Deploy universities to fix England’s regional divide

By Michael Gunn. Imbalances in the share of growth across the regions continue to be deep-rooted, the Office of National Statistics has confirmed. By 2012, the South East was the only region that had only just crept ahead of the performance that it had achieved in 2008. Four years after the recession, London had pulled even further away from all other regions in England.
With the economy and the cost of living remaining key battle grounds in the longest general election campaign in history, regional growth – or the lack of it – is back on the political agenda. More...