To provide an easily operable method for the production of a polymer compound for photoresist having high quality suitable for the film-forming step in a semiconductor production process by using the compound as a resin component of a resin composition for photoresist.

A resist resin solution is produced by dissolving a monomer at least containing a monomer A having a group eliminable by an acid to make the monomer to be soluble in alkali and a monomer B having an alicyclic skeleton containing a polar group together with a polymerization initiator in a solvent, polymerizing the monomers by dropping the solution into a solvent heated to polymerization temperature, adding the polymer solution to a poor solvent to precipitate the polymer, removing the solvent from the precipitate by centrifugal separation with a centrifugal separator, dissolving the wet crystal in a glycol solvent and concentrating the solution by vacuum distillation. In the above process, the distillation concentration of the solution obtained by dissolving the wet crystal in the glycol solvent is carried out after diluting the solution to decrease the concentration of the solid composed mainly of the polymer to ≤13 wt.%.