Levelling Up 2.0: What Actually Works for Regional Growth?

[Music] Hello and welcome to the rest of the money with me, Lord Preston. And me, Steph McGovern, and today we are joined by Andrew Carter, who's the boss of the Centre for Cities. If you've not heard of them, they're basically a leading think tank looking at how we can economically improve the performance of our towns. And cities, they advise on the government on things like urban regeneration, the level in up, regional equality, productivity, housing, and everything in between. And so, you know, we wanted to get him on to get a bit of a snapshot of where we're at, in terms of regional differences, and where that we might see progress. And what kind of holding back productivity for our big cities and urban areas in the UK, it's something we talk about a lot, isn't it, Robert? Yes, I mean, the general point is this, Britain's UK's productivity performance for the last 15 years has been incredibly disappointing. It's, you know, risen a fraction of its trend before the global financial crisis, before 2007, 2008. And it also, we've got, we've had this low growth against a backdrop where output per hour, a typical person works, an output per unit of capital owned by a business is low compared to other comparable countries. So on some measures and productivity in the UK is about a third lower than countries like Germany, much lower than France, way lower than the US. And these are all things we want to talk to Andrew about. And just, you know, on that, you know, talking about productivity. There's also big wage disparities too, like, you know, annual average workplace wage in London is 20 grand higher, than in the lowest parts, paid parts of the UK. So, so much to talk to about in terms of productivity, wages, growth, and everything in between. So, here's our interview with Andrew Carter. Angie, thanks for joining us. So, right at the end of 2025, the start of 2026, you guys, I know, put out your big reports looking at, you know, the future of cities, what's happening and, you know, where the productivity, the growth, and everything else is, who's doing well, who isn't. What's the feeling at the moment, annual productivity has been something you've been looking quite closely at. Something we're obsessed about talking about on the show, and, you know, you guys have talked in the past about the government, if they want to raise living standards, need to focus on boosting productivity in underperforming cities. So, tell us a bit about that. Yeah, because I think that's an important sort of big framing point, which is if we do want to raise living standards in our urban areas, but also across the country, then we're going to need to get more growth and more productivity. You know, as you know, you talk about this all the time, you know, we haven't seen much growth, and we haven't seen much productivity growth for the best part of a decade, maybe a bit longer. And if we don't get that kind of activity going, then we aren't going to see the living standards that we desperately need, and indeed the government desperately. So, I think that's quite an important frame in sort of perspective, because I think there is a bit of a conversation that maybe we can improve living standards by other means, by redistributing what we've kind of got between places or between people or between different sorts of households. And that is, there's a role for that, but actually we just desperately need more, we need desperately need more growth in the country. The second thing I would say, we see this a lot in our work, is that actually there is a particular geography to productivity and to growth performance in this country. And one particular geography, which we've seen for quite a long time, is that essentially are the cities, urban areas that are more productive, are almost exclusively in and around the greater southeast. So they are places like Reading, obviously London, but obviously places also place like Milton Keynes or Brighton to an extent, Swindon, even if you go down to Bristol, is a real pattern, a real geography to productivity performance in this country. And it's been there for quite some time, and that's partly where government policy, current government policy leveling up as we had under previous administrations recognize this point, and then wanted to try and do something about it. The last part I'd make on productivity, which again makes the Britain slightly unique, I think, compared to other OECD countries, comparable countries like France or Germany or Australia or Canada or the US, wherever Netherlands. Is that many of our bigger cities, so great a Manchester, greater Leeds, greater Birmingham, greater Sheffield, etc, don't do as well as their counterparts in those in those countries. And that's quite a problem for us, if we're trying to get regional prosperity, we need Liverpool to be more prosperous, we need greater Manchester to be more prosperous, we need Newcastle to be more prosperous. So they drive the economy and economic growth in and around their regions as well, and you've seen this again through various administrations, last and current, recognizing our big cities have a big role to play, but they're not maximized in their potential as of yet. So if you are going to look at the city or the urban area with the worst productivity performance and compare it with the place, which I mean my understanding has always been that it is London, which is the most productive part of the country, what is the gap? Depending on what you're comparing to, I'll take two versions of that, Robert, first I think is to think if you think about our big cities, so they're comparison to London, they're roughly about 70 to 75% of what London is, and that's kind of fairly historical. So they're three quarters as productive as London leads is a bit more, it's about 80% place like Birmingham or closer to 70 and just just below, so that's one way of thinking about the differential between our big cities and the differential there is bigger than if you compare French cities, you compare the gap between Leon say and Paris, the gap is smaller, it's