Reviving regions following coronavirus

Just over a month ago in our report, All Together Now, we were calling on government to ensure all areas across England published their local industrial strategies by this summer. Only seven of thirty-five have been published and the government’s original deadline of March 2020 has passed. Rightly, the government’s priorities have adjusted. It’s now focused on saving lives, supporting business as the economy is dramatically slowed and beginning to think how we can return to a sense of normal. 

It’s too early to know what the full impact of the COVID-19 pandemic will be and how hard regional economies will be hit. There is no directly comparable event to that we’re now experiencing. But we do know the UK has had a persistent gap in regional productivity and there’s no reason to believe that gap will be any easier to address as we work to revive the UK’s economy. 

Based on what we’ve gleaned from conversations, government views regions as crucial to reviving the UK’s economy, so there’s every expectation that their levelling up agenda progresses will resume