The TPI Productivity Scorecards for English Regions and Devolved Nations

The Productivity Lab aims to produce data-related tools and metrics to help researchers measure productivity. However, productivity is hard to measure, and its drivers are numerous and strongly interrelated. The Productivity Lab has developed the TPI UK ITL1 Scorecard series to compare productivity performance across UK regions and devolved nations.

TPI Scorecards for UK regions and devolved nations

Cite as Menukhin, O.; McKeogh, N.; Ortega-Argiles, R.; Sarsfield, W.; Watson, R. (2025), TPI UK ITL1 Scorecards, TPI Productivity Lab, The Productivity Institute, University of Manchester. DOI: 10.48420/21931770

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Several approaches involving sophisticated econometric and statistical techniques can be used to compare productivity performance at the sub-national level. The use of scorecards can be seen as the second-best alternative to a thorough scientific analysis. It constitutes a valuable performance metric used to identify the main productivity regional drivers and bottlenecks and how they are precisely related.

Scorecards are performance metrics used to identify regional characteristics and improve their resulting external productivity outcomes. They can be used to measure and provide feedback to organisations such as regional stakeholders to make better decisions to improve productivity in the short and long run.

The main advantages of scorecards over other performance metrics are that they can be easily compared and updated over time and that they allow one to pool together information and data into a single report rather than having to deal with multiple tools. The research design and the data collection process in the scorecards are crucial to ensure good comparability among the regional performance drivers and productivity outcomes.

TPI Regional Productivity Scorecard Drivers and their metrics

The TPI UK ITL1 Productivity Scorecards, based on CBI/KPMG (2021) and inspired by Jordan and Turner (2022)i, are comprised of five main regional productivity drivers that need to be analysed: business performance, skills and training, policy and institutions, health and wellbeing, investment and infrastructures. These five regional productivity drivers are captured using 17 indicators, and their past performance is analysed in the short and long-term to help develop regional strategic initiatives and objectives.

• Business Performance is analysed through export intensity (exports as % of GDP), R&D intensity (R&D per job) and innovative businesses (Innovation active businesses), SME finance (% of SMEs where finance is a major obstacle) and business creation (Business births as % of all active enterprises).
• Skills and Training at the regional level includes information on tertiary education (% of the population with tertiary education, NVQ4+), unskilled population (% of the population with no or low skills, NVQ1 or lower), training opportunities (% of employers providing training in the past 12 months), and regional skill mismatches (% of vacancies which are skill shortage vacancies).
• Policy and Institutions are evaluated by including measures on political uncertainty (% of SMEs where political uncertainty and government policy is a major obstacle) and red tape (% of SMEs where legislation & regulation is a major obstacle).
• Health and Wellbeing are described with measures of economic inactivity (economic inactivity rate), long-term ill health (% of economic inactivity due to long-term ill health), and active population (% of the population aged 16-64).
• Investment and Infrastructure are evaluated by including data on Foreign Direct Investment intensity (FDI per job), regional infrastructure intensity (Gross fixed capital formation per job) and measures of regional connectivity (access to Gigabit-capable internet services, 5G coverage).

TPI Regional Productivity Scorecard methodology

The TPI UK ITL1 Productivity Scorecards reports for each metric the median for the UK (with half of the observations above and half below). For each of the 8 English regions (ITL1) and three devolved nations, we show whether their measure is below 95% (red), above 105 % (green) or between 95 and 105% of the UK’s national median (orange).

Main regional productivity findings

Disparities between regional productivity performance are significant both across and within UK ITL1 regions. London remains the most productive part of the country in absolute terms, while Wales appears as the lowest productivity performer. However, the picture is not clear cut, with most regions having areas that are doing well and some that could be performing better.

Ranking the regions

Ranking the regions, according to level of productivity, with London being the highest and Wales being the lowest, we find a reasonably strong but far from homogenous alignment with the indicators:

For the regions with the highest level of productivity (London and South East), as well as the East of England and the North East, we find that 8-11 of the 18 indicators colour green.