under 20% rather than over 20%. So that's one way of thinking about it. If you think more broadly about urban areas, because we look at 63 urban areas across the country, so you're taking a much broader and bigger perspective, then really what you're looking at, if you can play somewhere like Slough on the outskirts of London, and you compare that to places like Mansfield or Donkaster, the productivity differential is basically twice. So Slough is twice as productive. Historically, London's productivity advantage was hugely to do with finance, with the city of London, Canary Wharf, is that still why London does relatively better, but because that can't be the explanation of Slough versus Mansfield, or is it the explanation of Slough versus Mansfield, is Slough basically another place where basically finance jobs tend to be more prevalent. It's less finance in Slough, it's more IT and data, but your broad point is correct in a sense that the places that have historically done well, and are beginning to do better, and you can see that in places like Greater Manchester or Leeds or Reading, what they're essentially getting is more of what we would call the new economy type activities, which are crudely the industries and the firms that were identified in the government's industrial strategy. So the more digital firms you've got, the more creative firms, the more finance firms you've got, the more life sciences firms you've got, whichever ones you want to look at, the more of that that you've got, that drives up productivity, and then that also results in those places having higher wages as well. So that's crudely, obviously Slough is different from London, different from Manchester, but just think about the extent to which they are getting, I've been able to get more of this new economy type activity, and if they get more of it, then they typically do better on a productivity fund, and they typically do better that from a wages front as well. So when you say new businesses, the cutting edge technology and things like that, we're also talking high value, like are these businesses worth a lot as well, are these, is that part of it? Yes, so they're worth a lot that they sense they are high value added firms and high value added activities high value added jobs in a sense that what we also know about them is they're in those kinds of industries where to varying degrees. The country at large has a comparative advantage. So we are, you know, we have competitiveness in life sciences, which is global in orientation. What does that mean? Well, we're able to attract the very end high end innovation activities that the high end new economy activities, the high end productivity activity, but we also sell what we then produce to other parts of the globe. You can see that in finances, you can certainly see that in creative, you can see that in digital because we're able to sell some of this activity to other parts of the world, that makes it very, very productive that actually creates an awful lot of value, which then benefits the people in those industries, but the places that have more of them as well. So what struggling areas need that more than anything are more high value industries to look at there? Yes. I mean, that's a very, that's exactly the right thing to think about in a sense that it's the absence of these things that that really explains why they do less well. And then it's trying to think about how do we create conditions that gives these places or some of these are more to be more attractive, but I think it's often in our world in sort of urban policy. We focus on what these places have already got and ask, can we get more of it? Actually, we need to think about the fact that they haven't got something that other places have and they need to get some of that rather than doubling down on what they've already got because that doesn't seem to be working for them. It's not producing the productivity. It's not producing the the wages that we desperately need in these places. So on your model, if you go to a place where output per person, output per unit of capital is low, living standards are low, wages are low. And your thinking is a, you know, there's a point of government policy. Let's try and get one of the big pharmaceutical companies to invest, create a research and maybe manufacturing capacity there or let's maybe try and persuade one of the big banks to set up a processing center there. What is the chicken and what is the egg in terms of getting that investment? Do you have to start with trying to ship people in with the requisite skills? If you just announce it, will people acquire the skills locally? And one of the reasons why these places are often, you know, find it hard to attract this kind of investment is precisely because, you know, you've had an neglected local population who haven't been helped to get the kind of skills. And then you got a problem of, well, all right, if I'm going to invest there, am I going to be able to recruit the people I need? Are they going to, you know, if I'm going to have to persuade them to move from some other part of the country, you know, is there the, you know, is there the kind of other become homes they want to live in? This is quite big and complicated stuff really. Yes, it is, it's a little bit, well, it is quite complicated, as you say, Robert, I think the way to, there are different ways of thinking about it, but I think it's not always helpful to think about it as a sort of a big bang approach. That's sometimes what happens, you see this with government, you know, government very deliberately said we're going to move quite a bit of the BBC up to Salford to Manchester and really build on on that. I think, you know, and you can see that there's been enormous benefits to the great amounts of economy as a result of that. Similarly, Channel four has gone to, has gone to leads and that has beginning to have, you know, an effect on there. Now we have a bits of Bank of England and such so that you can see different. Until they ditch the programme that was coming from leads every day, that was provided lots of employment called Steph