Download the Enterprise, Employment and Skills Strategy here (
PDF file 797KB)
As one of London’s five Olympic Boroughs, Waltham Forest is poised to benefit from the transformational potential of the 2012 Olympic Games and the development of an entire new “edge City” development at Stratford. The substantial infrastructure investment ahead of the Olympics and its regeneration legacy may result in the arrival of businesses with 30,000 or more jobs.
The Borough is also strategically positioned to benefit from the new economic geography that is emerging in north and east London as the Capital’s population continues to grow. Waltham Forest straddles two of the corridors earmarked to accommodate London’s growth – in the Lower Lea Valley part of Thames Gateway and in the Upper Lee part of the London-Stansted-Cambridge-Peterborough growth corridor. In each growth area, a population increase equivalent to a whole new London Borough is anticipated over the next twenty years.
The retail, consumer and personal services market alone will generate business growth and a yield a potential of perhaps 10,000 net additional jobs within the Borough.
This draft enterprise strategy sets the framework for business to thrive in Waltham Forest. It lays the foundations for residents and businesses to benefit from the Borough’s opportunities for economic growth and it sets out how Waltham Forest can achieve three broad outcomes:
- To enable local businesses to exploit the opportunities arising from the Borough’s physical regeneration, infrastructure investment and population growth
- To expand the base of small businesses in the Borough and to encourage inward investment and relocation of firms to Waltham Forest’s town centres, business parks and industrial estates
- To stimulate and help develop entrepreneurship in the Borough’s population – especially amongst disadvantaged and under-represented population groups and in poorer neighbourhoods.
The five key objectives of the Strategy are:
- Increasing enterprise and employment through the provision of start-up and grow on accommodation and business growth and support services delivered from “onestop” locations around the Borough
- Building an entrepreneurial culture by encouraging new business formation, self employment and the risk-taking inherent in becoming an entrepreneur – through business education, knowledge transfer, increasing the number of women entrepreneurs, encouraging growth amongst BME owned firms and by boosting social enterprise
- Developing a new vibrancy in our town centres by encouraging new firms in retail, leisure and personal services, especially in culturally distinctive cuisine
- A creative future for Waltham Forest by exploiting the arrival of media industries ahead of 2012 and by growing an international film and video production, distribution and exhibition sector
- A business environment that is clean, green, safe and accessible – served by good transport infrastructure, attractive and well managed business parks and industrial estates and is the best place for environmentally clean business in London.
To ensure that the Enterprise, Employment and Skills Strategy is effectively focussed on the authentic needs of business, leadership of the strategy will be taken forward by the Waltham Forest Business Board.
