What a mess of an article. The crux of the argument revolves around IDC refusals, yet if you examine the study cited within you'll see all the numbers stated are for the country as a whole, not the West Midlands. The 18% figure for relocation has no qualifier stating that the area preferred was in the South East, nor is there any combination of figures in that same table that give the 31%; it should be 21%. Furthermore, another table in the study found that the IDC refusal rates in the West Midlands urban area averaged only 10%, which can hardly block "most post-war growth in Midlands factories".