Packlunch, but hey, I'll hold my personal beef back. I'm happy to write, I'm happy to write a piece on how the government is, you know, has not helped their themselves by making those kinds of decisions. But yeah, so there's a sort of government led approach. You know, if you go back to the 1980s, maybe, you know, the poster child for a long time was Sunderland, right? And Nissan, and that was about, you know, encouraging foreign direct investment from somewhere else in the globe to come and be based in places like Sunderland. And what do they have? Well, they had quite a lot of land that was relatively cheap and they had quite a lot of labour that was relatively cheap. And they had a sort of an industrial pass, which meant there was a culture of these kinds of activities. There are different models, whereas I give you a different one, you know, if you look now at Stork, right? Stork is still a struggling place, but Bet365 is quite a significant employer and a spin-off merchant in and around Stork. And that's very much because, in part, the entrepreneur, the owner came from that part of town and has really kind of built up, always beginning to build up a sort of digital model. So there are different ways of thinking about it, but it's not just the big bang. I think all places, most places, will have something that can be encouraged, something that can be supported, something that can be help to grow a little bit, a little bit more. And I think that's partly the role of government, but it's also the partly the role of local leaders is to find those kernels and try to make them a bit bigger and a bit better than they currently are and see that as a beginning to be a slow process of accumulation. That's really the story about, but at many places, they start someplace, they move on, they move on, they move on, and then suddenly you get skill. If you're going to start somewhere, do you start with trying to improve skills locally or do you start with, you know, basically advertising to big international businesses, this is a place to come and then they turn up and they say, well, wait a second, it's a bit of a desert, you know, who am I going to recruit? You do have to start with the skills base and the skills profile in that place. You have to think very carefully and be considered about, do we have an education system in the school environment that is producing youngsters with the requisite qualification stroke skills to be competitive in the labour market, wherever that might be. And then suddenly, you know, in many of our urban areas, their school system is not as competitive as it probably could be, so you're disadvantaged from the off. So that is the, you do have to begin with trying to produce homegrown talent, homegrown capability, and then look to supplement that by bringing others in that want to take up opportunities for whatever reason, and you complement and supplement that with what's going on. That's part and parcel of what you see and you see this if you go to, if you go to Newcastle or if you go to Birmingham or if you go to Leeds or go to Manchester or even place like Mansfield, the ones I was talking about, they are trying to do this. They're trying to underpin the ability of their schools and skill systems to produce homegrown talent and look to complement that to the extent that they can by bringing in outsiders, because we're not in a position in this country anymore. We really be looking for the modern day Nissan equivalent, those opportunities have gone, so you have to think about the extent to which we can provide talent and then supplementary activities that make us attractive to existing firms to grow and would be firms to come and locate you, whatever, you know, whatever industries are in. But it's important, I guess, though, in this point you're making as well about Nissan not to have an all the reliance on any single industry in any one place, because that's the danger. So Steph, can I ask you as somebody who spent quite a lot of your adult life worrying about Middlesbrough, place you came from, and the absence of ambition and hope among young people? Where would you start in Middlesbrough if you were in charge of the regeneration? Yeah, well, you know, as Andrew can confirm, Middlesbrough tends to pop up quite a lot in most economic think tank reports, normally on the negative about what it hasn't got and what it's not doing. So, I mean, you know, I talk about people in Middlesbrough about this all the time, what can we do? What can we do that has legacy that actually provides something meaningful for young people? And it is, it is about providing, I think it comes back to skills needed in the region and a sense of like, you can learn stuff here and then stay here and do it. So, for example, TSAGE University has done a, I think, has done a great job with social mobility in the area where there's a lot of kids from the area who go there, obviously attracts people from other places too, which is great for the area. But it feels like Middlesbrough now is TSAGE University, that's what it feels like, that's where all the investments coming from, that's where the bars that are around it, where people drink has changed on the basis of where the university is, and the accommodation set up, even the retail centre is like moved towards the university. So, and Andrew, I mean, you probably know just, you know, a lot on this as well, for me, it's about how we scale people in the area. And I always go on about this and it's about that, for a lot, 55% of the kids from the region are from deprived homes, sorry, 50% of the kids in the region are in deprivation. And so, there is this sense as well of like, what can we do to give them skills that in case they can't get the academic stuff that they need, like how do we still mobilize them to know that, yes, okay, you might not have got the GCSEs you need because at the same time you were dealing with not eating and not having, you know, you share in the room with other kids and looking after you, being a carrier or whatever else you were dealing with all this stuff, you might not have slept because your house was