Norfolk, Bucks and Cornwall kings of manufacturing growth says GMB study

Twenty seven UK regions recorded a boom in manufacturing employment the GMB analysis of an ONS population survey showed. Scottish regions featured heavily in the renaissance with Aberderdeenshire, West Lothian, Edinburgh and West Dunbartonshire all registering job rises. Star English performers included counties more associated with tourism than manufacturing such as Bournemouth and Greenwich The boom areas bucked an overall national slump of 706,300 in manufacturing employment. Staffordshire, Worcestershire and Kent were the hardest hit areas with combined job losses of over 60,000, the study found. England accounted for 87% of the manufacturing job losses. Scotland suffered a 46,500 decline in industry jobs, Wales lost 40,300 and Northern Ireland over 6,000 over the past five years, figures revealed. Paul Kenny , GMB general secretary said: "The Downing Street led recession accelerated the haemorrhaging of jobs from UK manufacturing. In the UK as a whole the first four years of this recession has cost 706,300 manufacturing jobs. That is an average of 3,398 job losses a week."