The Fitzrovia Partnership’s employment and GVA figures are not credible

I read with interest the Fitzrovia Partnership’s email newsletter to its members earlier this month which included news of its letter from their new CEO Andrew Munk to Chancellor Rachel Reeves about business rates, the number of people working in its business improvement districts (BIDs), and the estimate of the gross value added (GVA) that the districts contribute to the London economy.

What struck me immediately was what I consider to be hugely exaggerated employment figures within the two BIDs and therefore the accuracy of the projections of job growth. If the GVA figures are based on those employment numbers, then they are also completely wrong.

Munk in his letter to Reeves claims that for 2023 the number of jobs within the Fitzrovia BIDs’ boundaries was 194,144 and that there will be a projected 14,384 increase to bring the total number of jobs to a whopping 208,525 by 2030.

Growth sector	Jobs 2023	Projected Jobs 2030	Change in Jobs (to 2030)	% change to 2030
Professional, scientific & technical	68,042	71,267	3,225	4.7
Information & communication	62,039	64,979	2,940	4.7
Hospitality, retail & leisure	28,018	32,284	4,266	15.2
Creative & media	14,009	15,510	1,502	10.7
Construction & real estate	9,506	10,694	1,188	12.5
Health & life sciences	6,004	6,647	644	10.7
Financial & insurance	4,503	4,868	365	8.1
Other services	2,023	2,276	253	12.5
Total	194,144	208,525	14,383

That is probably more than double the actual number of jobs in the area, which is less than 100 hectares. How did they arrive at those figures? Probably by including employment outside of the BID boundaries.

For context, the provisional figures for the whole of the London Borough of Camden for 2024 is a total of 445,500 jobs; and for City of Westminster there are 837,000 jobs. Those stats are from the Business Register and Employment Survey (BRES), which is what The Fitzrovia Partnership used to (mis)calculate its own figures.

I don’t have access to all the latest ward or lower super output area level data. But in 2001 there were 28,600 jobs within the Camden side of Fitzrovia, and in 2018 there were 71,000 jobs in the whole of Camden’s Bloomsbury ward. Westminster’s West End ward is considerably more than that, with 263,947 jobs in 2023.

The Fitzrovia BID in Camden is less than half of Bloomsbury ward in size; and West Fitzrovia BID covers maybe 20 per cent of West End ward. The high value southern edge of Fitzrovia is within the New West End Company BID. See the above map of the Fitzrovia BIDs’ boundaries which would fit within the confines of a one square kilometre grid square of an OS map.

According to the West End Good Growth (2018) report published by Arup, Oxford Street District (see map above) accounts for 94,000 jobs and businesses within it generate “£5.6 billion and £2.8 billion respectively in the western and eastern sections” — giving a total of £8.4bn in GVA per year.

Now those figures are likely to be somewhat higher in 2025 compared to when the report was written. But it gives some important context to the Fitzrovia Partnership’s daft numbers.

The Arup report also has some interesting analysis of employment density across the wider West End, with Soho having the highest at 1,350 jobs per hectare.

By contrast the Fitzrovia Partnership is suggesting that its district has around 2,000 jobs per hectare.

The claim by Munk that in 2023 “our district generated £13.2 billion in GVA” and that the figure will rise to £14.9bn by 2030, is likely to be very wide of the mark.

I would estimate the total number of jobs in the Fitzrovia BIDs in 2025 is nearer 85,000. I see no reason to disagree with the percentage growth projections, and I think it is likely that we will see an increase in jobs if recent performance is anything to go by.

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