freezing or but how do we make sure they know they are skilled and that's the key for me in kind of how we make areas prosperous is just how to when things are terrible and people are in deprivation, what can places like the university do to socially mobilise people and do, I mean, what do you think? No, no, I completely agree, you know, in many respects, in some of these places, middle school is a good example, I've already mentioned place like Stork, but Hull and Plymouth, the university or their further and higher education institutions are enormously important, I mean, they are the modern day equivalent of the old school massive factories that many of these places, you know, had my hometown is Swansea, you know, it's a similar perspective to yours. In the middle of the step, you know, you can see when you go to Swansea that the enormous contribution now and big contribution that the university is playing both in terms of literally as an institution providing people with skills and qualifications, et cetera, but actually employees and awful lot of people, many of them, you know, they are paid relatively well, it's regenerated large parts of the town and the city as it goes through its sort of expansion and development, you can see that in places like Coventry, if you haven't been, you know, you go to Coventry, you go off the train, you can't fail to be struck by the significance physically of the university, never mind everything else. My slight worry on that is that we seem to have a government and a previous government that was indifferent to the university sector more broadly, and ironically, you know, in some of these places, it's the universities that are incredibly important and are probably the ones that are feeling the strain most on the financial front. So you have an irony there where we want these places to expand, we want these places to do better, they have some assets but not very many, and if we're not careful, we'll undermine some of the very assets that they've got because we haven't thought about the place aspects of these sorts of industries because it really does matter. Yeah, so I just want to add to that because Robert might be sitting there thinking, I'm going to minute Steph often slags off universities in the sense of, I am very much about, we should have support for vocational education, just as much as we push people into higher education. The one thing that I've seen places like Teesai Junior do is it is be in the community not just as the place for higher education, but for example, I was there a couple of weeks ago doing a book event with Adele Parks, the famous author from the area. And that was for locals, yes, okay, students could go, but it was for local people, so that was the access to the arts, it was also where hosting the Turner prize in Miggles for the next year via the university, it was the university that got that bid, that's going to be really big for the area. So whenever I'm, you know, sometimes people think, oh, maybe she's, she's a bit empty, higher education, I'm not, I very much I'm like, it should be higher education, these amazing institutions being used for the greater good of the whole area, not just for the students who are going to go there. I mean, I completely echo and agree with that stuff, and you can see this, I mean, if you look, if you go and talk to some of our Metro mayors, for example, Tracy Breven in West Yorkshire or Oliver in South, and Steven Liverpool, et cetera, one of their big central elements, A is skills as we've already talked about, but it's the vocational, it's the FE element that they are very, very focused on, you know, the universities, yes, obviously, but they recognize. They have a particular role to play in actually in improving the vocational offer and the vocational connection and then dragging and drawing people into those those activities so that they can take up some of the jobs that are that are being generated in the place that, you know, don't necessarily require you to go to university, whatever that might be so that you'll see that as a very particular policy. Emphasis in in a many of our urban areas, particularly on that sort of vocational FE front as well as in complement in the the HE point that you were making so it's obviously brilliant that you've got these universities that both provide. Education and indeed jobs, right, but one of the problems many of these areas have is somebody gets a qualification and then they just move from the area that migration from these areas is a big problem right they go where the jobs are or the better paid jobs. And you know, we need to distinguish between the challenges that people on low incomes have, but also that that is not quite the same thing as the challenges that a place has because you could have a very credible industrial policy, which is simply all about making sure that, you know, everybody has the same. The same access to education and skills and not worry about the fact that almost all of those people are going to gravitate south and and and and leave behind an, you know, an older rather lost population living on welfare and and you know, we haven't we haven't cracked that problem that way. No, that's a that's a very good point. Well, but it is difficult and it it very much makes us really think about how we actually support and complement and help firms and entrepreneurs in these places to actually grow and to expand and to understand what they might need from public policy broadly defined in order to do that right and whether that is making sure that they've got access to the premises. That, you know, I'm making sure that our planning system permits the expansion of premises. So if they do look to expand that they, you know, they can, or if they need business support in order to identify new market opportunities that they run aware of that we are able to provide support to them on on that front. Or can we get them to partner with and become linked into other organizations like themselves. So there is a sort of sharing of experiences. So thinking very much about how you grow the economy on that side on the thern side is definitely, you