Power in Place

Developments in local governance and devolution over the past decade have provided new opportunities to tackle policy problems from a place-based angle. Innovations to strengthen participation can ensure more people participate in policymaking to help mitigate issues such as structural inequalities which affect them first hand.

Representative democracy

Place-based policymaking is based on the longstanding principles and statutes governing representative democracy. Citizens (those registered to vote) elect local councillors, and the largest party in a ‘place’ takes control of the council and sets the policy framework. Voters use parties to help choose between policy stances to reflect their own political preferences. And the way representatives decide how to spend public money, what to spend it on, and then account for their choices is tightly controlled by systems of accountancy and accountability.

But there are many reasons why local government has long sought to strengthen wider participation in policymaking alongside formal representative politics. Some under-represented and marginalised voices may not get heard in electoral processes, for example those who are not registered to vote, or who do not have a settled address. Even if electoral systems work as well as they can, there is an ‘in-built’ problem of minority voices being overlooked. Councillors represent the majority, and this gives a simple, clear, and overall fair way to decide. But a majority system can also have downsides; for example, if sections of the community are in a minority, they may sometimes lose out unfairly in decisions.

The role of local governance in strengthening participation

The development of successful and effective policies to tackle deep-rooted policy problems such as inequalities is vastly improved through the co-production of policies. This includes working with those who have first-hand experience and knowledge of problems, alongside the expertise of local councillors, researchers, council officers and other civic leaders. However, there is unfulfilled potential to use more participatory methods more often in local governance.

With the rapidly developing map of English devolution there is huge potential to take a place-based approach to tackling inequalities.

We have seen space for these opportunities in newer forms of sub-national governance, such as mayoral combined authorities. The devolved powers and budgets of combined authorities are well placed to tackle place-based inequalities around education outcomes, skills development, employment and health outcomes. With the rapidly developing map of English devolution there is huge potential to take a place- based approach to tackling inequalities, if meaningful participation of under-represented groups can go hand in hand with the requirements for public probity around public funds.

Greater 'people power'

The untapped potential for more participation to help tackle inequalities is a key focus in Greater Manchester following the Independent Inequalities Commission review, which argued for greater ‘people power’. Greater Manchester had already brought forward some democratic innovations in the region, including the establishment of panels covering all strands of inequalities. Earlier research examining the introduction of city mayors and directly elected police and crime commissioners suggests the mandate underpinning directly elected place-based leaders can encourage democratic innovation.

The untapped potential for more participation to help tackle inequalities is a key focus in Greater Manchester.

Following a roundtable set up by Policy@Manchester to bring together researchers, campaigners and policymakers to examine people power, we were invited to work with Greater Manchester policymakers in an action research project

The three aims of the project were to establish design principles to underpin governance processes for developing people power; audit and capture what participatory policymaking is taking place across the ten boroughs; and make recommendations to strengthen the linkage between participatory ‘people power’ and formal statutory governance processes.

Design principles

After reviewing the existing research, we argued that to tackle weaknesses, local participatory decision- making should be underpinned by certain design principles. Membership of decision-making forums should be open, porous, transparent and representative of the communities served. The voices of under- represented groups should be embedded in decision-making, which will avoid tokenism and a lack of representation, and ensure that their input is routinised and responded to. And all types of expertise and evidence should be valued and examined, from the expertise reflected by the gathering of evidence by policymakers and researchers alongside the lived expertise of those with experience of the policy problem.

Examples of best practice

We then shared and discussed these principles at a workshop on strengthening participation across Greater Manchester, which brought together members from the equalities panels and councillors across all the boroughs, including those with equality, diversity, inclusion, and consultation portfolios. We heard from international experts around the best practice for participatory budgeting, running citizens’ panels, and co-production.

This built a ‘menu’ of different types of participatory policymaking and when and why they might be used. Participants in the room shared examples of existing ways in which people power was being used across the boroughs, and the workshop finished with the aim of supporting the development of a community of practice for all involved – elected councillors, researchers, members of the equality panels, and officers from the combined authority and the boroughs.

