Abstract
In the UK, regional skill gaps have been an ongoing theme in regional development policy. This thesis constitutes a systematic investigation of regional skills development, with aparticular focus on UK’s left-behind regions. The overarching aim is to develop a new place based, flexible, and comprehensive skills framework that accounts for varying local capabilities, aligns with local industrial strategies, and leverages local vehicles to shape skills development effectively.
To achieve this aim, the thesis adopts a multidimensional approach comprising three independent yet interconnected studies. The first two studies investigate the role of skills at the regional level, examining their impact on regional diversification patterns. The third study shifts the focus towards exploring how skills can be effectively developed at the regional level. Collectively, the thesis makes contributions along three key dimensions: theoretical advancement, methodological innovation, and policy implications.
Theoretically, the underpinnings of this thesis are diverse and complementary, drawing together insights from multiple disciplinary perspectives to develop theory, test hypotheses, and address gaps in the existing literature. Centred around the discourse on regional skills development, the thesis integrates insights from Evolutionary Economic Geography (EEG), human capital theory, and place-based industrial strategy to explore how regional skills can be effectively leveraged and developed. Individually, the findings advance each theoretical domain by contributing novel empirical insights and conceptual refinements. Collectively, this thesis enriches broader place-based policy discussions by bridging EEG, human capital theory, industrial strategy, and regional skills development within a comprehensive theoretical framework.
Methodologically, this thesis applies the latest advancements across multiple domains. It employs sequence analysis to identify left-behind regions based on long-term regional developmental trajectories (Velthuis et al., 2024). It utilises text-mining techniques for the classification of skills into different clusters (Mandal and Gupta, 2016; Reveilhac and Morselli, 2022). It applies co-occurrence methodologies to compute measures of skill relatedness and skill unrelatedness (Boschma et al., 2022; Buyukyazici et al., 2023). Additionally, it adopts web-scraping techniques to systematically map the UK coworking landscape, mitigating limitations associated with fragmented data availability (Gauger et al., 2021).
From a policy perspective, this thesis consistently emphasises policy implications throughout, proposing a novel skills framework that enriches broader regional policy discourses. It reinforces the importance of better alignment and deeper integration between regional skills policies and place-based industrial strategies (Corradini et al., 2022). Moreover, by exploring coworking spaces (CWSs) as illustrative local vehicles, the thesis highlights the potential of CWSs to facilitate regional skills development in ways that are place-based, comprehensive, and flexible, thereby addressing key limitations in conventional skills policymaking.
This thesis integrates quantitative data from both primary and secondary sources. First, the Lightcast UK online job postings dataset is employed to construct measures of skill relatedness and skill unrelatedness. Second, regional socioeconomic data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) is used to categorise regions, measure regional diversification, and construct regression control variables. Finally, primary survey data is collected from both managers and coworkers in CWSs across the UK to examine their role in skill development.
The first study investigates the impacts of skill relatedness on regional diversification into manufacturing. Specifically, we examine the role of skill relatedness within two distinct clusters, technical-digital (TD) and social-cognitive (SC) skills, across four UK regional contexts distinguished by their development levels and historical industrial heritage. This study provides evidence that TD skill relatedness significantly drives regional diversification into new manufacturing industries, and its interaction with SC skills further amplifies this effect, though with varying regional effects. These insights underline the importance of fostering a stronger synergy between place-based industrial strategies and comprehensive regional skills policies.
The second study extends the analysis of the first study by moving beyond skill relatedness to explore the interaction between skill relatedness and skill unrelatedness and its implications for regional diversification. This study specifically focuses on two types of left-behind UK regions, revealing a significant moderating effect of skill unrelatedness on skill relatedness. The findings confirm that skill unrelatedness enhances the impact of skill relatedness on both facilitating industrial entry and reducing industry exits. Furthermore, we observe notable regional variations in this moderating effect, reinforcing the need for differentiated industrial strategies tailored to different left-behind regions.
The third study shifts the focus from examining the role of skills in regional diversification to addressing the question of how skills can be effectively developed at the regional level. We investigate the potential of CWSs as vehicles for fostering place-based regional skill development within both SC and TD skill domains, particularly in the UK’s left-behind regions. Drawing on survey data from both CWS managers and coworkers across 161 CWSs in 74 ITL3 regions, we provide empirical evidence that CWSs facilitate skill development through two distinct mechanisms. SC skills are primarily developed through informal social engagement in a bottom-up manner, whereas TD skills are more effectively cultivated through structured learning resources provided by CWSs. Each mechanism appears to be particularly suited to different regional contexts, underlining the importance of incorporating CWSs into place-based policy discussions and the potential of leveraging CWSs as vehicles to shape local skills development strategies.
| Date of Award | 10 Sept 2025 |
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| Original language | English |
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| Supervisor | Phil Tomlinson (Supervisor), Mariachiara Barzotto (Supervisor) & Felicia Fai (Supervisor) |