Cities, growth and rebalancing the UK economy

Challenge

Successive governments have tried to ‘rebalance’ spatial economic growth in the UK. Rebalancing the national economy was a core part of the UK Government’s economic strategy in the 2010s.

A flagship policy for delivering this was the ‘Northern Powerhouse’, first introduced under the Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition and particularly concerned with ‘Core Cities’, Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield and Leeds, as well as Hull and the North East. According to the Centre for Cities, in 2013, the Northern Powerhouse region contained 16% of jobs in the UK; increasingly, devolution legislation has introduced combined authorities to govern large regional cities and urban areas, which agree to have a directly elected mayor and take on devolved powers.               

However, challenges remain, including problems of inadequate funding for policies; ‘counter-regional’ policies which favour London and the South East; and an incorrect diagnosis of the true origins of the problem. The degree of imbalance in the UK has in fact increased over the last thirty years, with northern cities lagging behind the South-East. The result of this is a United Kingdom that is now home to the largest spatial disparities in Europe and is also one of the most centralised OECD countries as found by the Centre for Cities.

e of policy-makers, influencers, practitioners, academics and business leads the UK Government's plans to rebalance the UK economy. Panellists reflected upon the Government's flagship 'Northern Powerhouse' policy, discussing whether this is likely to achieve the stated aims of shifting employment and growth away from the dominance of London and the South East, towards towns and cities in the North of England.