Public First has published today a summary of our analysis and scenario modelling regarding the economic opportunity in the West Midlands.

We were commissioned by the University of Warwick and University of Birmingham to:

• Explore the growth sectors and clusters and provide a sense check on the potential for the region
• Identify and set out various other analogous city regions around the world which have taken action and improved productivity and employment growth in the same key sectors
• On that basis, make a series of economic forecasts for gains in productivity and employment across the region, based on certain scenarios
• Show the case to made for action a) within the West Midlands region and b) in partnership with central government, to act on delivering against these scenarios

Our modelling shows that:

• The West Midlands is home to industrial clusters of immense productivity. The top three single most productive locations in the country to put a worker in Electric Light Vehicle (ELV) production are all in the West Midlands (Solihull, Coventry and Birmingham), with Sandwell additionally ranking as the 9th best Local Authority in the country.
• The region also has six more instances of Local Authorities in the top ten most productive in the whole of England and Wales for particular sectors – logistics (Birmingham 3rd, Sandwell 4th, Coventry 9th); manufacturing of housing (Birmingham 2nd, Sandwell 3rd); digital economy (Birmingham 8th); aerospace and alternative fuels (Birmingham 4th, Sandwell 5th); and professional and financial services (Birmingham 5th)
• Focussing on the agglomeration benefits from the growth clusters identified in the region by the combined authority leads to a forecast gain of £6.5bn to the region’s GVA by 2035 against the current baseline – making the region grow above the UK national average growth rate.
• Such a scenario also leads to an almost 100,000 additional jobs by 2035 within the identified growth clusters – almost a doubling of job growth against the baseline scenario.

You can view the analysis in depth here