know, is definitely an important thing. Let's say otherwise the extent that you are training and skill in people they understandably will then go and look for opportunity elsewhere if they can't find it in their locality I would say this though. And this is kind of it's a fairly static statistic about 50% of the population adults, I mean live and work within within the area that they were born in. So, you know, people do move and maybe, you know, some of us on the call and those listening are, you know, are people who have moved an awful lot of people don't move at all. And actually, even if they do move, they don't move very far and they stay within their vicinity for a bunch of different different reasons as well. So, you know, it is an issue, particularly is you get more skills, but I think, you know, it just emphasizes this point about helping places to strengthen their economy create more opportunities is really, really important. So, we better go for a break because there's lots to pick up. Hi, I'm Stephen Carroll. And I'm Caroline Hepke here to introduce you to a podcast that brings you the news you need to start your day in just 15 minutes. It's called Bloomberg Daybreak Europe Edition, covering all the top stories across Europe and around the world. Each week day morning, we're up early to bring you the latest news by 7 AM. We've got everything you need to know from geopolitics and global events to economics and what's moving markets. I'm covering it all from London. And I'm in the EU's capital Brussels. We have 3000 journalists and analysts around the world to tell you what's happening, what it means and why it matters. It's more than just business headlines, from the price of your breakfast to global shifts in power. Economics and money aren't just part of the story they're often the driving force. So start your day with us on Bloomberg Daybreak Europe Edition for the news you need to know and the context to make sense of it. Find new episodes of Bloomberg Daybreak Europe Edition by 7 AM London Time, one Apple Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to the rest of the money. We're talking to Andrew Carter, who's the CEO for the Centre for Cities. You're a dedicated think tank, aren't you looking at how we can improve the economic performance of our urban areas. And we were talking a lot about skills before the before the break we were talking a lot about productivity. I just want to ask you about infrastructure in all of this and transport because for me that's after skills transports the big thing that drives me nuts. And you know, as someone who's regularly travelling around the UK, that feels like one of the biggest barriers to growing urban locations because it's just so hard to get between them. You know what I like, even just popping to leads for the day which technically is not that far from Newcastle, it can feel like a really strenuous effort because the trend system and everything else is just so out of date for what commuters and businesses need. And can I just ask you on that point if you look at what the data shows you. So you pointed to the fact that the productivity gaps between collaborations in a place like France are way lower than they are in the UK. Is that because one of the things that I'm afraid is conspicuous about France and Switzerland and actually less Germany's under invested in infrastructure recently but let's just look at places like Switzerland and France. They just have way better transport networks than we have is that a big driver of leveling up as it were in terms of productivity and incomes. Yes, absolutely. And to connect the previous conversation, we also know that there's a direct relationship between the ability to attract skilled labour and skilled workers and the provision of public transport right skilled workers want to be in places that they can get around relatively easily and they don't necessarily have to rely on a car. They want to live in nice places and when they mean nice one of the things they mean is places that are connected internally as well as externally connected to somewhere else but to connect it within their place. So, you know, it's all part and parcel of the same thing, but you're right in a sense the significance when you look at our urban areas outside of London is the absence of any form really of integrated transport system. You know, it's just almost, you know, it's incredibly difficult to get around, you know, greater Birmingham or greater leads or slightly less or now greater Manchester because they've made some big strides but, you know, greater Liverpool, etc. It's very, very hard to get around these places unless you own a car and that is noticeable. So, do you think things are going to change on that front because obviously the push towards more devolution the metro mayors that they're all the things that they want and aren't they? So, are we going to say things change? I think so and I think we've seen I think we definitely will see and I think we have seen I think if you there are there are many strands to, you know, the devolution agenda that we've seen over the last decade but a prominent and big strand has been around transport. And that's two things. One is actually now beginning to put capital investment into these places so that they can actually improve the physical infrastructure of their place, build more metal lines, add more buses, put in more cycle lanes, etc. So, the physical hard yards are being done and there's money being amid, money's been made available by the government for them to do that. And then secondly in within that they've increasingly the mayors being given powers to actually control and manage and influence how that system works. So, they now have Manchester is one London historically has always had it other places getting they now have the ability to control their bus system. You know, which some sound somewhat you know revolutionary in this country but is part of the course in practically every other part of country. I always say this to be when I talk to international mayors on occasion and explain to them that mayors in this country