Edinburgh retains top five place in PwC ‘best cities’ report

While the highest ranked cities still tend to be mostly in the South of England, Edinburgh has maintained its top 10 berth in the latest PwC Good Growth for Cities report.

The index, produced by the accountancy firm in partnership with cross party think-tank Demos, measures the performance of 42 of the UK’s largest cities against a basket of 10 categories, based on the views of the public and business on factors influencing economic success and wellbeing.

Edinburgh continues to be one of the best cities in the UK, holding its own in fourth place against historic top performers in the south of England.

However, the Scottish capital, along with Aberdeen, fell one place this year, from third to fourth, with Aberdeen dropping from 10th to 11th, respectively, while Glasgow has climbed from 29th to 27th.

Inverness, although not included in the index and, therefore, unranked, performed well, and all Scottish cities improved their overall score, the report says.

Susie Simpson, PwC’s head of private business in Scotland, said: “Inverness continues to shine in all the right ways – skills, jobs, transport infrastructure and income distribution are all above the UK average.”

Cities across the UK are seeing strong jobs growth and are catching up on the historic top performers in the South of England, with the big improvers in the 2017 index including Birmingham, Leeds, Newcastle, Liverpool and Derby, suggesting that the Midlands and North of England are steadily narrowing the gap with the south.

Oxford and Reading have topped the index for a second year running.

Only London and Southampton from the South are among the top 10 improvers relative to last year’s index.

John Hawksworth, chief economist at PwC, commented that: “The UK has been a great job-creating machine in recent years and this has driven improvement in our good growth index this year across all major UK cities. On average across the UK, the index is now at its highest level since it began in 2005 and all regions have benefited from this upturn.

“But there has also been a price to pay for this in terms of worsening housing affordability, increased average commuting times and more people having to work long hours. The cities that are highest ranked on our index also tend to suffer the highest price of success.”