London 'stagnating' as North booms

Fears that London’s economy is stagnating were underlined today when new figures showed job creation in the North was outpacing the capital and the South-East.

The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors said total employment in Britain rose by 1.8 per cent in the past three years, but the gains were in cities in the rest of the country while job numbers in London remained flat.

The RICS’s July economic brief predicts cities such as Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle and Birmingham will become “more serious rivals” to London as commercial centres.

Claims the change is politically driven seemed to be borne out by figures which show most of the job increases came from the public sector as jobs are relocated outside the South-East to Labour heartlands in the regions.

Some 90 per cent of the 30,000 increase in civil service jobs from 1999 and 2002 took place outside London.

Liverpool added 50,000 jobs between 1998 and 2002 — more than any other city.