Mend the gap: solving the UK’s productivity puzzle

When it comes to the output, education and wellbeing of the Great British workforce, our towns, cities and regions exist on a dramatically unequal footing. A new, wide-ranging research network hopes to find answers to a decades-old problem - the UK's productivity gap. There's a narrative that the UK is a very rich country, but many regions of the UK outside the capital are poor. Maria Abreu The UK is the world's sixth largest economy. But would it surprise you to learn that outside of London, the South East and a handful of major cities, many areas of the UK are just as poor as swathes of Eastern Europe? The disparity between different regions of the UK is stark, and not only in terms of living standards and educational attainment - but, crucially, also in the productivity of its workforce. The productivity gap is one of the most serious and vexing economic problems facing the government of the day, and Brexit is adding uncertainty to the mix. Close the productivity gap between the most and least successful regions of the UK, and the GDP of UK PLC will invariably rise.