The latest instalment of our weekly series, in which we use the Centre for Cities’ data tools to crunch some of the numbers on Britain’s cities.
So, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough has a metro mayor to cover the newly-created combined metro area.
Obviously, let’s just start by saying this is ridiculous. The clue’s in the last syllable of the first word. Cambridge-shire. Shire!
Anyway. Obviously, because the vast bulk of this ‘metro’ mayor’s area is literally just fields and villages, they’ve gone and elected a Conservative mayor, James Palmer.
But what will he have to tackle – other than working out how to travel most effectively from one village to the next? It’s time to hunker down and take a look at the Centre for Cities’ data, on their new-fangled ‘Metro Mayor Dashboard‘, to see what’s cooking.
In all sorts of ways, things are very very good in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough. The proportion of the population with no qualifications is far lower than in the rest of the country. (In all these grapsh, Greater Cambridgeshire is in green, the national average is in grey.)
Click any of the following images to expand. All images: Centre for Cities.
School performance is quite a bit higher too, on average, as measured by the rather nebulous Progress 8 score, which tracks how well pupils perform versus expectations.
The total number of jobs has increased much faster than it has in the rest of the country, too.
And those are well-paying jobs. Average weekly earnings are markedly ahead of the national average.
It makes sense, then, that the employment rate is also higher than the national average by quite a way.
The youth employment rate, though skittish, is also higher than the national average, and has been consistently – even after some strange sudden dips.
As a result of all this, the claimant count – the percentage of the population claiming state benefits – is lower than the national average.
You’ll really want to click to expand this one. Image: Centre for Cities.
The region’s economic success is also apparent in other ways. Its goods exports – aka, the amount of stuff it ships off to other countries – is higher than the national average.
And looking at the region as a whole, it’s not even as though all this success has come back to bite the people in other ways.
Housing is still slightly more affordable than the national average, though that gap has closed a little more recently.
The total number of dwellings has risen faster than the national average, too, which is a good sign in terms of trying to keep that housing affordable.
But given that the region is so vast, such figures cannot be entirely representative.
Cambridge, for a start, has vastly inaffordable housing that is well beyond the reach of most people in the city – and has property prices constitently ballooning at wildly unsustainable rates.
So while housing in Peterborough and the swathes of countryside encompassed by this region might still be relatively affordable, the key city of Cambridge is a different picture.
And it’s sadly not all good news for James Palmer, though his in-tray does look really remarkably light on the ground.
For a start, good school performance isn’t universal.
Those on free school meals – aka, the poorest kids – are underperforming relative to the national average, and vastly underperforming relative to their more affluent local peers. The region’s schools have a serious onus on them to do something about that.
And though the population is very highly skilled, the region could still do with fostering more new apprenticeships – which currently sit well below the national average.
Despite the good news of goods exports, services exports are lower than the national average, which definitely has room for improvement.
On a more immediately practical level, bus journeys are tanking even faster than they are across the country.
Either the buses are rubbish, overpriced, unreliable, or all of the above – and something must be done about it.
And as more and more of us become aware of the negative effects of air pollution – and how severely some of our cities are affected by it – Cambridgeshire & Peterborough should be wary of the cleanliness of its air.
At the moment, air pollution in the region is higher than the average, though there are some signs that it’s falling faster than it is nationally.
In essence, James Palmer has a pretty good deal.
He gets the title of metro mayor for Cambridgeshire and Peterborough – which is undoubtedly a promotion from his former role as leader of East Cambridgeshire District Council – but doesn’t actually have all that many problems to deal with on a general level.
That said, the region is so vast, disparate, and largely not very metro at all, that Palmer will have to proceed very carefully.
Cambridge, for example, is a vibrant, economically successful, liberal, staunchly pro-EU, academically minded, high-wage city. It’s home to a plethora of huge hi-tech scientific conglomerates, as well as the university – not to mention the thousands upon thousands of people who are desperate for day-to-day solutions to issues from how rubbish the busses are to how sky-high the rents are getting.
Peterborough is a very different story. It’s a eurosceptic city, with industry centred on logistics and retail – a place where out-of-town sprawling retail parks are much more likely than out-of-town sprawling laboratories.
There’s a very good piece on how different the two cities are here, from Jeremy Cliffe. Have a read.
Then throw in an army of villages – and, more terrifyingly, villagers – and the whole thing’s a mess.
While James Palmer may nominally only have bad buses, a bit of pollution, and slightly low goods exports to deal with, he has a huge challenge on his hands.
He must somehow find a way to serve the two extremes of his ‘metro’ region – and the rural interests stuck in the middle – which will often have needs and demands that are totally at odds.
Rather you than me, Jim.
Want more of this stuff? Follow CityMetric on Twitter or Facebook.
