Transport for London (TfL) has published research highlighting its economic impact “across the UK” as it calls for £500m in capital funding by 2024/25.
A new report from global engineering firm Hatch says that in 2022/23, London’s transport body spent £6.5 billion in the UK with more than 2,000 suppliers.
This supported £5.9 billion in gross value added and more than 100,000 jobs, the research found.
Seventy per cent (£4.6bn) of TfL’s total spend on suppliers was made in London, with 699 different companies.
But two-thirds (66%) of the transport body’s suppliers were based outside London, and around half of its suppliers were SMEs.
TfL said the research illustrates that its investment has “a huge benefit for its supply chain across the UK”.
“This in turn delivers wider benefits to the economy of the local areas where suppliers are based, supporting employment and economic growth across the country,” he added.
TfL’s biggest spend outside London was in the North West, where it spent £540m with 155 suppliers.
These were mainly “land transport services and pipeline transport services (except rail transport), construction and warehousing and support activities in the transport sectors”, according to the investigation.
The report says this investment supported a total of 8,870 full-time jobs in the region, including 4,870 as a direct result of its spending.
TfL’s North West suppliers include Holbro Engineering in Fleetwood, Lancashire, which provides precision machined refurbished components for underground trains.
The regions with the next highest spending on suppliers were the South East (£370 million), the South West (£320 million) and the North East (£270 million).
TfL’s highest-spending local authority area outside London was Stockport, where the body spent £300m with eight providers.
The research is based on TfL’s procurement database, supplemented by other information such as an internal survey of senior TfL staff.
It comes as the transport body asks the government for £500m in capital funding by 2024/25, which it says would support critical projects that will “boost the UK economy”.
These include completing a major signal upgrade on the Metropolitan and District Tube lines. TfL also wants capital support to help deliver “critical road renewal schemes” on the A40 Westway and Blackwall Tunnel.
The transport body’s current funding settlement ends in March 2024.
The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said: “London is the engine room of the UK, and this research shows just how big an impact TfL has on the UK economy, but also how much London needs the ‘experience from the whole country that is not available in our capital.
“TfL’s investment has supported small businesses, created thousands of new jobs and brought billions of pounds to the UK economy. To continue driving this growth, we have exciting plans to make it even better more London’s transport infrastructure, but this cannot happen without the right funding deal. I urge the Government to work with us on a long-term funding deal so that we can continue to build a better and more prosperous London and country for to everyone”.
Transport for London Commissioner Andy Lord said: “The report makes clear that it is wrong to view our transport network through a London-centric lens – nothing would be possible without the power and innovation of British industry as a whole.”
