Category Archives: North-south divide

One in 52 Blackpool children in care as poverty soars in north of England

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£25bn of public money would have been saved between 2019 and 2023 if north had same care entry rates as south, report says

One in every 52 children in Blackpool are in care compared with one in 140 across England, leading to calls for more to be done to urgently tackle the widening north-south divide, brought on by “decades of underinvestment”.

Nine in every thousand children are in care in the north, compared with six in the rest of England, according to a report by Health Equity North.

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Put aside differences to focus on growth across UK, Ed Balls tells politicians

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Former shadow chancellor is one of the authors of a new academic paper on how to bridge the regional divide

Britain needs a 20-year cross-party consensus to level up the economy and unleash the untapped potential of regions outside London and the south-east, the former Labour shadow chancellor Ed Balls has said.

Balls, one of five co-authors of an academic paper on bridging the UK’s regional divide, said it was vital that Labour and Conservative politicians put aside their differences in order to embed necessary funding and governance reforms.

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GCSE results expected to confirm widening of north-south attainment gap

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Tory leadership candidates called on to commit to fixing growing regional disparities in education

This year’s GCSE results for England and Wales are expected to confirm a widening north-south education gap, prompting a prediction that the government will miss one of its key levelling-up targets if it continues to hold back pupils in the north of England.

A coalition of school leaders, charities and the Northern Powerhouse Partnership has written to the Conservative leadership candidates urging them to commit to fixing growing regional disparities in education.

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Britain might look to Germany to heal the north-south divide | Torsten Bell

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What happened after the fall of the Berlin Wall involved money, and lots of it

Before the government was forced into locking down British regions, it wanted to level them up, closing productivity gaps between north and south. That’s a valuable objective, reinforced by new research on UK regional inequality from academics appropriately spread across Sheffield, Birmingham and London. The paper reminds us that the UK has some of the biggest productivity gaps between regions in the developed world, with global leaders in parts of London and the south-east very different to some cities in the north and Midlands.

There’s nothing new in politicians or academics pointing to the north-south divide, but more interestingly the work notes that the UK has not always led the way in this inequality between places. Most countries had higher regional gaps than the UK for most of the 20th century. Indeed, the UK’s productivity gaps fell postwar and their surge is only a post-90s phenomenon.

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Business heads urge next PM to commit to finishing HS2

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CBI among industry groups to sign open letter amid concerns over project’s future

Business leaders are calling on the next prime minister to commit to completing HS2, adding that if they do not they risk blocking future investment in the north.

In an open letter, more than 20 figures from industry and commerce have called for the next Tory leader to back the project in full.

It comes amid speculation that the next prime minister – with Jeremy Hunt and Boris Johnson now the final two MPs vying for the position – could decide to axe the second phase of the project due to concerns over spiralling costs.

Johnson is reported to have asked a former boss of the £56bn scheme to carry out a review if he is made prime minister, while Hunt has said HS2 is “absolutely vital” and he would not scrap the project in its entirety.

Signatures of the letter include the Confederation of British Industry, the Institute of Directors, the British Chambers of Commerce, the Federation of Small Businesses and London First, the BBC reports.

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