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: 10.48420/30030415

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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), 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), we find that 10-13 of the 18 indicators colour green, while Scotland and the East are ranked 3rd and 4th for productivity with 5 and 9 indicators in the green respectively.

• London has only one driver in the red: the percetnage of SMEs that find finance a major obstacle. It performs the best in nearly all categories.
• The South East notably underperforms on 2 out of the 5 business performance and characteristics measures.
• Scotland scores well on 3 out of 4 skills and training measures, while underperforming in 3 out of 5 investment, infrastructure and connectivity measures.
• The East scores well on 3 of the 5 business performance and characteristics indicators and scores average or above average in all other indicators other than FDI per job.

The North West, South West, Northen Ireland and Yorkshire and The Humber rank 5th - 8th in productivity. Their performances across the categories vary.

• The North West scores well on 2 of the 5 business performance indicators (business births and R&D per job). 4 out of 18 of its indicators are red.
• The South West scores well on 6 of the 18 indicators, scoring poorly on 2 of the 4 investment, infastructure and connectivity drivers.
• Northern Ireland performs well on 2 of the 18 available indicators, performing exceptionally well in access to gigabit-capable internet services.
• 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.

Finally the regions ranking 9th to 12th are West Midlands, North East, East Midlands, and Wales. Most of these regions had 3-5 green indicators except for Wales which only performed well in exports as a % of GDP.

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 three regions outperformed the UK average for % of vacancies which are skill shortage vacancies (Yorkshire and The Humber, North East, and West 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:

• 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, only Northern Ireland is 105% above the ITL1 median.
• London leads the way for 5G mobile coverage with 3 other regions out performing the ITL1 median (East Midlands, West Midlands, East)

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