As far as the sustainability of public services in London is concerned, there seems to be a number of non budgetary factors at work, many of which are related to the affordability of housing, or rather the lack of it. In Lewisham we have started to notice that schools are finding it difficult to recruit Head Teachers. I think this has been a problem in the past across the country, but this was due to teachers not wanting to take on the extra responsibility and stress. Now it seems that part of the issue is that suitable candidates are not applying because they know that they couldn't afford to move here if they were successful. My sense is that this has been an issue for recruitment to senior posts in public services in London for some time.
But house prices are not just preventing good people from coming to London to further their careers, they are also pushing people out. People are leaving London because they can't afford to buy a house here, even though they are in good jobs with good career prospectives. Even those who own their own homes are having to move away because they can not afford to trade up and buy a property big enough to raise a family. People are willing to endure a 90 minute to two hour commute each way, in order in keep their job in London, but also have a modest family home, while their partners give up their London job and look for something local. Others leave the London job market completely. The other force pushing people out is the desire of those lucky enough to have a family home, to cash in on what they consider is a housing market bubble. They have seen the price differential between London properties and those elsewhere expand so far that the trading opportunity is just too good to pass up. I have seen both forces at work in Lewisham.
The good thing about churn at the top of the job market is that it provides opportunities for those lower down to move up, and the more the churn, the more opportunities there are. During the time I visited the primary school that my sons went to in Lewisham, I was struck by how many very young teachers there were by the time the youngest left, compared to when the eldest started. In the couple of school visits I have made since becoming Lewisham's Cabinet Member for Children & Young People, I noticed how many young teachers there were. I don't think this is just a false perception brought on by my own ageing! I know from the people in their twenties who I work with at Hales Gallery, that these young workers are Generation Rent. They tend to be living in rented accommodation with their partners and/or friends and they are childless. I don't know the data on the age profile of employees in public services in London and how it may have changed over the years. However, I suspect that there are an awful lot of Generation Rent employed in our schools, our social services and the NHS. What will happen when this cohort decide to have children? Will we see a slow motion, mass exodus of young doctors, nurses, social workers and teachers from the Capital in the coming years? Who will care for and teach those who remain?
I, of course, am particularly worried about the effect that our dysfunctional housing market is going to have on our schools in the coming years, especially as the situation is being exacerbated by increasing numbers of children needing places and budget reductions. However, I think the situation in adult care may be much worse. We know that the number of elderly people is going to increase in the coming years, and their needs will also increase as they live longer. Thankfully, they have been spared Iain Duncan Smith's welfare reforms so they are not being forced to move to Chatham or Broadstairs to escape the bedroom tax. So in London we are going to have growing demands on adult health and social care that will have to be met by a NHS whose funding was effectively capped at 2010 levels of need, and the social services departments of local councils whose budgets are been drastically cut. And all this will be happening at the time of a possible recruitment crisis.
As I say, I don't have all the data and am just extrapolating and speculating. However, I think the bottom line is that you have to question the viability of a City where a modest family home is out of the price range of young professional people working in the public sector.
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