Strenghtening participation in policymaking to tackle education, skills, employment, and health will ensure that 'levelling up' funding and policies are well targeted, effective and inclusive.

Key recommendations

The possibility for strengthening participation in policymaking to tackle inequalities is considerable, as more and more mayoral combined authorities are created. Strengthening participation in policymaking to tackle education, skills, employment, and health will ensure that Levelling Up funding and policies are well targeted, effective and inclusive. Our key recommendations to achieve this are below.

Firstly, participation should be underpinned by a set of key design principles for decision-making. The processes of participation should be open and porous, as well as transparent, inclusive, embedded, and valuing the fullest range of expertise.

Secondly, the extension of people power can complement representative democracy and enhance decision- making if it is routinely connected to policy development, scrutiny functions, and the work of local elected members.

Finally, when considering how to strengthen participation, consider the target audience, objectives, and all the methods available, and choose wisely.

About the authors

Professor Francesca Gains is a Professor of Public Policy at The University of Manchester.

Professor Liz Richardson is a Professor of Public Administration at The University of Manchester.

Behaviour change is central to discussions about achieving net zero and encouraging more sustainable practices. But there are limits to focusing on individual behaviour change with a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach in a policy field that lacks understanding of cultural diversity. So how can environmental policy take a place-based approach that ensures it works for all communities within an area? And what needs to change to move away from views that some people are ‘hard to reach’?

Assumptions about behaviour

Awaab Ishak was two years old when he died from exposure to mould in a Rochdale flat. At the inquest, the landlord admitted that they did not act because they blamed the mould problem on the cooking and bathing practices of Awaab’s Sudanese parents: “We did make assumptions about lifestyle and we accept that we got that wrong”. The child’s father called out these assumptions as racist, an assessment that casts light on what happens when a focus on individual behaviour obscures the structural causes of social inequality. It is a powerful reminder that human behaviour is complex and making assumptions is dangerous. That is why it is essential that decision-makers take cultural differences, as well as institutional racism, seriously.

Researching with Global South immigrant communities in Manchester

There is growing awareness within environmental politics research that greater attention to inequality within wealthy countries like the UK is needed to develop inclusive policies for a just transition to a sustainable society. Negotiations at the COPs, and most media coverage, show that inequalities exist between rich and poor countries and must be redressed on a global scale. However, there is rarely parallel discussion of the experiences of people living in the Global North who have migrated from the Global South (the ‘south within the north’ as it were). Such populations hold first-hand knowledge of extreme climate breakdown yet have often had lifestyles that contributed little to the problem.

This analysis informs the Towards Inclusive Environmental Sustainability (TIES) research project, which is gathering data on the household practices and environmental perceptions of people who have migrated to Manchester from countries of the Global South. Working with Somali and Pakistani residents, we have conducted a survey and interviews that give us insights into participants’ experiences of living in, and leaving, severely climate challenged homelands. The majority of our participants live in underserved wards in south-central Manchester, where the quality of the local environment and housing is low compared to affluent areas of the city.

We have learned from them that most immigrants from Somalia and Pakistan are just as concerned about climate change as UK born citizens, that they engage in a wide range of ‘green’ practices (such as recycling and energy saving), that their religious beliefs provide strong motivation for conservation, and that many are upset by what they see as the effects of a wasteful, throw-away culture in the UK.

Lack of diversity in the environmental sector

Our research has also gathered evidence that policymakers in Manchester are aware of – but uncertain how to address – the lack of diversity within environmental politics in the city. A 2022 study found that under 5% of people working in UK environmental professions identify as a racialised minority. That means most of the people making policy on net zero (and environmental policy more broadly) come from a narrow range of backgrounds and probably have few opportunities to reflect on how this shapes policymaking. Arguably, when behavioural sciences are favoured over social sciences in the development of environmental policy, there is room for assumptions to be made about people’s lives that don’t get challenged by evidence, let alone by the voices of marginalised people.

