Is the UK on track for growth in every postcode?

Every UK region grew in 2024, but nearly a third of local authorities experienced a fall in total output that year. Analysing the latest official data helps to explain this striking variation – and offers an initial framework for assessing the prime minister’s promise of ‘growth in every postcode’.

UK prime minister Andy Burnham has promised to deliver ‘growth in every postcode’. Aside from any concerns that economists might raise about the benefits of ‘agglomeration’ (productivity gains from concentrating economic activity into clusters) potentially counteracting this objective, a broader challenge concerns measurement. In short, how will we know once growth has been delivered in every postcode?

One thing is for certain: we will know only with a lag of around two years. On 23September 2026, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) published regional gross value added (GVA) figures for 2024, which estimate the value of economic output in each area.

Year-on-year growth in real GVA is the most natural reading of Burnham’s ‘growth’, so these data provide the best available benchmark against which to judge this target. Even so, they are not published at postcode level. The finest official breakdown is at the level of the local authority, of which there are around 361 in the UK, each containing an average of about 5,000 postcodes.

These datasets are complicated to collect and compile, and the process takes time. Yet the politics of pursuing a target that can only be assessed formally with a two-year lag are challenging, particularly in an environment of short electoral cycles and constant demand for real-time evidence of progress.

The hope, perhaps, is that voters will feel the benefits of broad-based growth before statistical agencies are able to report them. But since growth-enhancing policies take a considerable amount of time to come to fruition, this seems unlikely.

Growth across UK regions

Real gross value added (GVA – a measure of output) in the UK grew by 1.3% between 2023 and 2024, below the average of 2% over the period from 2010 to 2019. Output now stands at 4.5% above its 2019 level, equivalent to annual growth of just under 1% since the pandemic.

The national figure conceals considerable variation across the 12 parts of the UK known as ITL1 regions (see Figure 1). The North West grew fastest, at 1.6%, followed by the West Midlands, the South East and the North East. At the other end of the scale, Wales grew by just 0.5%, less than a third of the North West’s rate. Yorkshire and the Humber (0.8%) and the East of England (0.9%) also lagged the UK average. Despite variation, every ITL1 region recorded positive growth – a fact that might not hold for more local areas.

Figure 1. Real GVA growth by ITL1 region, 2023 to 2024

Source: ONS regional GVA (balanced), September 2026, chained volume measures. Note: The bars are growth rates in 2023-24; the diamonds are average annual growth rates in the period 2010-19; the dashed line is the UK average in 2023-24; UK excludes extra-regional output (not assigned to a region).

Almost all regions grew at a slower rate than in the 2010s. Only the North East grew faster in 2024 than its average over the period 2010-19 (1.5% compared with 1.4%). Every other region fell short of its pre-pandemic pace. The shortfall was smallest in the South West, Scotland and the North West.

The largest slowdowns were in Wales, the East of England and London. After displaying the fastest growth of all regions over the period 2010-19, at around 2.6% per year, London grew only slightly above the UK average in 2024. Wales fell from mid-rank in the 2010s to the slowest-growing region. Recent growth bears little relation to past performance: the leading regions in 2024 are not, for the most part, those that led before the pandemic.

For living standards, it is the output per person that matters. This influences the wages that firms can afford to pay, the incomes available to households, and the tax revenue that funds public services. This differs from productivity, which measures output per hour worked: output per head also reflects how many people are in work. A region with low labour market participation will therefore have lower output per head than its productivity alone would suggest.

Most of the growth across regions reflects more people, rather than more output per person (see Figure 2). Of the UK’s 1.3% growth in GVA, around 1.1 percentage points came from population growth, leaving growth in real GVA per head of only about 0.2%.

In four regions, GVA per head fell outright: the East of England, Yorkshire and the Humber, the East Midlands and Wales. In these places, the positive headline growth was entirely down to rising populations. Only in Northern Ireland did output per head contribute more than population, and Scotland was the only other region where it made up a substantial share of growth. In Wales, the slowest population growth in Great Britain was paired with a fall in output per head.

Figure 2. Real GVA growth in 2023-24 split into population growth and real GVA per head growth, by ITL1 region

Source: ONS regional GVA (balanced), September 2026; ONS mid-year population estimates, 2024 provisional.Note: UK total excludes extra-regional output

At the regional level, growth in 2024 was widespread but shallow. Every region grew, but almost all grew more slowly than in the 2010s – and most of that growth came from rising population rather than rising output per person; in four regions, output per head fell.

But regional averages can be a poor guide to whether growth is reaching every place. Each ITL1 region contains areas of very different economic character, and a positive headline rate can mask local contraction beneath it.

Beneath the surface

Regions across the UK are made up of many individual areas, with their own unique economic characteristics. The North West spans the cities of Liverpool and Manchester as well as rural Cumbria; the South East includes both high-productivity Oxford and more deprived coastal towns such as Hastings and Thanet; and Scotland combines Edinburgh’s financial services sector with the Highlands and Islands. Headline regional growth rates can disguise varying growth outcomes across places.

