. That’s an astonishing 37% of them, the highest child poverty rate of any region in the country. |
| Drawing on analysis by the Resolution Foundation, the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) forecasts that the number is set to rise by 200,000 by 2020, largely as a result of measures announced by the government in its summer budget. It says that up to half of these young people would have at least one parent in work. An impressive coalition of family and anti-poverty campaign organisations, including Barnardo’s, Trust for London, the National Union of Teachers and the CPAG itself, is asking the next London mayor to do something to stop that rise occurring. | Drawing on analysis by the Resolution Foundation, the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) forecasts that the number is set to rise by 200,000 by 2020, largely as a result of measures announced by the government in its summer budget. It says that up to half of these young people would have at least one parent in work. An impressive coalition of family and anti-poverty campaign organisations, including Barnardo’s, Trust for London, the National Union of Teachers and the CPAG itself, is asking the next London mayor to do something to stop that rise occurring. |
| Like what? The Family Friendly London manifesto sets out areas where it thinks the next boss of City Hall could tailor policies and apply his or her powers of persuasion. They’d like a big push to make it easier for mothers in particular to find employment. At present, a combination of low wages, high transport and childcare costs and inconvenient working hours often makes it difficult to combine holding down a job with meeting parental responsibilities. | Like what? The Family Friendly London manifesto sets out areas where it thinks the next boss of City Hall could tailor policies and apply his or her powers of persuasion. They’d like a big push to make it easier for mothers in particular to find employment. At present, a combination of low wages, high transport and childcare costs and inconvenient working hours often makes it difficult to combine holding down a job with meeting parental responsibilities. |
| The campaigners want the next mayor to put more effort behind the London Living Wage campaign, encourage family-friendly employment practices at the Greater London Authority and get the London Enterprise Panel - a grouping of boroughs and businesses chaired by the mayor to drive job creation and growth - to do more work on facilitating parental employment. | The campaigners want the next mayor to put more effort behind the London Living Wage campaign, encourage family-friendly employment practices at the Greater London Authority and get the London Enterprise Panel - a grouping of boroughs and businesses chaired by the mayor to drive job creation and growth - to do more work on facilitating parental employment. |
| Mayoral drives to increase childcare provision, including by supporting the boroughs with meeting their legal obligations in this area, and to enlarge the provision of universal free school meals for primary school pupils so that it encompasses every borough would also be welcomed. | Mayoral drives to increase childcare provision, including by supporting the boroughs with meeting their legal obligations in this area, and to enlarge the provision of universal free school meals for primary school pupils so that it encompasses every borough would also be welcomed. |
| Inevitably, housing is a specific area of major concern, with tens of thousands of London families housed in temporary accommodation and an estimated 400,000 children living in overcrowded conditions. The manifesto urges the next mayor to at least commit to a target of seeing 50,000 new homes being built in the capital every year, to seeking to extend mayoral powers to improve the private renting sector (which houses increasing numbers of families), and to work with boroughs to halve overcrowding by 2020. | |
| The housing request is a big one, but then it is a big, big problem. The other manifesto items rightly recognise the potential of the mayor’s office for advocacy, both publicly and behind the scenes. Acknowledging the damage done by child poverty in London, both to the individuals affected and to the city as a whole, and the need to find ways to correct it should be part of every mayoral candidate’s mission. Let’s see how they respond. | The housing request is a big one, but then it is a big, big problem. The other manifesto items rightly recognise the potential of the mayor’s office for advocacy, both publicly and behind the scenes. Acknowledging the damage done by child poverty in London, both to the individuals affected and to the city as a whole, and the need to find ways to correct it should be part of every mayoral candidate’s mission. Let’s see how they respond. |
| Read the Family Friendly London manifesto here. | Read the Family Friendly London manifesto here. |