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The daily journey-to-work movements of the great majority of the working population is a phenomenon of our age and is of considerable importance to the design and management of the transport system and to the location of development. It has major implications for the study and the planning of peak urban and inter-urban transport requirements and the locations of major land uses that generate the need for movement. Further, it is an important element in the consideration of the level and quality of employment opportunities available and in questions of industrial location policy. At the level of the individual, the daily commute journey can involve considerable psychological strain as well as the expenditure of time and money.
An ever-greater separation of home and workplace, promoted by economic and social factors and facilitated by increased levels of car ownership, has led, over the past half century to both a large increase in the number and length of work trips and to an increasingly complicated spatial pattern of work movements to move diverse locations. The major trips are centripetal - that is, flows towards the centres of towns from suburbs and outlying areas, but the detailed pattern in Lancashire is complicated both by the fact that many work centres lie within a short distance of one another and by the development of out of town and out of centre major employment areas. The result of such factors has been to create local work trip patterns of multifarious cross-flows and counter-flows of various volumes. Both the significance of external workflows to and from Lancashire and the wholly internal trips within the sub-region have increased substantially over recent decades.
For many people the daily commute is voluntary in order to take advantage of a better job or desirable home environment. For others it can be an expensive and lengthy necessity brought about by industrial restructuring and changing workplace patterns. For those willing and able to undertake such work journeys, the choices of work opportunities are greatly enhanced; for employers there is an ability to recruit from an enlarged potential workforce with a greater work-skills base.
The nature and scale of journey to work movements in Lancashire can be gauged from the 2001 Census of Population Workplace and Transport to Work Statistics. Comparisons with previous Census reports enable trends over time to be established and identified. Table 1 shows the journey to work patterns for the Lancashire NUTS-2 area and its constituent areas.
'Lives and works in area' includes people who work at or mainly from home and those with no fixed place of work.
Counts do not include people whose usual residence was outside England and Wales.
In 2001 Lancashire had more employed residents (617,600) than jobs within its boundaries (596,200). The balance is accounted for by net outward commuting (primarily to Greater Manchester and Merseyside work centres) amounting to 21,400.
The majority of Lancashire's employed residents continue to both live and work in the same district. In Lancaster this share rises to nearly 83% suggesting a fairly self-contained local labour market, but the proportion falls to just 45% in South Ribble where many residents have a high dependency on Preston for employment opportunities. Generally speaking the larger urban areas of Preston (with 69% both living and working in the district), Blackburn (71%), Blackpool (71%) and, to a lesser extent, Burnley (66%) tend to be more "self-contained" in terms of employed residents' working trips than districts elsewhere in the sub-region.
Districts may be classed into "job surplus" or "job deficit" areas referring to the balance in a district between its numbers of employed residents and its numbers of workplaces. This is a simple arithmetic division that fails to account for any differences in either the quality or the skills of the positions available or of the workforce and therefore should not be taken as a (direct) measure of self-sufficiency (Table 2).
In 2001 the same five districts as in 1991 had job surpluses, that is to say, they attracted more workers than they lost to other districts. These were Preston, Lancashire's largest single work centre with a net gain of 22,300 workers (2% less than in 1991) which it attracted from all parts of the sub-region and beyond; Fylde (+8,300 - a decrease of 6.4% since 1991), which benefited from the presence of a number of very large major employers such as BAE Systems, British Nuclear Fuels and the insurance company Axa; the two manufacturing centres of Blackburn (+5,400) and Burnley (+200), although Burnley's net inward flow has decreased by 91% since 1991; and Blackpool (+250), but again with a large reduction since 1991. At the opposite end of the spectrum, Chorley (with a net daily outflow of -12,600 commuters), Wyre (-10,600) and South Ribble (-9,600) experienced the largest district journey to work outflows, though in the first two cases the long-term pattern of ever greater net losses appear to have been contained over the past decade. Elsewhere, Rossendale's work loss of 7,000 represented an increase of 43% over the 1991-2001 decade, presumably reflecting its strengthening economic ties with work centres in Greater Manchester. The improved position of Ribble Valley (-2,300 net outward commuters in 2001 compared to -3,600 in 1991) is likely in part to represent the above-average rates of employment growth and new local business formation over the decade.
There has been a tendency for those districts that were net exporters in 1951 to continue exporting workers, with the exceptions of Burnley and Blackpool (who became net importers in 1961 and 1991 respectively); small inflows in 1951 in the districts of Lancaster, Chorley and Pendle have become net outflows over the period, significantly so for the Central Lancashire District of Chorley. Preston, Fylde and Blackburn districts have increased in importance as net attractors of workers over the period 1951-2001. South Ribble, with a net inward flow of workers in 1951 on a par with Preston, by 2001 had the third largest net outflow of any district.
In 2001 Lancashire County had a net outward commuting of 27,000, as reflected on Table 1, though this disguises much larger gross flows to and from the area (Table 3). In the case of Preston, for example, in excess of 40,000 people commute to the district each day whilst 36,000 Preston residents commute outwards to other work centres. At the other extreme, the lowest gross flows are found in Lancaster.
Viewed over the decade 1991-2001 virtually all districts have seen increases in gross flows. The largest increases in inward flows have been in Hyndburn (+69%) and Lancaster (+62%). Lancaster remains a fairly self-contained local labour market though over the last decade also registered a 54% increase in the number of commuters from the area.
Blackpool (+9%) and Fylde (+10%) together with Preston (+12%) are the districts that registered smaller changes in relation to commuters to the area, between 1991 and 2001.
In terms of outward flows, aside from Lancaster, the largest increases were experienced by Preston (+38%), Pendle (+36%) and Burnley (+35%) with West Lancashire, South Ribble and Blackpool recording much lower rates of increase.
Table 4 reveals the journey to work trends for the Lancashire during the 50-year period 1951-2001. There have been significant increases in commuters to and from the sub-region. The dependence upon external work centres has been a characteristic of increasing importance throughout the post-war period, with nearly eight times the net (outward) movement of workers from the County by 2001 compared with 1951.
This page was compiled by Bryan Moulding .
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