Agenda aims to prove there’s life in the region

The chief executive of Leeds City Council is keen to talk through its contents.

“You would be hard pressed to find a council or a group of councils – if you count the Leeds city region – who have been more active in trying to help stimulate the economy, in the country,” said Mr Riordan.

He goes through the agenda, picking out discussion items which he said prove his point.

“There’s the Tour de France bid, which is exciting and a big boost potentially for the tourist industry, if it comes off. We are working very well with Welcome to Yorkshire.”

Chief executive Gary Verity is leading the Back Le Bid campaign to bring the race to Yorkshire in 2016 and has won the support of 150,000 people.

“There is work we are increasingly doing on the healthcare side with health bodies in the public sector but also more widely the work we are doing with the private sector,” added Mr Riordan.

The council is working with companies including Surgical Innovation, Brandon Medical and an unnamed third on plans for a science park in Leeds. It is applying for support from the Government’s regional growth fund.

He went on: “We are looking at our financial strategy and there are few institutions doing more for deficit reduction than Leeds City Council. We have saved £145m for taxpayers over the last two years. “We are still providing the same level of service or better than we did before, so a big productivity improvement.”

The council has a big challenge to come, he added, alluding to further cuts, perhaps.

He said: “We are looking at the potential of pooling business rates. We are looking at setting up a combined authority with the different councils to get more transport powers down from centre. We are talking about the new £1bn transport fund.”

Under the City Deal agreement with central Government, the fund could pay for improved access to Leeds Bradford International Airport and the capacity of the ring road, new park and ride facilities, and an extension of the Next Generation Transport scheme, known as trolleybus.

“We are also looking at specific schemes that can stimulate the economy,” he said, citing the Trinity Leeds retail centre, the purchase of the Millgarth police station to help lure John Lewis to a nearby site in the city, the Sovereign Street development, which has accountancy firm KPMG as its anchor tenant, and the enterprise zone.

“We have a specific project in Kirkstall in the Leeds-Bradford corridor where we think there is a very good scheme but it has stalled in the difficult economic circumstances.

“We have a proposal that we will provide financial assistance to kick-start that project,” he added.

Finally, the council has a ‘green deal’ project with £1.2m worth of grants and loans to help pay for insulating homes in the city.

“If you add all that together, it’s a really significant package and one that we’re proud of and trying to drive forward. It will be thousands of jobs. The overall impact is well over 10,000 jobs.

“More importantly, we are starting to get an image with investors as a place that people enjoy doing business, they know we are open for business and I think that will lead to investment in the future as well.”

Lurene Joseph, chief executive of marketing agency Leeds and Partners, is working to bring in new investment, he said.

Leeds has a history of civic enterprise; the Civic Hall was built by unemployed construction workers in the early 1930s.

Mr Riordan wants to evoke that spirit today. He said: “This building with the golden owls on is a great emblem of Leeds’s resilience in probably the parallel most difficult time that there has been in the UK economy.

“The Leeds Arena I think is the symbol of that same resilience and that same spirit of civic enterprise, that we are not going to sit down and let things happen to us, we are going to try to shape our own destiny in Leeds.”

That’s all well and good, but the city has a significant and growing problem with so-called NEETS – young people who are not in education, employment or training. This applies to around 40,000 16-25 year-olds.

Mr Riordan said the council is working with the private sector to increase apprenticeships “so young people can see they have a bright future in our city, that the city cares about them”.