Most of the people making policy on net zero (and environmental policy more broadly) come from a narrow range of backgrounds and probably have few opportunities to reflect on how this shapes policymaking.

Challenging assumptions, enabling inclusivity

In 2019, our team published a report on findings of a pilot study based in one of the most diverse wards in Manchester that sets out recommendations for how to challenge assumptions and enable greater inclusivity in local environmental governance. The following are three recommendations that have been further developed by the TIES research.

A place-based approach, where conversations are held in neighbourhoods and households, enables better understanding of people's everyday lives.

First, we recommend questioning the assumptions underpinning behaviour-change focused policy, specifically that all individuals are equally able and responsible to change what, how and how much they consume. A place-based approach, where conversations are held in neighbourhoods and households, enables better understanding of people’s everyday lives and resists top-down, one-size-fits-all solutions. Observing how people live and listening to what they already know are important methods for challenging the view that people require education and nudges in order to behave in pro-environmental ways. Many daily practices ‘imported’ from Global South contexts already have low environmental impact.

Second, there is a need for intersectional analysis of power relations that shape household consumption practices. Intersectionality, a concept that describes how systems of inequality (for example, class, gender, and race/ethnicity) intersect to create unique dynamics and effects, is gaining ground within environmental and climate policy. The 2021 report of the Cambridge Sustainability Commission on Scaling Behaviour Change stresses that policymakers need to think more deeply about how the interplay between social and political identities affects climate injustice. When such analyses are advocated by mainstream social scientists, the time has come for the mainstreaming of intersectionality into UK environmental policy.

Reflecting on - and changing - professional practice

Our project seeks to avoid ‘othering’ people from Global South immigrant communities by focusing exclusively on their stories. We are researching with them to help combat this possibility, but nevertheless some express suspicion: ‘why us?’. In response, we stress that at the same time as asking questions about their everyday household practices we are ‘holding up a mirror’ to people in power. We call this a symmetrical approach to researching local governance.

A third recommendation, then, is that all those in positions to design strategies, make decisions and set behaviour change targets for the whole population must practice symmetry and reflexivity. So, rather than positioning minoritised people as ‘others’ with deficiencies in language, cultural know-how, or motivation, and therefore in need of special campaigns to tell them how to behave, reflexivity involves looking at the deficiencies, assumptions and privilege that sustain both institutionalised whiteness and racism. In effect it flips the script so that rather than assuming some groups are ‘hard to reach’ the question becomes why are ‘they’ so easy to blame?

About the authors

Professor Sherilyn MacGregor is Professor of Environmental Politics in the Sustainable Consumption Institute, The University of Manchester, and leads the Leverhulme Trust funded project Towards Inclusive Environmental Sustainability (TIES).

Dr Udeni Salmon is a Research Associate in the Sustainable Consumption Institute at The University of Manchester, researching migration, intersectionality and family business.

Urban regeneration schemes are happening across the UK. Place-based policymaking for urban regeneration is crucial when addressing long-term population health and wellbeing. It can also improve the resilience of communities to environmental stressors (such as climate change), socio-economic shocks (such as cost-of-living), and the uneven distribution of negative impact. However, evidence about the impacts of urban development schemes is lacking, as are tools with which to monitor them.

From 'ill-being' to wellbeing

One way to measure and monitor the economic, environmental and social impacts of regeneration schemes is to develop an outcome impact framework. However, very few robust impact frameworks are used within urban regeneration programmes, and there are issues with those that do exist. Firstly, most monitoring frameworks do not balance objective and subjective measurements. For example, area safety can be low in regard to crime statistics but the same community may not feel safe. Secondly, existing frameworks adopt a pathogenic approach that focuses on the amelioration of disease and disorder.

Wellbeing requires a salutogenic approach that focuses on realising human potential. In short, we need to prioritise wellbeing, not just ‘ill-being’. Finally, wellbeing is a multi-faceted concept. Rather than being imposed from the top down, it requires input from local communities about what to measure and how.

Wellbeing is a multi-faceted concept. Rather than being imposed from the top down, it requires input from local communities about what to measure and how.

