PART of the North-East has the worst rate of economic growth in the UK, according to a new study.
Tees Valley and Durham comes bottom of a national league table for growth (GDP), registering only 1.1 per cent per year between 1998 and last year.
By contrast, Oxfordshire, Berkshire and Buckinghamshire enjoyed the sharpest increase in GDP in the UK at 4.4 per cent per year - four times as much.
Five of the ten fastest-growing regions in Europe over the next five years are predicted to be in southern England - the others are Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire, Surrey and East and West Sussex, East Anglia and inner London.
The difference in growth between the Thames Valley counties and Tees Valley and Durham, is more marked than in almost any other European country. Experts believe it is evidence that the North-South divide is worsening - and will continue to do so over the next five years.
Rebecca Snow, a senior economist at Experian, which carried out the research, said: "We expect the gap between the best-performing and worst-performing UK regions more extreme than in any other western European country."
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