Economic Geography of The United Kingdom - Regional Disparity

Regional Disparity

The combined effects of changing economic fortunes, economic restructuring and the decline of the UK as an imperial power have created the so-called North-South divide, in which decaying industrial areas of the north of England and Scotland contrast with the wealthy, finance-and-technology led southern economy. This has led successive governments to develop regional policies to try to rectify the imbalance.

The success has been, at best, patchy and the uneven distribution of economic wealth in the UK has led to migration from north to south, aggravating serious pressure on the southern housing market.

Although, in 2004, house prices in the north of England and Scotland increased faster than those in the south, this happened at the same stage of the last property cycle and the rises are off of a lower value base – it is far too early to concluded whether the trend is reversing. Either way, there were 113,000 transactions in London and the South East recorded by the UK HM Land Registry in the year to November 2004, compared with 83,000 in the North, North West and Yorkshire and the Humber.

This is not to say that the south is uniformly wealthy; Some of the worst pockets of deprivation can be found in London, especially inner London, while Hastings and Bexhill-on-Sea, on the south coast are also subject to urgent regeneration efforts.