• London is notably weak and scores poorly when looking at Policy and Institutions measures. It also performs poorly on 2 out of the 5 business performance and characteristics measures.
• The South East notably underperforms on 2 out of the 5 business performance and characteristics measures as well as vacancies which are skill shortage vacancies.
• East of England scores well on Policy and Institutions as well as 2 out of the 3 Health and Wellbeing indicators. Interestingly it also performs well in indicators which are weak for London such as innovation and finance for SMEs.
• The North East scores exceptionally well on 4 of the 5 business performance and characteristics indicators as well as the policy and institutions indicators.

The South West, West Midlands, North West and the East Midlands all score green on 5 or 6 of the 18 indicators

• The South West scores well on 2 of the 5 business performance indicators (innovation and finance for SMEs) as well as 2 of the 3 Health and Wellbeing indicators (Economic inactivity rate and %of economic inactivity due to long term health).
• The West Midlands scores well on R&D, business births FDI and both indicators for policy & institutions
• The North West performs well on 2 of the 3 available indicators for Investment, infrastructure and connectivity but is weak on the other indicators.
• Like the West Midlands, the East Midlands perform well for both indicators for policy & institutions. But, in contrast, the East Midlands also performs well on economic inactivity rate and % of economic inactivity due to long-term ill health which are average for the West Midlands.

Scotland and Yorkshire and Yorkshire and The Humber score strongly on 3 indicators

• Scotland does particularly well on 2 out of the 4 skills and training indicators.
• Yorkshire and The Humber shows strength in vacancies of skilled workers, SMEs where legislation & regulation is a major obstacle and access to Gigabit-capable internet services but are weak on exports, economic inactivity rate and SMEs where political uncertainty is a major obstacle.

Northern Ireland and Wales score above the UK median for only 1 or 2 of the 18 indicators

• Northern Ireland performs well in vacancies of skilled workers and access to Gigabit-capable internet services. However, Northern Ireland is weak across most other indicators with 13 of the 18 indicators being red.
• Wales performs well for exports, however is either average or below average for all other indicators with 9 of the 18 indicators being red.

Ranking the indicators

Looking at individual indicators, we find that the distribution across regions varies quite a lot

• On business performance indicators, the performance of regions is widely spread. Only R&D had 5 regions performing above the UK average (London, South East, East, North West and West Midlands), while the remaining indicators had 4 regions performing above the UK average.
• On skills & training, five of the regions outperformed the UK average for % of the population with no or low skills (London, South East, Scotland, East and South West) and four regions outperformed the UK average for % of vacancies which are skill shortage vacancies (Yorkshire and The Humber, North East, Northern Ireland and East Midlands)
• On policy and institutions, the spread of indicators is reasonably comprehensive
• In contrast, the distribution of health and well-being is more skewed, showing a clear north-south divide

On % of population aged 16-64, only London is significantly above the UK median, with all other regions and devolved nations hovering around it.

There is a high skewness for % of economic inactivity due to long-term ill health where only London, South East, East, South West and East Midlands outperform the UK median.

• On Investment, infrastructure and connectivity:

On FDI, only London, South East, North West and West Midlands are above the UK median

London, South East, East, North West and North East outperform the UK median on Gross fixed capital formation per job

On Access to Gigabit-capable internet services, London, Yorkshire and The Humber and Northern Ireland are above the UK median.

None of the devolved nations perform above the UK average for 5G mobile coverage.

How to use the indicators?

The use of those indicators is helpful to English regions and devolved nations to assess their relative strength and weaknesses vis-à-vis others and help them understand which policy areas might deserve further investigation to improve performance.

Each region can only do well on some indicators. There is no silver bullet to improve productivity. But broadly speaking, a larger group of indicators performing well above the UK median across the five main regional productivity domains points to a better productivity performance.

Acknowledgement

We acknowledge the expert advice and suggestions received from John Turner, leader of the TPI Northern Ireland Productivity Forum, and David Jordan, member of the TPI Northern Ireland Productivity Forum from Queen’s University Belfast

Note: 

The TPI UK ITL1 Scorecards are adapted and methodologically modified from Jordan and Turner’s The Northern Ireland Productivity Dashboard 2022 which was inspired by the CBI/KPMG Scottish productivity Index 2021.

Authored by: William Sarsfield, Nathan McKeogh, Ruby Watson, Olga Menukhin, Raquel Ortega-Argilés