New report reveals daily impact of coronavirus lockdown on South West economy

A new report has revealed the daily impact of the coronavirus lockdown on the South West economy and highlighted which sectors are performing the strongest and protecting the UK from even greater damage.

According to UK Powerhouse, a report by legal and financial services firm Irwin Mitchell and the Centre for Economic and Business Research (Cebr), Gross Value Added, or GVA – the measure of the value of goods and services produced in an area, industry or sector of an economy – is estimated to be falling in the region by 36 percent, or £185 million every day during the lockdown.

Some sectors are faring better than others. The agricultural sector – the largest in the UK outside Scotland – is down 12 percent, or £0.8 million of GVA per day. Most badly hit is the hospitality sector, which has recorded a drop of 95 percent – or 18.3 million per day. Miming and quarrying is down 86 percent, or £1.1 million a day, and manufacturing has fallen 78 percent, or a staggering £42.7 million a day.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, businesses in human health and social work activities are actually seeing an upturn in GVA at two percent, or £1.1 million a day.

Meanwhile, travel restrictions and social distancing have effected South West businesses less than those in other regions. The report says that in the five years before the pandemic the region saw the largest rise in the share of people who mainly work from home for their job, increasing from 2.2 percent to 6.8 percent of the workforce.

This, suggest the report authors, put the region in a more resilient position in terms of share of people able to work remotely.

Victoria Brackett, CEO of Irwin Mitchell’s business legal services division, said: “Although in absolute terms the South West economy is losing almost £200 million a day, relatively it has fared better than many regions in the UK.

“One of the reasons for this is that the region has one of the highest share of the workforce that worked from home before the virus started spreading. For these people, it is likely that their ability to work from home will continue on a fairly usual basis.

“Furthermore, they would have been well set up at the start of the lockdown, as they already had the space and equipment to work from home.”