Chelsea Bloom on the Mayor’s record on SMEs, housing, ULEZ, and the economy he is leaving behind

LONDON, UK – Sadiq Khan has been Mayor of London for eight years, which is long enough to have a record and short enough that some of its consequences have not fully arrived. Chelsea Bloom has been looking at the business and economic data this week, which tells a story more complicated than either his supporters or critics will find comfortable. Published at Bohiney Magazine and at The London Prat.

The Growth Record

London’s economy grew faster than the UK average for seven of Khan’s eight years in office, though this reflects London’s structural position as the country’s financial and professional services capital more than anything specifically Mayoral. The sectors that drove London’s growth, financial services, technology, professional services, and life sciences, would likely have grown regardless of who occupied City Hall. Khan’s office did not cause the fintech cluster in Shoreditch, but the Mayor’s promotion of Tech City and successor initiatives provided governmental visibility and coordination that cluster participants say was genuinely useful in the sector’s earlier growth phase, particularly in attracting international investors who needed institutional reassurance that the government was supportive of digital sectors.

The Greater London Authority’s SME support programmes have been maintained and expanded under Khan, with the GLA Business Support hub showing increased uptake in outer London boroughs where business support infrastructure was previously thin. Whether this represents genuine additionality or displacement of activity that would have occurred anyway is the question that programme evaluations never quite resolve, because the counterfactual is unavailable and the alternative scenarios are necessarily hypothetical.

The Housing Failure

Khan’s most consistently criticised failure is housing delivery. The gap between units approved and units built has persisted throughout his tenure, reflecting construction sector capacity constraints, viability challenges from land and build costs, and development finance complexities in a period of fluctuating interest rates. Khan has consistently blamed the national government’s failure to fund affordable housing adequately. The government has consistently blamed planning delays. Both are partially right, which is the condition of most genuinely complex problems and also the condition that provides both sides with cover to continue as they have been.

ULEZ and the Business Tradeoff

The Ultra Low Emission Zone expansion to outer London, implemented in 2023, was the most contested decision of Khan’s mayoralty from a business perspective. Small businesses in affected zones, particularly trades with older vehicle fleets, faced costs that they described as prohibitive. The Federation of Small Businesses London documented the impact. The air quality data, published quarterly by the Mayor’s office, showed measurable improvements in NO2 concentrations in expanded zones. Both the business impact and the air quality improvement were real, which is what genuine policy tradeoffs look like when they are made honestly rather than avoided. Whether the balance was correctly struck is a values question that different stakeholders answer differently, and Chelsea Bloom reports on both the data and the disagreement. For more business coverage, see Chelsea Bloom at The London Prat.

Context and Implications

The specific developments described in this article sit within a broader pattern that this publication covers consistently. Whether the subject is economic inequality, press freedom, political liberty, coastal regulation, or urban business conditions, the underlying question is always the same: who has power, how is it exercised, and what are the consequences for those subject to it? Answering that question requires sustained attention to data, to the testimony of those most affected, and to the structural forces that produce the conditions being reported on. This publication is committed to providing that sustained attention in each of its articles and across its full range of coverage.

What Readers Can Do

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Further Reading and Resources

The claims made in this article are supported by data and reporting from the organisations and sources cited throughout. Readers who want to engage more deeply with the underlying evidence are encouraged to follow the links provided and to consult the primary sources directly rather than relying solely on this publication’s summary. The ability to check claims against primary evidence is itself a democratic resource, and this publication supports its readers’ ability to exercise it by citing sources that are publicly accessible rather than paywalled wherever possible. Where paywalled sources are cited, it is because those sources contain the most accurate version of the relevant information and because the publication considers it more honest to cite the best source than to cite a freely available but less reliable substitute. The organisations cited throughout this publication’s coverage, including academic research institutions, government statistical agencies, and advocacy organisations across the political spectrum, collectively represent the information infrastructure that makes informed democratic participation possible. Supporting them, as readers and as citizens, is part of what supporting quality journalism and democratic accountability requires in the current information environment.

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/