Co-designing urban regeneration

We have been working collaboratively with partners in Manchester to create a framework to monitor the economic, environmental and social impacts of regeneration schemes to understand how they can improve wellbeing. This work began when we tracked the impact of the final phase of a ten-year housing- led regeneration program in a highly deprived, post-industrial area on the edge of Manchester city centre that is also at high risk of flooding. While the scheme had delivered new and improved mixed-tenure housing, the area suffered from poor-quality outdoor spaces including a run-down park and unattractive green spaces.

Co-design was a key part of this work. The local community were involved in co-designing a new park, implementing solutions ranging from rain gardens to absorb water, play equipment for children, biodiverse planting, and an index to evaluate the impact of the park on wellbeing outcomes. This involved a partnership approach to understand, in the community’s own terms, what ‘health’ and ‘wellbeing’ meant to them and what changes they would like to see to local outdoor spaces.

Measuring the impact of outdoor spaces on wellbeing

Using a combination of research methods, we created a baseline measure of wellbeing, looking at both this area before the park was built and comparison areas that had similar characteristics but no improvements to their outdoor space. We created a new inclusive measure of social wellbeing called Neighbourhood flOURISHing (NOURISH). This was used alongside a second measure of activities closely associated with wellbeing: socialising with others, physical activity and taking notice of the immediate environment.

We found that wellbeing activities in this area increased substantially over time, once the new park was completed. These changes were apparent three and 15 months after its completion, suggesting that changes to wellbeing and associated behaviours were not a novelty effect. The intervention’s success has inspired further interventions in other similarly deprived and flood-risk areas of Greater Manchester.

The project also highlighted the fundamental value of working with the community and the need to collect social wellbeing data, to provide a snapshot of the salutogenic benefits in motion, and not solely the reduction of risk factors - such as flash-flooding.

Change at a larger scale

We are now putting these lessons into practice at a larger scale for another regeneration project in Manchester that will be completed in the next 10-15 years. Despite a growing economy, overall Indices of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) show North Manchester, where this regeneration project is situated, to be among the 5% most deprived areas in England. This large-scale £6bn urban regeneration scheme is a critical lever to ‘level up’ groups who live with multiple social, spatial and environmental challenges.

Despite a growing economy, overall Indices of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) shows North Manchester, where this regeneration project is situated, to be among the 5% most deprived areas in England.

Again, we are taking a partnership approach, with Manchester City Council, the developer, the local NHS health trust, civic society, and voluntary organisations. Those involved wish to measure the success of the planned regeneration at key stages of the 15-year programme. They hope to involve the collection and use of routine and bespoke data from young people, adults and older people as part of a ‘flourishing index’.

The index, a co-produced ‘theory of change’, and existing data will inform decision-making by providing an understanding of local issues from multiple perspectives and will help encourage working across organisational boundaries.

Long-term place-based monitoring

Scaling up place-based policymaking for urban wellbeing will require considerable resources in terms of financial support and citizen engagement, but the impact of this approach will deliver on value and values. On the one hand, public and private investors are more likely to achieve stronger return on investment, as stronger policies lead to better places and in turn more consistent profit generation. At the same time, public investors are likely to see greater value as NHS burden and anti-social behaviour is decreased. On the other hand, it is an opportunity to do more good and deliver places that take full responsibility for what most communities, irrespective of utilitarian benefits, treasure most highly: experienced wellbeing.

This will require longer timescales and greater ambition. Many regeneration schemes offer an opportunity to mainstream more effective approaches to working with communities and evaluating changes to health and wellbeing, many of which only appear over years and decades rather than weeks and months.

We recommend not limiting data to official ONS or OECD frameworks but also listening closely to local communities and stakeholders.

In order for this approach to work, local authorities, investors and developers must embed long-term relationship building with local communities, researchers, and organisations, such as healthcare trusts and the voluntary, community and social enterprise (VCSE) sector. Partnerships and the insights needed to guarantee long-term wellbeing impacts do not happen overnight. Listen to people’s subjective (self- reported) wellbeing throughout the development project, and it is important to build in flexibility to adapt the project to sometimes dynamic need and what doesn’t work.