Below the regional level, the local authority provides an intuitive unit of analysis. It is the most granular geography at which the ONS publishes GVA estimates, and it corresponds to the areas that residents recognise and that local policy-makers govern.

Even so, the 2024 release illustrates the difficulty of measuring growth at this scale. Estimates for 52 of the UK’s 361 local authorities are currently ‘suppressed’ because of an error in boundary allocation, with corrected figures expected in four to six weeks.

For policy-makers responsible for these areas, this compounds an already long delay: data describing 2024 will not be available until late 2026. Even when published, local estimates should be interpreted with caution. Smaller areas are more sensitive to the activity of individual firms, and year-on-year growth rates can be volatile.

The closer you look, the more uneven growth becomes. The story of positive GVA growth across the country no longer holds (see Figure 3), with 92 local authorities (30%) showing contracting GVA out of the 309 for which we have data. Every region saw at least one local authority shrink, although the share was highest in the East of England (where 17 of 45 shrank) and lowest in Northern Ireland (two of 11) and London (seven of 33).

Beyond the numbers of areas that contracted, the spread of outcomes is significant. Growth across local authorities ranged from -7.3% in Fylde (North West) to 10.8% in North Warwickshire (West Midlands), a gap of around 18 percentage points, compared with just over one percentage point between the fastest- and slowest- growing regions.

The variation within regions is far larger than the variation between them. The widest spreads were in the East Midlands and the East of England, where local authorities across the two regions ranged from -6.6% to 7.3%, while the North East was comparatively uniform. A region’s headline growth rate says little about how any individual place performed.

Figure 3. Real GVA growth by local authority area, 2023 to 2024, grouped by ITL1 region

Source: ONS regional GVA (balanced), September 2026, 2024 provisional.Notes: Each dot is one local authority (blue = growth, red = fall); the dark bars represent each ITL1 region total. Wales is not shown and parts of the South West and Scotland are missing since the estimates have been suppressed by ONS pending boundary correction; Basingstoke and Deane are excluded due to implausible real terms estimates.

Figure 4 shows where these expansions and contractions occurred. England’s east coast stands out as an area with several shrinking local economies, from the Humber through Lincolnshire to Norfolk and Suffolk. By contrast, the strongest growth is concentrated in a band running from the Midlands through the Oxford-Cambridge arc.

Unevenness is also present within cities: growth in north-east London contrasts with contraction in parts of the south-east and west of the capital. In Scotland, Aberdeen grew while parts of the central belt contracted. The grey areas remind us how much is not yet known: Wales, much of the South West and the north and west of Scotland are awaiting corrected estimates.

Figure 4. Real GVA growth by ITL3 area, 2023 to 2024

Source: ONS regional GVA (balanced), September 2026, chained volume measures.

There is also no sign that poorer places are catching up. Because single-year growth at a local level is volatile, it is important to look at growth over the period 2019-24 (see Figure 5). Across local authorities, average annual growth bears almost no relationship to GVA per head in 2019. Places with low output per head grew no faster, on average, than those with high output. Areas at similar levels saw very different outcomes.

North Tyneside (North East) and Ashfield (East Midlands) started with comparable GVA per head of around £22,000, yet North Tyneside grew by around 3.8% a year, while Ashfield contracted by around 3.4% a year. Without faster growth in poorer areas, existing gaps in output per head will persist.

Figure 5. Real GVA growth (2019-24) against 2019 GVA per head by local authority

Source: ONS regional GVA (balanced), September 2026; ONS mid-year population estimates, 2024 provisional.Notes: GVA per head = workplace GVA/resident population, so commuter hubs are inflated. Excluded are City of London, Basingstoke and Deane, and local authorities suppressed by ONS (all of Wales, parts of South West and Scotland)

Conclusion

Returning to Andy Burnham’s original promise, do the latest data suggest that we are on track for growth in every postcode? While at first glance every region delivered growth between 2023 and 2024, at a more granular level, 30% of local authorities saw a fall in total output.

The answer is clouded by measurement challenges. These results describe 2024, arrive almost two years later and (at present) are missing for around one in seven local authorities, including all of Wales. At the level that the target is framed, it cannot currently be monitored in anything close to real time.

What would help?

First, greater honesty about economic geography. Growth tends to concentrate where activity is already dense. A more credible approach would set out realistic models of growth for towns, rural and coastal areas, rather than implying that every place can grow at the same pace.
Second, better local measurement. Regional GVA is built largely by apportioning national totals to areas using indicators such as employment, which blur genuine local variation. Building estimates from the ground up using administrative microdata, such as VAT turnover, PAYE payroll records and business register data, could provide more accurate and more timely local figures.
Third, newer data sources could fill the gap in the meantime. Card-spending data, for example, are available almost in real time and at fine geographical resolution. These measure consumption rather than output, but they could offer an early signal of local economic conditions long before official estimates arrive.

This article has described where growth occurred, but not why. The wide variation within regions suggests that local factors are important, and sectoral composition is an obvious next step to consider.

Do contracting areas share an exposure to particular industries? Do the fastest growers owe their performance to a few large firms? These questions, and an update once the suppressed estimates for Wales and elsewhere are published, will be the subject of future work.