The coronavirus lockdown will damage the West Midlands economy more seriously than the national average, new research has concluded. Problems in the property sector, including too much office floorspace and inflexible landlords, will be part of a constellation of serious hurdles, a report from the West Midlands Economic Institute suggested.

Work to rebuild local economies will need to be radical, according to background material prepared by the Centre for Local Economic Studies collaboration with the U.S.-based research and development lab The Democracy Collaborative. The analysis “makes the case for community wealth building as the vehicle to drive systemic change through the initial rescue and recovery phases”. In so doing, CLES argued, local authorities can lay the groundwork for a wholesale, much needed, reform of their local economies — making them fairer, more inclusive and more secure than those that existed before.

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