Whilst standardisation is helpful, wellbeing is multi-faceted and context specific. We recommend not limiting data to official ONS or OECD frameworks but also listening closely to local communities and stakeholders, drawing on a combination of routinely collected data and bespoke local data. Automated approaches for tailored data collection are increasingly reliable and therefore present promising new opportunities.

About the authors

Dr Jamie Anderson is a Research Fellow in Geography at The University of Manchester, where he leads wellbeing evaluations of prospective urban changes.

Dr Joanna Barrow is a Research Associate in the Department of Geography and Manchester Institute of Education at The University of Manchester, working on research to define, capture and assess social impact primarily in urban contexts.

Dr Arbaz Kapadi is a Research Associate in the Division of Psychology & Mental Health at The University of Manchester, working on implementation science research funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR). He recently completed his PhD which explored community engagement in the co-production of healthcare services.

Professor James Evans is a Professor of Geography at The University of Manchester, where he directs the Manchester Urban Institute.

Current models of education and social mobility take an individualist approach that encourages young people from rural areas and small towns to move to city centres to obtain qualifications and skills. But this approach worsens regional inequalities, as places outside urban centres are left behind. So, what could change if we took a different direction – one that focuses instead on place?

Places, not people, have been 'deskilled'

The current model for education policy revolves around individual students accessing educational opportunities that are thought to lead to higher income in later life. While this correlation held during the massive post-war increase of professions in need of expert knowledge, the expansive growth in graduate- level jobs plateaued long ago.

Consequently, today we see ever more graduates competing for a shrinking number of employment opportunities concentrated in expensive parts of rapidly growing cities. This in turn compounds regional imbalances as young people are compelled to leave places with fewer work opportunities to obtain qualifications and employment in city centres. The resulting pattern amounts to long-term deskilling of entire ‘left behind’ places, not people.

Today we see ever more graduates competing for a shrinking number of employment opportunities concentrated in expensive parts of rapidly growing cities.

Youth flight in north-west England

Comparing the changes in graduate and young populations between the 2011 and 2021 through Census data demonstrates this trend well. Cities like Manchester and Liverpool, with large universities and growing economies, have seen increases of 10,000 to 20,000 graduates and young people.

This compares to neighbouring areas like Sefton or Oldham that have seen much more modest increases in the numbers of graduates and young people. And some places like Halton and Warrington have experienced a decrease of young people entirely. These places are therefore getting further and further left behind in terms of skills and capacities, making it that much harder for these places to catch up and diversify economically. This discrepancy highlights the vicious cycle through which our individualist approach to educational policy can, in fact, cause regional inequalities.

The Levelling Up white paper, for example, recommends further public money to be spent in ‘Education Investment Areas’ to “ensure talented children from disadvantaged backgrounds have access to the highest standard of education this country offers”. But, if one such student in Oldham or Sefton obtained high marks on national standardised exams, they would, quite sensibly, follow their peers to where the universities and graduate level jobs are. Thus, last decade, we saw a considerable increase of young people and graduates in Manchester/Salford and Liverpool compared to their neighbouring boroughs to the North, East and West (see Figure 1).

Co-developing place-based educational strategies for civic renewal

To disrupt this vicious cycle, we need to shed individualist social mobility assumptions and encourage local place-based strategies that link new educational provision to new work patterns and opportunities for all. No one-size-fits-all solution will work because these left behind places are not simply the obverse of advantaged city centres benefitting from economic growth and highly educated graduates.

We need to shed individualist social mobility assumptions and encourage local place-based strategies.

The long-term patterns of change in seaside towns along the Wirral and Sefton coasts are very different from those at the feet of the Pennines in Oldham and Rochdale. The latter have exhibited post-industrial decline across decades due to historic links to the production and commerce in industrial Manchester. Coastal communities are not experiencing decline due to deindustrialisation but because of the growth of package holidays and cheap air travel. Both places have developed around low-skilled work alongside the deskilling of the available local workforce, but for different reasons. Each requires a different strategy to diversify their existing economies.

