No place-based transition plans for AI-exposed local economies (contact-centre towns)

Call-centre employment fell ~19% and telephone sales ~23% (2021-25, Annual Population Survey via British Progress); Forrester projects contact-centre jobs halving by 2030. These jobs cluster in specific labour markets (the North East, South Wales, central Scotland), which overlap AI Growth Zone areas whose data centres create construction but few continuing jobs. No exposure mapping feeds Local Growth Plans; combined authorities have neither the data nor a duty to plan; DWP employment support is not AI-aware. Nobody links the two policy worlds.

Displacement will be experienced as place-level shocks, not national averages: the deindustrialisation lesson. The same towns hosting AI Growth Zone data centres could see their largest service employers automate, a politically combustible combination with no owner in Whitehall or town halls.

AI transition compacts for the 10-20 most-exposed local labour markets: occupation-level exposure mapping (from the Observatory in gap 1), pooled DWP/Skills England/local growth funding, employer early-notification norms for AI-driven restructuring, and AI Growth Zone community-benefit clauses tied to local retraining.

// Build together: Counterparty: one metro mayor or local authority compact pooling DWP/Skills England funding; exposure mapping is doable today.

Displacement will land as local shocks in the very towns hosting data-centre booms, yet no exposure map feeds any growth plan and the mapping is doable today.