The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, the Rt Hon Wes Streeting MP, has presided over the opening of the University of East London’s (UEL) new Neighbourhood Health Hub in the London Borough of Newham – a pioneering partnership bringing healthcare closer to home through collaboration between the University, the NHS and local authorities.

The launch event at UEL’s Stratford Health Campus on 17 October brought together local leaders, health partners, students and residents to see how the Hub will transform access to health and wellbeing services in east London.

The Neighbourhood Health Hub plans to provide accessible, preventative, research-informed healthcare services for local residents, while offering hands-on training opportunities for students and professionals, both preparing to join and progressing further in the health and social care workforce. It combines clinical care, education and research under one roof – creating a model that supports healthier lives, reducing pressure on local GPs and hospitals, advancing digital innovation and offering students real-world experience in a prevention-first approach to healthcare.

Health and Social Care Secretary Wes Streeting said, “Where you live shouldn’t determine how long you live but that is the unjust reality in our capital today. A girl born in Newham will fall into ill health six years earlier than a girl born down the road in Kensington and Chelsea – this is a scandal which we are determined to end.”

“This groundbreaking neighbourhood health hub will bring healthcare closer to communities that need it most, providing a one-stop shop for health and care services on people’s doorsteps. It is a leading light of change we are making in the NHS, shifting its focus from hospital to community.

“By integrating care, education and innovation in one place, we’re not just treating illness – we’re preventing it, training the next generation of healthcare professionals, and bringing our analogue health service into the digital age.” 

At the Hub, residents can access a wide range of practical, community-based health and wellbeing services, including:

• Physiotherapy, sports therapy and podiatry for injury recovery and mobility support
• Counselling and wellbeing sessions, including mindfulness and parenting support
• Health checks and screening for blood pressure, cholesterol and heart health
• Musculoskeletal therapy, a non-invasive technology that supports joint, muscle and bone health – with free sessions offered to eligible Newham residents as part of clinical trials

Professor Amanda Broderick, Vice-Chancellor & President, University of East London, said, “The Neighbourhood Health Hub is designed to be a ‘passport to good health’ for our community, reflecting three vital goals: helping families build healthy foundations from a young age; supporting people to stay active and in work; and reducing health inequalities for everyone in our community.

“The Neighbourhood Health Hub also gives our community access to free, high-quality services while offering students and practitioners transformative learning experiences that prepare them to make a difference from day one in the NHS.”

The Hub forms part of UEL’s expanding Stratford Health Campus, which also includes the University’s state-of-the-art Hospital and Primary Care Training Hub, opened by His Majesty King Charles III, and the forthcoming Academic Health Building. Together, these facilities are shaping a new model for healthcare education, research and service delivery in east London.

UEL is also developing a new, primary care-focused medical school, with its MBBS degree at the heart of the Stratford Health Campus. From 2027, and subject to General Medical Council (GMC) approval, the programme will train doctors for east London, from east London – widening access to medicine and strengthening the region’s healthcare workforce for generations to come.

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The University of East London (UEL) has announced plans to open its first South Asia Careers Hub in Chennai, strengthening its long-term strategic commitment to India and the wider South Asia region.

Planned to open in Autumn 2026, the Hub will serve students, alumni, employers, researchers and entrepreneurs across South Asia. It will bring together international academic practice with regional industry and community expertise to create practical, career-focused learning opportunities.

The Hub will support:

• internships and live industry projects
• executive education and workforce development
• applied research partnerships
• support for start-ups and entrepreneurship

Focus areas aligned with regional priorities:

The Hub’s initial academic focus will include:

• Health and Behavioural Sciences
• Engineering
• Business Management
• Psychology

These areas closely align with Tamil Nadu’s priorities in healthcare, life sciences, advanced manufacturing and inclusive development.

Developed in partnership with the Tamil Nadu Industrial Development Corporation (TIDCO) and the Government of Tamil Nadu, the Hub will work directly with industry to provide hands-on experience while supporting fast-growing sectors such as advanced manufacturing, health technologies, digital innovation and the creative economy.

