Journey to Work
1991

Introduction

A network of cross flows and counter flows contribute to the spatial pattern of work journeys for Lancashire. The significance of external workflows to and from Lancashire and also the size of internal movements within the County have increased during the past half-century.

An ever-greater separation of home and workplace, promoted by economic and social factors, especially throughout the past half-century, has led to an increasingly complicated spatial pattern of work movements. The daily journey to work is an important feature for significant numbers of the workforce. For many it 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 changing workplace patterns. For those willing and able to undertake such work journeys the choices of job 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 seen from the 1991 Census of Population Workplace and Transport to Work Statistics and comparisons with previous Census reports enables trends over time to be established and identified. Table 1 shows the journey to work patterns for the County, its sub-regions and its districts; the detailed magnitude and nature of journey to work flows to and from Lancashire are shown in Table 2.

Appendix: Journey to Work Flows, Lancashire, 1991

In 1991 Lancashire had more employed residents (586,600) than jobs within its boundaries (569,150) with net outward commuting accounting for the balance. It is estimated that3 55,000 people (9.4% of all employed residents) travelled to work destinations outside the County, whilst 37,550 people (6.6% of all working in the area) came to work from locations outside the County, giving a net outwards workflow balance of 17,450. The principal origins and destinations of these external flows are given in Table 3.

The predominant influences are the conurbations of Greater Manchester and Merseyside accounting for over 70% of the work destinations of the outward movements of the employed resident population of Lancashire; and of an equivalent share of those incoming to the County from residences elsewhere. West Lancashire District has important economic links both with Merseyside (the largest single external flow, 11,400) and Greater Manchester. For Lancaster the largest number (1,900) of its employed residents who work outside the district do so in Cumbria, and a similar number of Pendle's residents work in Yorkshire. Rossendale, Chorley and Blackburn also have established ties with Greater Manchester (over 15,000 of their residents working in the conurbation.

The majority of the County's employed residents continue to both live and work in the same district. Over two-thirds of all Lancashire's journey to work trips ended within their district of origin, although there were sizeable variations between districts. South Ribble had less than half of its employed residents working in the district; Lancaster, with nearly nine out of every ten of its employed residents working in the district, proved a very self-contained labour market. The larger urban areas Preston (75%), Blackpool (75%), Burnley (75%), Blackburn (78%) tend to be more self-contained in terms of employed residents' working trips than districts elsewhere in the County. North Lancashire (90%) and East Lancashire (87%) are fairly well-defined catchment areas within which the vast majority of work trips have both their origins and destinations. Central Lancashire, at 78%, indicates a greater level of mobility of employed residents to workplaces outside the sub-regional boundary.

The directional strengths of the workflows between the districts in Lancashire (and beyond) are shown in Figure 1. The majority of flows are between neighbouring districts and many trips involve just a step across an administrative boundary.

Figure 1 Journey to Work, 1991

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 4).

In 1991 five districts had job surpluses that is to say, they attracted more workers than they lost to other districts. These were Preston, Lancashire's largest single workcentre with a net gain of 22,900 workers, which it attracted from all parts of the County and beyond; Fylde (+8,900), which benefited from the presence of the two major employers of British Aerospace Military Aircraft and British Nuclear Fuels; the two manufacturing centres of Blackburn (+5,300) and Burnley (+1,700), although Burnley's net inward balance has more than halved over the decade since 1981; and Blackpool, which for the first time during the post-war period had a net inflow of workers into the district (+1,000). The gains for Blackpool derive in large part from central government Social Security Offices, with the continued dispersal of civil service (and executive agency) jobs to the area where local offices have been substantially up-graded and expanded over the years. At the other end of the spectrum, Chorley (-12,700) and West Lancashire (-10,600) experienced the largest district journey to work losses.

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 1951-1991; South Ribble, with a net inward flow of workers in 1951 on a par with Preston, by 1991 had the third largest net outflow of any district.

Table 5 reveals the journey to work trends for the County during the latter half of the century. There have been significant increases in commuters to Lancashire and commuters from Lancashire (+115% and +171% respectively). The dependence upon external work centres has been a characteristic of increasing importance throughout the post-war period, with more than six times the net (outward) movement of workers from the County by 1991 compared with 1951.

Appendix: Journey to Work Flows, Lancashire, 1991