Social mobility in every postcode?
By Tim Thorlby
5 mins read
Prime Minister Burnham has declared his intention to promote “growth in every postcode” in the UK. This is a clear recognition of the many regions and towns that have been left behind over the last forty years.
It’s a welcome statement of intent, although how he intends to match his rhetoric with actions is yet to be seen. However, one of the more curious decisions of the new PM is his quiet abolition of the Social Mobility Commission. But ‘closing the gap’ between North and South and between Coast and Inland will have to involve work to address social mobility too.
In this blog I have chosen to highlight some of the recent work of this soon-to-be-gone Commission and to discuss how its challenging agenda will need to be taken forward by devolved government.
1 | Social Mobility Commission: the end of a (short) era
One of the Burnham Government’s earliest decisions, not widely reported, is the imminent closure of the independent statutory Social Mobility Commission.
Originally established in 2012, before being put on a statutory footing in 2016, it was first led by the Rt Hon Alan Milburn MP. It has often made the headlines with its annual ‘state of the nation’ reports and has delivered a fair amount of in-depth research on the issue.
Various reasons have been given knocking the Commission on the head – from the somewhat vague “we are reviewing arm’s length bodies” to the fairly damning “there are no examples since its inception in 2016 of its work directly informing government policy”.[1] Ouch. (Also: just because governments don’t implement your recommendations, does that mean your recommendations are wrong?)
Instead, the Government are establishing a new ‘Class Unit’ to sit within the existing Office for Equality and Opportunity and are promising to address social mobility anyway.
It might work, you never know. The reasons for the change seem opaque to me.
I thought it was worth marking the Commission’s passing as it has done some good solid research on social mobility and kept the issue in the public’s view.
So, below, I have picked out three of the Commission’s most recent contributions. At the end, I ponder the future for the challenging agenda of delivering social mobility in the UK today.
2 | Social Mobility: some evidence
Exhibit A | State of the Nation 2025
The most recent national review of social mobility across England[2] studies changes over time as well as offering new insights.
The Commission identifies three sets of factors which drive social mobility over the longer term:
1. Conditions of childhood – unsurprisingly, the family context for a young person is still very influential in shaping their education and career prospects. The expectations, wealth and connections that a family can offer are key factors.
2. Labour market opportunities for young people – these factors shape the kinds of opportunities that young people may have in finding training and work in their area.
3. Innovation and growth – these factors shape the wider local economy and the extent to which it is dynamic and able to offer a range of good quality jobs.
Overall, their analysis shows little significant change in the pattern of social mobility in the last 20 years, highlighting that shifting underlying conditions takes a long time.
Concerningly, some aspects of social mobility have worsened in the recent years, driven partly by accelerating housing costs making locational mobility more difficult (i.e. less affordable) for many people. This has contributed to what it called “extreme regional differences.”
The geographical areas with the most entrenched challenges – the former coal mining and heavy industry areas in the Midlands and the North of England – have also shown relatively little relative progress.
Making faster progress to social mobility in England will require a sustained effort to address regional disparities, as well as much greater progress in getting young people from disadvantaged backgrounds into higher education (whether academic or vocational).
This means, in a nutshell, substantial and sustained investment in areas outside of the South East of England to accelerate their economies, as well investment in schools and higher education to narrow the attainment gap between families and neighbourhoods.
Exhibit B | Universities and social mobility
This year, the Commission published an analysis[3] of which applicants were successful in gaining a place at university and compared their socio-economic backgrounds.
It found that nearly one third of English universities – mostly the well established Russell Group universities – continue to under-enrol students from more disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds, even when they have the necessary academic grades to get in. These institutions have been slow to change their admissions practices. The report makes a range of recommendations on how to make this process more transparent.
(As a stark case study on this, I wrote a blog a while ago exploring how the phenomenon of social mobility and university access played out in my home city of Sheffield - ‘closing the participation gap’).
Exhibit C | Innovation Generation
A Commission report of 2024 (the ‘Innovation Generation’)[4] reviewed their approach to social mobility and recognised that they needed to move away from a relatively narrow focus on an individual’s circumstances and take greater account of their geographical context. They also recognised the need to consider wider opportunities than just ‘going to university’.
This refreshed analysis of how to address social mobility points to:
a place-based approach, recognising that answers may look different in each region, and fits well with the devolution agenda.
investment in vocational education and apprenticeships, not just university education
development of innovation-led economies that create a range of good jobs
specific initiatives to address the needs of our one million young people who are NEET (not in education, employment or training)
The report also highlighted, in particular, the need to break the cycle of disappointment in areas of industrial decline and in many of our coastal towns, which continue to be reflected in low educational attainment. This is about much more than just whether there are good jobs locally, it requires engagement with local culture and ingrained expectations about life chances.
3 | Social Mobility: can devolution pick this up?
The Social Mobility Commission may be for the chop, but none of these issues are going away. It seems to me that the Commission’s analysis has a lot to offer to both central government and devolved government.
We know from long experience that even if we could achieve robust economic growth “in every postcode” (and that would be a big achievement), it would not deliver social mobility alone.
Why? Because wealth doesn’t ‘trickle down’. It never has, it never will. An understanding of social mobility helps us to identify the stepping stones we have to put in place to connect economic opportunities with those who need them.
If we want to join up the expanding opportunities from a rising regional economy to people with disadvantaged backgrounds, then we have to construct pathways from one to the other. This is where the Commission’s work may be of the greatest benefit to those working on city region growth strategies. If ‘growth in every postcode’ is to meaningfully deliver ‘social mobility in every postcode’ then every strategy will have to answer these questions:
how do we support young families to give their children a better start in life?
where do we need to invest more, and differently, into education, training and apprenticeships to open up vocational education?
how do we better connect employers and schools?
how do we persuade all of our universities to ‘join the team’ on social mobility?
How do we support young people who have fallen through the net to get back on their feet?
Social mobility in every postcode? Now that would be transformational.
Put it on your agenda, Mayor.
This blog was written by Tim Thorlby. Please s if you’d like to know about future blogs, usually published once a month. (It’s free!)
Notes
[1] Government Press Release, 9th September 2026 | Access here: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/time-to-end-class-squeamishness-first-government-unit-to-improve-life-chances-for-working-class
[2] State of the Nation 2025 | Access here: https://socialmobility.independent-commission.uk/publication/state-of-the-nation-2025-the-evolving-story-of-social-mobility-in-the-uk/
[3] Who gets in? University benchmarks for social mobility (2026) | Access here: https://socialmobility.independent-commission.uk/who-gets-in-university-benchmarks-for-better-social-mobility-technical-report/
[4] Innovation Generation: next steps for social mobility | Access here: https://socialmobility.independent-commission.uk/publication/innovation-generation-next-steps-for-social-mobility/