Closing the Productivity Gap - Skills and Growth.

10:15 on 19th November 2025 - HEADLINE stage

South Gloucestershire sits at the heart of one of the UK’s most productive regional economies, driven by advanced manufacturing, aerospace, and digital technologies, yet productivity across the wider West of England remains uneven.

Drawing on Closing the Productivity Gap (Brunel Centre, 2025), Dr Damian Whittard examines how skills, innovation, and sectoral specialisation shape growth. Using data from 2008–2024, he shows that sustaining South Gloucestershire’s lead requires continued investment in workforce skills, local innovation, and place-based strategies.

The session highlights priorities for building stronger technical and higher-level skills pipelines, leveraging high-value sectors to generate wider productivity spillovers, and improving regional connectivity to ensure that economic success is sustainable, inclusive, and widely shared across the West of England.