The nature of present imbalances complicates this task because many of the jobs and businesses that could fill these places are not as widespread. We often see a chicken-and-egg scenario in place, where emerging businesses hesitate to relocate to towns without skilled workforces, and educational institutions find it difficult to invest in these skills without a local employer to create a realistic demand for those skills in the area.

A balance should therefore be struck between consultation with the existing local populations and stakeholders about what they would like to see and what types of work, education and places are thriving in similar and different places. National policymakers and educationalists could facilitate sharing of best practices between, for example, seaside towns and post-industrial towns. Ultimately, each place needs resources to develop their own long-term educational strategies to instigate new economic, cultural, and civic renewal locally.

Less competition, more coordination

As these regional patterns above reveal, we must move away from a competitive system wherein some individuals or local authorities succeed at the expense of their neighbours. Thus, place-based policy would require more regional coordination to integrate different local strategies. While there are many emerging opportunities in digital technologies, if every outer borough pursued the same ‘creative and digital’ strategy and limited educational provision to coding – the most likely skill to be automated in the next decade – we will have failed to turn the wheel.

Place-based policy would require more regional coordination to integrate different local strategies.

Rather, we need to see different functions spread around different regions – in patterns akin to those that developed during the industrial revolution. As 19th century Manchester shifted roles from being a production centre to a commercial hub, like spokes on a wheel, Oldham became the centre of cotton spinning, while Bolton was known for its fine yarn, Macclesfield was known for silk making and so on. So, as we re-engineer our city centres around digital and creative media clusters, we must retain a view of these historically significant adjacent places that surely have roles to play in our regional futures.

We need to encourage multi-directional mobility patterns that allow young people to move back and forth between city and town, following emergent opportunities without sacrificing income or quality of life. Hybrid working patterns post-COVID-19 could facilitate this, but this requires investment in infrastructure and know-how. Pursuit of such place-based solutions are, however, realistic and necessary, particularly after decades of individualist policies that have further widened regional inequalities.

About the author

Dr Erick Lybeck is a Presidential Fellow and Lecturer at the Manchester Institute of Education, The University of Manchester.

Inequality can be sliced many ways. A key aspect of the UK’s picture on inequality falls starkly along spatial lines of geography. So how can mapping spatial differences make policymaking more effective and targeted?

Place-based approaches

It is encouraging that the government has recently committed to place-based policymaking to tackle entrenched spatial inequality. However, there has been a lack of spatial analysis to pinpoint the different challenges encountered in local areas. This is essential to inform the policy debate. There is a need to develop robust spatial analysis by bundling key indicators. This will provide a more grounded understanding of issues and permit benchmarking by contrasting and comparing places.

In addition, visualisation of the different spatial patterns through mapping analysis can lay bare different socio-economic conditions, as well as showing the neighbouring context between different places.

Visualisation of the different spatial patterns through mapping analysis can lay bare different socio-economic conditions.

Illustrating spatial inequality by numbers

This can be illustrated by taking labour productivity and employment change as an example. There has been intensive debate over the so-called ‘productivity puzzle’, relating to the UK’s significantly lower level of productivity growth after its sharp fall during the 2008 global financial crisis. This puzzle is made all the more intriguing when considering the growth in employment over the same period.

Persistent spatial divide of labour productivity

The most recent small area labour productivity data (2020), shown in Map 1, confirms the persistent spatial divide between London and the Southeast regions and the rest of the country in terms of gross value added (GVA) per hour worked. There is also a north-south divide among the combined authority (CA) areas, with the West of England and Cambridgeshire and Peterborough CA areas out-performing the others. Map 1 also highlights the fact that there were major spatial variations in productivity levels across different local authority districts (LADs), even within the CA areas.

In numerical terms, we can see this inequality more starkly. In 2020, GVA per hour rate in Greater London was £47.25, followed by West of England’s £34.71 and Cambridgeshire and Peterborough’s £32.31.

