Headline regional ambitions

Introducing the targets

These targets address the distinctive set of challenges facing the region over the next generation and describe the leading and sustainable economy to which the East of England aspires. Though ambitious, the coordinated action of local, regional and national partners will ensure the East of England improves both its economic and environmental performance while addressing inequality. They aim at improving the quality of life in the broadest sense.

Targets to achieving a more prosperous and sustainable economy

As a key indicator of economic well-being, improving the growth rate of output per capita is necessarily a headline ambition for the regional economic strategy (RES). Achieving it will require faster growth in the productivity of those who live and work in the region and higher employment rates. This will bring important challenges such as population and housing growth, sectoral change and environmental and resource-use pressures.

A comprehensive programme of research was undertaken to provide stakeholders with the information necessary to weigh up these complex considerations.

These included:

  • the RES-RSS joint-modelling project: an economic forecasting model built specifically for the East of England that jointly models economic, housing and population growth
  • REEIO environmental and resource-use modelling: testing economic growth scenarios and policy options for their impact on greenhouse gas emissions, water use, energy consumption and waste arisings
  • analysis of the impacts of economic growth scenarios on biodiversity, historical heritage and other environmental receptors.

The headline regional ambitions are designed to:

  • anticipate the performance of the wider UK and world economies
  • be consistent with the scale and distribution of future physical development as laid out in the regional spatial strategy
  • minimise the environmental and resource-use impacts of economic growth
  • recognise infrastructure constraints and pressure on public services
  • be consistent with other headline targets and objectives, other key regional strategies and public service agreements
  • take account of the region’s governance structures and changing institutional landscape.

Overarching ambitions for sustainable economic development

Productivity and prosperity
Annual growth in real workplace-based GVA over 2008 - 2031
Per capita 2.3 per cent
Per worker 2.1 per cent
Employment
Employment rate by 2031
Working-age population 80 per cent
16-74 population 70 per cent
Skills
Share of working-age population with qualifications by 2020
(aged 19 to state pension age)
NVQ level 2 or equivalent qualification and above 90 per cent
NVQ level 3 or equivalent qualification and above 68 per cent
NVQ level 4 or equivalent qualification and above 40 per cent
Inequality
Earnings
Level of lower-quartile to average incomes by 2031 60 per cent
Greenhouse gases
End-user-attributed CO2 emissions by 2031
Reduction on 1990 baseline level 60 per cent
Water resources
Household per capita consumption of water
Reduction on 2008 baseline level by 2030 20 per cent
Per capita consumption in 2030 120 litres*

*per head per day

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