The 10 pillars of wisdom?

Professor Frank Peck of the University of Cumbria’s Centre for Regional Economic Development writes for in-Cumbria on the big issues of the day and the economic data behind them. This month, an industrial strategy for the UK: building local institutional capacity. Government is currently consulting on a Green Paper entitled “Building our Industrial Strategy”. It is certainly a timely document that seeks to put down markers designed to help shape the future for industry in the UK outside the EU. It is, therefore, fundamentally linked to the Brexit debate which comes to a head in March 2017. The document reiterates a well-known feature in economic policymaking – the productivity gap between the UK and our major industrial competitors. This international imbalance is not the only issue. There are also highly significant regional disparities within the UK that the Green Paper recognises are “wider in the UK than in other western European nations”. Finding an answer to this regional imbalance is regarded not simply as desirable, but also as essential – “because that is where much of the untapped potential of the British economy is to be found”. Put simply, regional imbalances result in high costs generated by pressure on resources in congested regions coupled with redundant spaces, communities and resources in peripheral regions