UK Regional Policy: An Evaluation

INTRODUCT ION ities in unemployment during the recession of the early 1990s, which bit deeply in the southern regions. However, the convergence of regional unemployment rates UK regional policy has existed at varying levels of intensity for nearly seven decades. Throughout its conceals persistent spatial disparities in unemployment at a higher level of disaggregation. Fig. 2 shows that existence, the overriding objective has been to provide economic help to the country’s most heavily depressed those Travel-to-work Areas experiencing the highest unemployment rates in 1985 tend to be the same areas or least well-oV areas. A wide variety of policy measures have been used to create employment and thereby some 10 years later. Further, Table 1 shows that the spatial pattern of unemployment at county level has reduce unemployment in the areas with persistently high unemployment. This paper has two primary aims: remained remarkably stable. Broad regional aggregates conceal immense spatial disparities in unemployment ® rstly, to identify the major bene® ts of regional policy; and secondly, to investigate ways in which UK regional within regions, and these spatial disparities are persistent over time. It is this high unemployment persistence that policy can be made more eVective and hence more eYcient. ultimately justi® es spatially discriminating policies such as regional policy. As a ® rst step, it needs to be established that the UK actually has a regional problem. It is easy to demonstrate The paper is organized as follows. The next section identi® es the major economic and social bene® ts of that spatial disparities in unemployment, at a broad level, have virtually disappeared during the 1990s. The regional policy, followed by a review of recent government views on the case for regional policy. The fourth `north± south divide’ that was so evident in the 1980s has been eroded by a substantial convergence in unsection compares two diVerent approaches to solving regional problems: the ® rst is a market-based approach employment rates. This is vividly illustrated in Fig. 1 which shows the dramatic narrowing of regional disparwhich aims to make local labour markets more exible;