InfoIslington - Islington Reference Library

Business Register and Employment Survey, London 2010

The Business Register and Employment Survey (BRES) provides annual employment and employee estimates in the UK. This brief focuses on London results.

London and the UK

• London employment was 4.336 million in September 2010 an annual increase of 44 thousand jobs (or 1.0 per cent)
• This was the second highest increase after the South East (51 thousand or 1.3 per cent increase)
• This compared to a decrease in employment in the UK of 156 thousand (or -0.5 per cent)

London employment by industry

Between 2009 and 2010 the largest increases by sector were:

• Business Services (39 thousand increase in employment)
• Information and Communications (20 thousand increase)
• Finance and Insurance (12 thousand increase)

London sub regional employment

• Employment in Inner London increased by 36 thousand and in Outer London by 8 thousand
• Employment increased in 20 out of 33 London boroughs
• The greatest increase was in the City of London (24 thousand)

Employment projections for London by sector and trend-based projections by borough

This working paper from the GLA examines projections for employment in London.  It estimates 5.393 million employees in 2031. ‘Professional, real estate, scientific and technical activities’ is set to be the fastest growing sector. The other relatively fast growing sectors are ‘Information and communication’ and ‘Administrative and support services’ followed by ‘Transport and storage’.

An Analysis of London's Exports

The total value of London’s exports in 2009 was £92.1 billion, up from £65.6 billion in 2001. All of this increase was due to services; whilst exports of goods fell by £1.5 billion (to £21.9 billion), exports of services rose by £28 billion (to £70.2 billion) over this time.

London’s goods exports made up 10 per cent of the UK total in 2009, whilst London’s service exports made up 44 per cent.

Whilst the EU remains the largest regional destination for London’s goods exports, the USA remains the largest country destination.

View the paper from GLA Economics here.

London's Digital Economy

This report draws together a variety of data sources to highlight London’s position in the digital arena. The report looks at uptake and use of digital technologies by businesses and households. Amongst the findings are:

• There are over 23,000 ICT and software companies in London – the highest number of any European city. London specialises in the technology industry hosting a quarter of all British jobs in computer and related activities employment and 22 per cent of British jobs in Telecommunications. London has the highest level of private equity and venture capitalists investments into technology companies of the UK regions. In 2010 they invested £453 million into 60 companies in the city.

• London adults are more likely than those in the rest of the country to access the internet by mobile phone.

• The Broadband Quality Survey 2010 shows that UK broadband services enable users to “comfortably enjoy” the latest web applications but still lag someway behind the best in the world, such as those in South Korea, Hong Kong and Japan. The Survey scores London at 30, the same as Glasgow and one point higher than Birmingham. This compares to the winning city of Seoul that has an overall score of 73. Both Virgin and BT are in the process of updating their networks to offer their customers superfast broadband and the Government recently announced that they are creating a new £100 million urban broadband fund part of which will benefit London.

London's creative industries 2011 update

The data in this note are an update to the GLA’s creative industry employment and firm count statistics.

The sector which employed the most creative workers in 2010 was Advertising with 73,000.

Libraries in London and Surrounding Area Holding British Standards

The City Business Library has produced this useful list of libraries around and in London where you can locate British Standards.

Islington Hotels Study

This is quite an old report (2004) but important one assessing the supply of and demand for hotels in Islington up to 2016 with much important statistical information on the sector. Download here.

Council Contracts

Islington Council  publishes its contract opportunities of over £100,000 to supply a range of goods and services. See here for details.

Islington Crisis Response Plan

Emergency Planning is the general term for the work that the Government, Emergency Services, Local Authorities, the Health Services and other organisations carry out  in preparing plans and procedures for responding to, dealing with and recovering from any incident/emergency.

In the event of any incident requiring the assistance of Islington Council, the Emergency Services will contact the Council by way of an agreed procedure.

The role of the council is then to:

• support the emergency services
• support people affected by the incident
• provide mutual aid to other responders
• maintain normal Council services
• plan for medium and long term consequences and recovery from the incident

The type of assistance that can be offered is the provision of:

• transportation
• rest centres
• examination of building structures
• highway closures and diversion routes
• specialist equipment
• welfare/support

Once the immediate life-threatening period has passed, the council will play a major role in restoring normality to the area as quickly as possible.

Under the Civil Contingencies Act (2004), the Council has the duty to provide and maintain robust and resilient contingency plans. The purpose of the contingency plans (crisis response plans) is to provide staff with plans, procedures and information they will require to enable them to mitigate the effects of any major emergency occurring within Islington, whilst allowing council services to continue to provide their usual day to day services as far as possible.

The Crisis Response plan, details how the council will respond to an emergency and details roles and responsibilities for each department to ensure a coordinated response. The plan is designated to enable mobilisation of resources, at short notice, in response to any incident in addition to ensuring that core critical services are maintained in the event of major disruption.

A major incident is defined as: A major incident is any emergency that requires the implementation of special arrangements by one or all of the emergency services and will generally include the involvement, either directly or indirectly of large numbers of people.

 

Complete Business Reference Adviser (COBRA)

COBRA is an online database the library subcribes to and can be viewed for free in any Islington library and at home or at work if you are a member of the library. It is useful if you are thinking of starting up or currently running a small business. COBRA gives  practical information on setting up and running a business, details of sources of support and finance, and a legal library covering laws and regulations affecting small businesses. UK market synopses cover key trends and future developments across more than 60 market sectors.