Announcement made at India International Higher Education Summit

The announcement was made at the India International Higher Education Summit (IGES), where Professor Amanda Broderick, Vice-Chancellor and President of UEL, is leading the University’s delegation.

Professor Amanda Broderick, Vice-Chancellor and President of the University of East London, said, “India is one of the most dynamic education and innovation markets in the world, and Chennai is at the heart of that momentum. The launch of our first South Asia Careers Hub represents a major step in UEL’s long-term commitment to India, bringing our careers-first, enterprise-led education model directly into partnership with government, industry and academia.”

“This collaboration with the Government of Tamil Nadu and TIDCO allows us to co-create globally relevant, industry-embedded education, applied research and workforce development that delivers real impact – for students, employers and society. Together, we are building new pathways for talent, innovation and inclusive growth that will shape the future workforce across India and South Asia.”

The Hub will also support alumni engagement across India and South Asia, strengthening links between education, employers and lifelong learning, while creating new opportunities for academic and research collaboration in the years ahead.

Government of Tamil Nadu statement

The Government of Tamil Nadu welcomed UEL’s decision to establish its first South Asia Careers Hub in Chennai, reinforcing the state’s position as India’s leading destination for global education, advanced skills and innovation-led growth.

Formalised through a Memorandum of Understanding with TIDCO, the initiative reflects international confidence in Tamil Nadu’s governance, talent ecosystem and policy stability, strengthening its reputation as the preferred destination for high-quality global universities.

Planned to open in 2026, the Hub will support high-value job creation, skills development and inclusive economic growth, aligned with the India–UK Vision 2035 and Tamil Nadu’s ambition to act as a global gateway for education, innovation and talent mobility.

Find out more about studying in the UK as an international student.

The University of East London (UEL) hosted a cross-sector symposium at the House of Commons on 9 February, bringing together parliamentarians, employers, practitioners and people with lived experience to examine how workplaces can better support colleagues affected by trauma, substance use and recovery.

Held in partnership with the International Consortium of Universities for Drug Demand Reduction (ICUDDR), the event focused on employers’ responsibilities in a changing landscape of work and health, and the role recovery-ready, trauma-informed practices can play in addressing long-term sickness and economic inactivity.

Discussions were framed in the context of the Government’s Keep Britain Working agenda and the growing recognition that good work can support long-term participation in the labour market.

Opening the symposium, UEL Vice-Chancellor and President Professor Amanda Broderick said: “East London is a place of extraordinary energy, resilience and creativity. But it is also where communities often experience the sharpest edges of health inequality, economic precarity, trauma and addiction-related harm.

These realities do not stop at the workplace door. They show up in absence, presenteeism, disciplinary processes, and too often, in people falling out of work altogether.

Our work is deliberately practice-based and grounded in a responsibility to deliver solutions that benefit learners, employers and communities alike. Developing recovery-ready, addiction-informed workplaces is, for us, a practical way of enacting that responsibility – translating evidence, values and lived experience into real organisational change.”

Through keynote contributions, panel discussions and facilitated roundtables, participants explored how organisations can move beyond basic policies to create workplace cultures that reduce stigma, support early intervention, and enable people to stay in or return to work safely and sustainably.

The symposium heard that around 2.8 million working-age adults are economically inactive due to ill health. Roughly one in five working-age people is out of work. The economic cost of this is estimated at over £200 billion a year.

Guests included House of Commons host the Rt Hon James Asser, MP for West Ham and Beckton, Deputy Mayor of London Mr Howard Dawber, the Rt Hon Sir Stephen Timms, MP for East Ham and Minister for Social Security and Disability, and Dr Laurie Krom, Executive Director, and Dr Carmel Clancy, Director, from ICUDDR.

Professor Fatima Annan-Diab, Executive Dean of the Royal Docks School of Business and Law, told guests, “We are committed to working with employers, policymakers, practitioners, and partners to translate evidence into capability – and intent into delivery. Through our interdisciplinary expertise and our Recovery-Ready and Trauma-Informed Professional Pathway, introduced today, we are building the infrastructure needed to support real and lasting organisational change.”

