Richard Exell

The 2009 figures for Regional Gross Value Added (the nearest thing to a GDP figure for each region) published today by the Office for National Statistics give us a picture of the impact of the recession around the country. Comparing the 2009 figure for each region with the 2008 level, we can see that the recession has made every part of the UK worse off. But some regions were hit worse than others, ranging from a 3.2 per cent decline in GVA in the East of England to 0.9 per cent in Scotland:

There is a bit of a tendency for the regions that were most successful at the start of the recession to have suffered most, but its not a simple relationship.