Recent trends in labour productivity

Between 2015 and 2019, five CA areas outside southern England enjoyed growth in GVA per hour worked by over 4.4% in real terms. They were West Yorkshire, North of Tyne, Greater Manchester, the North East, and West Midlands - outperforming Greater London’s 3.19% increase. Due to this upward trajectory, Greater Manchester’s labour productivity has been catching up and reached a level of £33.22 value added per hour worked in 2019 – the highest productivity outside southern England.

However, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on labour productivity has been detrimental to all areas, ranging from -4.79% in Greater London to -6.93% in South Yorkshire between 2019 and 2020.

The situation was particularly challenging in South Yorkshire, Liverpool City Region and Cambridgeshire and Peterborough CA areas as their GVA per hour worked in 2020 was even lower, in real terms, than in 2004.

Trends and underlying factors of employment growth

Alongside GVA, we can look at employment growth patterns. These have been mixed across CA areas, ranging from 0.24% in Tees Valley to 12.94% in Greater Manchester between 2015 and 2021. While the southern CA areas in West of England (12%) and Cambridgeshire and Peterborough (9.09%) exhibited high growth, there has been an emergence of a high performing Mersey Belt across Greater Manchester (12.94%) and Liverpool City Region (11.04%) CA areas.

By drilling down into the components of employment change, the analysis shows that variations in employment growth during 2015-2021 were mainly related to differential place competitiveness conditions (total regional growth minus the national growth and industrial mix effects). This accounted for 98.2% of local variations whereas local industrial mixes (regional growth explained by that industry’s growth at the national level) accounted for 1.3%. The relatively high levels of employment growth witnessed in Greater Manchester and Liverpool City Region were largely attributed to their increase in place competitiveness advantages across most of their local authorities (see Map 2). The West of England CA area, however, enjoyed growth from both its favourable industrial mix and its increased place competitiveness.

Since local competitiveness condition is the residual value after taking account of the national economic situation and the industrial mix, working out what constitutes these conditions in individual areas requires in-depth local knowledge.

Differential spatial trajectories require different policy action

The analysis here illustrates the complex trajectories of local economic performance when examining different economic indicators. While some areas score well on employment growth, their GVA level remains low with stagnant growth in both GVA and employment (for example, South Yorkshire). Others are doing well on GVA level but becoming less competitive in their place conditions (such as some London boroughs). This data can inform place-specific policymaking to improve economic performance in these areas.

The analysis here illustrates the complex trajectories of local economic performance when examining different economic indicators.

While the analysis largely confirms the paradoxical relationship between productivity and employment growth, it does highlight some key messages. GVA per hour worked is associated with the concentration of specific types of high-paid industrial sectors such as the information and communication sector; the professional, scientific and technical sector; aerospace; and car industries. Different places do perform differently on these indicators and as a result they will require different policy action. Emerging spatial clusters of areas sharing similar characteristics could be identified through spatial mapping analysis to foster synergy in collaborative strategy.

We can build on this data to create even more detailed pictures of different areas. For example, over a quarter of the population was found to be economically inactive in some LADs across the Greater Manchester CA area including Manchester, Bolton, Oldham and Salford. Economic inactivity is also found to be closely associated with unemployment levels and lower life expectancy. These all have implications on labour productivity and economic performance of places and should be factored into place-based policymaking.

Economic inactivity is also found to be closely associated with unemployment levels and lower life expectancy.

Good policy on place-making needs to have strategic vision. This type of spatial analysis highlights different local challenges and offers opportunities for more creative spatial thinking to exploit synergies and partnership working across different places, both within and beyond local and combined authority boundaries.

About the authors

Professor Cecilia Wong is a Professor of Spatial Planning and Director of the Spatial Policy & Analysis Lab at The University of Manchester.

Dr Wei Zheng is a Lecturer in Planning and Environmental Management at The University of Manchester.

Both Cecilia and Wei are researching spatial inequalities in the UK and working on a five-year project examining the relationship between public health, transport and urban planning in the Greater Manchester City Region.