“This work does not begin and end with an event. It is ongoing, and it is designed to be collaborative.”

Over the next phase, the collaboration will focus on developing professional education and practical resources for employers, including continuing professional development (CPD) courses, employer toolkits and opportunities for applied research.

View all our short courses (CPD)

4 min read23 April

It is a retrospectively rewritten graduate tax that punishes aspiration, entrenches inequality, and falls hardest on women at every stage of their working lives.

An entire generation was told repayments would feel like “a phone contract” or “a few coffees a week.” That was a lie. Only a third of Plan 2 borrowers will ever clear the balance.

The rest pay 9 per cent of every pound above a frozen threshold for up to 40 years – a 51 per cent marginal rate when combined with income tax and National Insurance. A graduate on £50,000 will only keep 49p of each additional pound – how dare politicians continue to call it a loan.

Beneath these headline injustices sits a deeper one policymakers refuse to name: this system is gendered from the day it is signed to the day a woman retires.

Women make up 57 per cent of UK students. They leave with the same debts as men but a labour market that pays them 14 – 15 per cent less and expects them to take career breaks for caring but doesn’t give financial relief.  In the student loan system they pay for longer, pay more in real terms, and rarely clear their balance.

Our research found Ms JD puts the arithmetic in words ministers should read: “Unless you are being paid over £66k annually, you do not even start to break even. To earn £66k as a female in a male-dominated industry will be almost impossible.” Seven and a half years of consistent repayment have taken her balance from £57,000 to £83,000. She finds it “near impossible to buy a house on my own.”

Then there is motherhood – if a woman can afford it. Interest does not pause for maternity leave.

Ms HS, 32 and child-free despite wanting to be a parent, says: “Knowing my student loan balance would still be growing during maternity leave adds an extra layer of financial pressure.” Ms HG and her husband pay £420 a month and have put off starting a family: “This is why the birth rate is so low, we can’t afford to do so.” Westminster wonders about falling birth rates. It has engineered one of them.

The unfairness begins before a woman has even taken out her own loan. Ms CM describes how the parental assessment for maintenance loans assumes a stepparent will fund an adult stepchild’s university costs – penalising single mothers who re-partner. Most single-parent households are headed by women. That is not a footnote. It is structural.

Then there is the pension pipeline. The part that should stop ministers in their tracks. Every pound deducted in a woman’s 20s, 30s and 40s is a pound not compounding in her pension. Women retire with 40 per cent less pension wealth than men. As Ms HS puts it: “Ultimately, it’s a 9 per cent additional tax for life.” The state that raids her payslip now will rescue her later. That is not social policy. It is a doom loop.

Layered on top is a retrospective rewriting of the deal. The repayment threshold was promised to rise with earnings; it has been frozen and re-frozen. Interest rate bands were tightened at the 2025 Budget without mention in the Treasury’s own Budget documents. The 6 per cent cap from September 2026 does not enable graduates to clear their debts, it merely slows the rate at which those debts become unrepayable. In any regulated consumer credit market, marketing debt on terms this misleading would be a clear breach of consumer protection law and bee deemed a scandal.

What I have described is, on its face, indirect sex discrimination under the Equality Act 2010. No gender impact assessment has been published for the threshold freeze or the hidden tightening of the interest bands, raising a serious question about whether ministers have discharged the Public Sector Equality Duty at all.

Fairness is not free; nor is unfairness. Proper reform, retrospective justice, a lifetime repayment cap, and a mandatory gender impact assessment on every future change – costs roughly 0.3–0.4 per cent of GDP. Reforming the triple lock releases savings that would address this intergenerational unfairness.  A political choice, not about affordability.

The student loan system promised social mobility and has delivered a debt trap.

This government has committed to closing the gender pay gap, the gender pension gap and reversing birth rate decline, so cannot credibly defend a policy that measurably widens all three. Ms HG asks the question ministers must answer: “When did hard work mean only surviving?”

Gina Miller is founder of MoneyShe, and co-founder of SCM Direct. You can read her TSC submission here and policy white paper here.