A common sentiment in struggling towns is that they’ve been overlooked by government in favour of places further south, but this isn’t the source of their problems.
‘The town that levelling up forgot’ ran the headline in the Sunday Times this week about Blyth. The Northumbrian town has been in the news since the collapse of Britishvolt, and with it plans to open a factory in the town. Yet, while the article suggested that the town had been ignored in favour of providing support in the Greater South East instead, this isn’t the reason why the town struggles.
The sentiment in the Sunday Times article is the same one that was the driver of the political focus on ‘left-behind’ towns in the aftermath of the EU referendum. “Nee bugger gives a s*** about us” said one quote. “We’ve been forgotten up here” read another. A third was even more specific: “London and the South gets more than us…we always get left behind.”
This feeling is understandable. Blyth, which is 14 miles north of Newcastle, lags behind the national average on a range of indicators. Data from the 2021 census shows that 21 per cent of residents have no formal qualifications, compared to the English and Welsh average of 18 percent, while the share of residents with a degree is just 22 per cent, 12 percentage points lower than England and Wales overall. Those classing themselves as in ‘very good health’ was 43 per cent, compared to the English and Welsh average of 48 per cent. And ONS data on incomes shows that in 2018, income in Blyth was £15,900, trailing the England and Wales figure of £17,300.
If this was the result of London and the South winning at the expense of Blyth and other northern towns then we should expect to see Blyth’s neighbours in a similar struggling position. But this is not universally the case. Morpeth lies 10 miles inland from coastal Blyth but it provides a stark contrast. Its share of people with no formal qualifications is below the England and Wales average and it has double the share of degree-holding residents that Blyth has. Incomes are above the English and Welsh average and its share of residents in very good health hover around the average. Morpeth is not alone – other Northumbrian towns like Corbridge and Hexham are in a similar position.
The performance of these towns is not the result of government funds flowing into them, or because levelling up didn’t forget about them. It comes down to where the Northumbrian middle class has chosen to live. According to the census, 44 per cent of people living in Morpeth are in a ‘managerial class’, compared to 24 per cent of residents in Blyth.
These residents are very likely to work in Newcastle. In each town close to 40 per cent of high-skilled commuters headed south to the city in 2011 (more than double the number that work in their respective home towns). This means that for the high-skilled workers that work in Newcastle but want to live elsewhere, Morpeth and Blyth are in competition with one another. The data suggests that relatively speaking, the former outcompetes the latter.
This is likely to be because of what both towns are able to offer as places to live. Getting data to quantify this is difficult, but two indicators – housing and crime – give a reasonable picture. Morpeth has 35 per cent of its housing in the two lowest council tax bands, compared to 83 per cent in Blyth. This suggests that the former has a better quality stock of houses (its history as a market town had bequeathed it a great deal of pre-19th century architecture). Meanwhile data on crime shows it to be much worse in Blyth than Morpeth.
The result is that not only does Morpeth attract and retain a greater share of this demographic, but it has a knock on impact on that other bell weather of levelling up – the high street. Data from the Local Data Company for 2018 shows that, at 17 per cent, high street vacancy rates in Blyth were double what they were in Morpeth. This will result from the different amounts of affluence in each place and so the amount of money available to spend on the high street.
Efforts to make Blyth a more attractive place to live should be part of any levelling up agenda. But here’s the big problem. Without increasing the number of high-skilled jobs available within commutable distance, this would simply lead to a redistribution of the population between Morpeth and Blyth. The size of the economic pie needs to be increased so that more places can benefit from it.
To increase the number of high-skilled jobs we need to look at the principle source of them for both towns – Newcastle. As shown above, Newcastle brings prosperity to both towns. But the problem is that it doesn’t generate enough of this prosperity. It lags behind both the UK average and its comparators on the continent in terms of productivity. This limits the prosperity it is able to generate for its wider region.
So if the residents of Blyth are not to feel ignored, a mix of interventions in the town around skills, housing and ‘pride in place’ (to use the phrase in the Levelling Up White Paper) will need to be done alongside a number of economic interventions in Newcastle to create a great deal more high-skilled jobs in it. A brighter future for Blyth needs as a prerequisite a better performing Newcastle.
The white paper recognised this, and it was for this reason that one of its goals was to create an internationally competitive city in every region of the UK. Yet very little action has taken place on this goal since the paper’s publication. The result is, if anything, that it is Newcastle and other large, underperforming cities outside of the Greater South East that levelling up has forgotten.
The good news at least for the north east is the recent announcement to expand the devolution deal to cover all of Northumberland, Tyne and Wear and County Durham. If the new mayor wants to improve prosperity across this area, then he or she too will need to follow this thinking. If all parts of the North East are to be more prosperous in the future, then it will need its cities to be playing a more significant role.
This report maps out the current geography of the new economy and calls for the creation of a £14.5 billion growth package to build innovation districts in Birmingham, Glasgow and Manchester.
Centre for Cities' Realising Regional Growth conference series returns for 2023 with this first event taking place in Newcastle.
The new deal finally solves the mismatched geography of the North of Tyne mayoralty.
To pass the Nissan test, policies will have to address the reasons for why knowledge-intensive activities do not locate in the parts of the country the policies are attempting to target.
Leave a comment
Be the first to add a comment.