Editorial

UK ‘smart city’ progress depends on EU funding, warns Juniper

And no less than £23bn’s worth, says the research firm – money that will have to be found elsewhere after 2019

Posted 23 October 2017 by Gary Flood


London is the country’s ‘smartest’ urban environment, well ahead of nearest national rivals like Edinburgh or home of the alleged ‘Digital Beach’, Brighton.

The judgement was made by global IT consultancy Juniper Research in a new study, ‘Top 10 UK Smart Cities – UK Leaderboard 2017’.

How it made the decision: a complex scoring methodology, claims the research group, comprising KPIs (key performance indicators) in everything from transport to healthcare, public safety and energy.

London beat off its smart city rivals mainly for its high scores in public safety and productivity, reflective, says Juniper, of its smart street lighting and intelligent surveillance analytics. It also likes ‘The Smoke’s’ Tech City initiative, and its numerous relevant smart city hackathons and conferences.

Good news for the capital then, but who else is in the top 10?

In order, the rest of the list goes Edinburgh, Glasgow, Bristol, Manchester, Brighton & Hove, Liverpool, Oxford, Birmingham and Milton Keynes.

The report singles out as worthy of comment a number of success factors in other cities on the list, such as x

But perhaps its biggest policy message is that for smart city progress on a national level, there are some bumps on the road.

These mainly centre on funding – which has a Brexit angle – and the ability to scale up projects.

A significant proportion of money used in the UK for this kind of work until now has derived from the European Investment Bank and Horizon 2020 project – a hefty £23bn over the past three years.

But the UK’s withdrawal from the EU means that alternative sources will have to be found for that sum, which seems a daunting prospect.

To cope, the report urges the creation of more ‘testbed environments’ for SMEs and start-ups so they can get access to smart city technology.

That might tempt slow-moving players such as UK utility firms to look to partner with more smart city pioneers to develop the new solutions and business models needed to maintain momentum.