The council’s airport company has contributed nearly £500 million over the past two decades to frontline services and community and charitable organisations.
Councillor Javiera Hussain is a Luton Labour Party councillor, and director of Luton Rising, the council-owned economic development company. The company has outlined plans for the airport’s expansion, which include enlarging Terminal 1 and adding a second terminal.
As a local authority, raising funds to enable us to deliver for our communities can be tough – but this doesn’t detract from our duty and desire to support our residents, by improving their living standards, and eradicating poverty.
At Luton Council, we’ve used innovative methods to unlock spending power and facilitate delivering the best for our residents. One of the most effective methods is using the council’s ownership of assets, including London Luton Airport, to channel financial benefits directly into local and neighboring communities.
As a direct result of the council’s sole shareholding in Luton Rising, our company that owns the airport and other associated assets, the airport has contributed nearly £500 million over the past two decades to frontline services as well as essential voluntary, community, and charitable organisations.
Our airport company’s community investment funding has an annual budget exceeding £7.4m, supporting dozens of local organisations such as Active Luton, The Culture Trust Luton, Luton Women’s Aid, Autism Bedfordshire, Victim Support and more.
Since 2019, and the launch of Luton Rising’s Community Investment Fund (CIF) in early 2020, our funding partner the Bedfordshire and Luton Community Foundation has managed and awarded over £13.4m in support from Luton Rising. The support has reached over 964,000 beneficiaries.
Luton Rising has other funds too, also driven by our ownership of the airport, including the Small Grants Fund to further support community and voluntary projects in Luton, and the Near Neighbour Fund to support communities not within our local authority area but which we acknowledge are impacted by the airport’s operations.
For every passenger travelling through our airport, an industry-leading sum is invested by Luton Rising directly into local community causes. In 2019, this amounted to 53p per passenger, 20 times that of any other UK airport. This helps make Luton the most socially impactful airport in the UK.
Before the onset of Covid, Luton Rising was also contributing around 15% of Luton council’s budget to support frontline services, and the company continues to be a vital source of income for its shareholder during the recovery.
Of course, this is all evidence of what has been achieved so far, and how the council’s ownership of assets has facilitated these vast sums of community investment. But we’re also looking to the future too.
We are developing the Luton Economic Growth Strategy for 2025-2032 to establish a framework for delivering further growth, creating good jobs, and improving living standards, benefiting all Luton’s citizens and communities. A growing, inclusive, and sustainable economy is not just good for Luton, but also for the wider region and nationally.
To guide the Strategy, we’re using the Luton 2040 Vision to create a healthy, fair, and sustainable town where everyone can thrive, and no one has to live in poverty. This vision has been developed in collaboration with residents, reflecting their aspirations for the future of our town.
With a strategic plan and adequate resources, there is potential to alter Luton’s current environment and future trajectory: 2020 saw 4,000 less children in poverty than there were in Luton in 2017, illustrating the potential to achieve significant change.
The continued success of programmes like CIF will be a key driver to realise the Economic Growth Strategy and 2040 Vision ambitions, and to build upon London Luton Airport’s status as the most socially impactful airport in the UK.
Of course, the airport provides many benefits that support our residents beyond the community investment it facilitates. The airport is the most significant employer in the region, with employment in and around the airport increasing by 9% in 2023 to an all-time high of 12,100 jobs, with 84% of these full-time.
Rarely has this asset been more vital to the town, and the sub-regional economy, with the devastating news that Stellantis is proposing to end the 120-year history of vehicle manufacture in Luton during 2025. We are looking at a loss of up to 1,250 jobs from the plant and a further loss of up to 2,500 from the wider supply chain, meaning as many as 3,750 jobs are at risk.
The council is the sole shareholder in Luton Rising, so alignment of ambitions for economic growth is vital for the future prosperity of the town. We’ve already achieved so much with our social impact funding, and we don’t intend for this to slow down either. It’s a council’s responsibility to look after its residents – that’s exactly what we’re currently doing and what we will continue doing.
We’re working hard to encourage sustainable, economic growth in Luton and dispel previous misconceptions regarding our population and output. Our vision for sustained economic growth for the working people is helping the future of Luton look brighter. Our ownership of assets like the airport is supporting our ambitions, and it’s a model that other councils ought to consider to achieve similar levels of community investment and social impact that we’ve been delivering for decades in Luton.
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