Berkshire Economic Strategy

Committed to working together to deliver exceptional productivity and employment growth, Berkshire’s six Unitary Authorities have identified opportunities to significantly boost the benefit Berkshire provides to the UK economy by 2035.

This roadmap – the Berkshire Economic Strategy 2025-2035 – aims to ensure that Berkshire thrives in the face of future challenges. The strategy has two main aims: to provide a compelling case for investment in five transformational projects, and to define the set of collaborative actions that will deliver an ambitious vision for Berkshire.

Mitigating the impact of global trends at local level

Our plan is to capitalise on Berkshire’s strengths while outlining actions to mitigate emerging and wider challenges. We benefit from a highly skilled workforce, an excellent national and global business location, and a rich range of businesses, from global giants to specialised SMEs.

In spite of our enviable position, we are, like other regions of the UK, vulnerable to global trends. We must ensure these do not prevent us from reaching our goals by 2035.

The mega trends shaping this Strategy:

• Weaker productivity growth in Europe and accelerating growth in developing areas of the world.
• Technological change and the emergence of disruptivetechnologies.
• The move to net zero is creating new jobs and a green economybut risks increasing costs for businesses.
• A growing and ageing population together with a decliningbirthrate, reducing the size of the working-age population.

A collaborative and resilient strategy for growth

The Strategy sets out four focus areas. We will us these as a framework for analysing our competitive advantages and performance, managing delivery and measuring impact.

1. Economic Productivity
2. Business Performance
3. People, Work and Skills
4. Business Environment

Within each focus area, we set our evidence-based rational for action, indicators and key metrics. Each of these focus areas has its own opportunities to develop, as well as barriers to overcome.

Underpinning the focus areas, we propose five transformational projects for investment.

• Innovate Berkshire
• Export Powerhouse Berkshire
• Berkshire’s Productivity Heroes
• Creative Digital Skills Academy Berkshire
• Growing and transforming Berkshire together

These projects are designed to contribute towards achieving our vision for exceptional productivity and employment growth.

The Berkshire Economic Strategy represents an opportunity to not only put Berkshire in the spotlight by 2035 but also to deliver multiple benefits for the UK.

Our vision is that, by 2035, Berkshire will have the most productive and fastest growing local economy in the UK. Our strategic aim is to grow the Berkshire economy by 3% per annum in real terms from £52.5bn to £70.5bn and to increase employment by 6% from 601,000 to 637,000 between 2025 and 2035.