don't really control their transport systems. Firstly, they laugh because they think you're joking and then they start to cry because they realize you're not joking and it's just a sad indictment of affairs in a sense but we are we are getting there and we are giving the mayors the ability to control their bus systems to reconfigure it so it works for the place not just for the operators to really get hold of some of the urban network, the urban road network. And actually make sure that that is prioritised in ways that helps. They're getting further control over the fair system so they can actually think about how they can cap fairs or how they can they can vary fairs to encourage people to more trouble. This is standard stuff in London, we've never not had it in London but we've never had it in these other places for the best part of 30 years so I'm really confident that we're going to get much more of that. I want to also ask you a bit about the retail side of things and kind of the vibrancy of urban centres because how important is that to how well a place does. We had the chairman of M&S on the shore and you know he was talking about the move out of those kind of secondary urban areas. Again, middles were being one of them losing its M&S which was really catastrophic for the area even though you're like well it's just a shot of your bike rolls and you know bit of food. It's not but it is actually can really change the optics of how a place looks and how it's viewed by people but what what what have you found on all that. It's a great question and in some respects you know we know this from our work and you can see this in the polling. In some respects our high streets or our town centres, actors, bellwethers. I mean when you ask people about how they feel about their place and how successful it is and is it prospering. When they think about that they're really thinking about the state of the high street and whether there are vacant units and you know dilapidated units etc etc. It's a really important issue that it resonates with people up and down the country. And can I ask as well just about leveling up you know that that was the big thing and the last government. Do you have we seen any tangible benefits at all for you know for urban economies outside London from leveling up. I would say I mean I think I would say you know we did this analysis looking at the big cities you know leads Manchester Bristol. Birmingham etc and I think if you take the last 10 years and for those more nerdy listeners there is some data issues that you can look out on our website and we explain all of that but nevertheless. There does seem to be an uptick and increase and improvement in the productivity performance of particularly places like Manchester and leads and to a degree Liverpool and Bristol. So yes the gap is actually narrowing with London now about about about 40% of the gap narrowing is down to the improved performance of the big cities. The remainder of the gap closing is to do with London's poor performance and that is a story that we've seen pretty much since the great financial recession of all eight maybe a little bit before but certainly afterwards. Is that essentially London has continued to struggle it's still our most productive city and is by some ways we talked about that earlier on but it's actual performance over that you know that decade and a half has been pretty weak from a from a particularly when you compare it to New York or to Paris or to Stockholm. It doesn't seem to have rebounded in quite the same way and so part of the convergence now is about the big cities outside London doing better London not doing very well and so you you are getting the narrowing but in some respects to use your term. Steph you're going leveling up from the big cities but a leveling down from London which actually closes the gap that's not ideal you know particularly given you know London is give or take 25% of the national economy you know London's poor performance from the great recession large explains about 40% of the overall national poor performance of productivity right it's a big issue for us in London and some of that is macro Brexit etc. Some of that is the fact that London's affordability and ability to get more homes built etc etc has been problematic for some time which then impedes build people to come and work here etc. So there's a bunch of big things and local things going on that makes London struggle a bit. Before you go can you give us like what you kind of predictions are then for the next year give us your mystic Meg because obviously we're going to start our new year I know you guys will have your big outlook report out again later in January. So what are you thinking in terms of what things are going to go in in urban environment so the next year or so. So I am pretty optimistic I think about the big cities outside of London I think London is a different issue as we just talked about but I am optimistic that the performance now the improvements that we've seen in our big cities will continue in part because I think they are being actively supported by government and they have some of the powers and the funding to make the right decisions. In order to grow their economies more and I think that is I'm optimistic about that over the next period I said we're beginning to see the tangible benefits of devolving powers to the Metro miles. Yes there's always complicated questions about causality etc but you can see that you know they've had these powers for you know a decade or so. I think in many places they are making the right decisions even even though it's hard and we are beginning to see some of the benefits and some of the you know the rewards from their activities and I would expect that to continue over the next 12 months and 24 months and 36 months so I'm pretty optimistic about the big cities we like a bit of optimism this time of year. Yes especially at the start of a new year always good. Andrew thank you so much it's been great to chat to you and fascinated to get your insights on everything so thank you from us that's it from us on the rest is money bye bye.