OK, so GSK are planning to close their factory in Crawley and the insurance industry appears to be evacuating Horsham, but something must be going right in this area.  Its a pity that this story in the paper today does not have the graphics from the printed version in the online one.  If it did you would see the 56 top English cities and towns marked with different coloured circles, of a size proportionate to their economy.  Crawley was very prominent with a large red circle.

Red, according to the key meant it was classed as an ‘enterprise powerhouse’, while Brighton was in a much lower classification something like ‘not living up to its potential’.  Right at the other end of the scale were places like Hastings with a classification of ‘economic graveyard’.  Ok.  So I am making up the names that I can’t remember, but ‘enterprise powerhouse’ is definitely right.

To get some idea of what its all about I had a look at the website for the Work Foundation who did the research and found this table of the data (in PDF format).  All the measurements are of GVA and show that Crawley is in 7th place out of the 56 – just one place behind London.  This is good news not just for the town itself but for its wider area of economic influence – as we know many of the jobs in Crawley are filled by commuters from Horsham, Haywards Heath, Brighton, East Grinstead and even further beyond.

It must take a long time to gather and process all the data, because the report that was released only yesterday shows performance in 2005, and compares it to 1995.  The table shows that Crawley’s GVA per head was 26678 (pounds presumably), only 18 lower than London and well above the 18K average for the country.

The negative side is that Crawley’s position in 1995 was 3rd place, so it has been overtaken by Reading, Swindon, Milton Keynes, and London – but not by a lot. Its not just a case of a North-South divide either: Warrington, Northampton, Leeds and Derby are all in the top fifteen, while Southend, Hastings, and Chatham are near the bottom.  Coastal towns generally have not done well.  Basildon, Harlow, Bracknell,  and Stevenage which you might have thought were comparable new towns to Crawley don’t even feature in the list, neither do Guildford or Basingstoke.

Not that having a high GVA per head is necessarily good for a town, or not for everybody in it anyway.  The way I understand it ((imperfectly obviously)) the total economic benefits generated in a town are divided by the population of the town: that does not mean that the product was generated by the same people.  It is quite possible for a town to generate lots of income, all earned by incoming commuters, while the indigenous population are stuck in low-paid service jobs.  Unless you believe in the trickle down theory, being poor in a productive town is no better than being poor in an unproductive one.