Swindon’s strong performance in the Centre for Cities Outlook Report has been welcomed by North Swindon MP Justin Tomlinson.
The Cities Outlook Report, compiled by the independent think tank The Centre for Cities, is a health check on the country’s 63 biggest towns and cities. The report looks at a number of factors including innovation, employment and housing. Historically, the major cities of the United Kingdom drove growth but in the last decade, town's like Swindon have joined these major cities to boost growth & employment and deliver a more robust, sustainable economy.
This year's report showed that out of the 63 major towns and cities assessed, Swindon has once again excelled in area including:
- Employment
- House building
- Value added to the economy
- Education qualifications
The town had the third highest employment rate (80.59%) of all of those surveyed, with only Crawley and Worthing having better employment rates. Swindon's employment rate is on the up and already significantly outstrips the national level of 75%. Unemployment in the town has fallen significantly, and over 9,000 more people are in work today than in 2010.
According to the report, Swindon also had the fourth highest proportion of private sector jobs. These jobs are largely in the highly-skilled finance, technical and engineering sectors, with major employers including Honda, BMW, Nationwide, Zurich & Intel driving growth both locally and nationally.
These highly-skilled jobs mean that Swindon ranks seventh nationally for Gross Value Added, surpassing a number of major cities. This means that people working in Swindon add on average almost £60,000 per person to the UK economy.
As well as strong employment, the report also found that Swindon has the fourth highest housing stock growth out of the 63 towns and cities. Swindon was one of the first councils in the country to develop a publicly-backed, cross-party local plan for sustainable development.
Another positive figure showed that only 3.9% of residents in Swindon do not have a formal qualification, the third lowest in the report.
Justin Tomlinson MP said: “This is fantastic news, and shows that Swindon is going from strength to strength. I hope we can build on this further and make sure Swindon continues to thrive.”
