'It is about making tangible stuff happen': How Lloyds' new Yorkshire ambassador wants to help region grow

While not without its critics, the mayoral system has succeeded not just because of powers and budgets granted to the new political leaders but also through having an identifiable single individual with an ability to make things happen in their areas.

One organisation which evidently sees value in that type of set-up is Lloyds Banking Group, which has recently created 10 ambassadors for different areas of the UK with a remit to engage with politicians, business leaders, local authorities and charities.

Their man for Yorkshire and Humber is Mark Burton, who has taken on the role on top of his existing duties as the bank’s Head of UK Regions and Global Head of Services, Public Sector and Private Capital.

Meeting The Yorkshire Post in the impressive new Lloyds office in Wellington Place in Leeds, Burton explains the aim of the ambassadorial posts is to help Lloyds play an important role in improving different parts of the country.

"It has the aim of looking at how you can bring the entirety of the Lloyds Banking Group to support the development of the region and bring the voice of the region back into Lloyds because every place in the UK is different and has different challenges,” he says. "Yorkshire and the Humber clearly is very different internally in the areas covered by each mayor. Understanding Yorkshire in itself is hugely important.”

There is a particular opportunity in this region, where Lloyds has around 7,500 employees.

One recent example has seen Lloyds work with Leeds City Council and other partners on unlocking finance for the eco-friendly retrofitting of properties. That pilot scheme has led onto an recent announcement for a £1bn partnership for the national retrofitting of social housing involving Lloyds, Barclays and the Leeds-based National Wealth Fund.

Lloyds also recently co-created the MADE Partnership with Barratt Developments and Homes England to help deliver large-scale ‘garden village’ new housing schemes, while on a more local level it announced earlier this year that its former data centre in Pudsey is to become the site of 80 new social housing properties.

Burton says the bank’s scale and financial firepower gives it the ability to help drive genuine change. "We have got things in our armoury where we can tangibly make a difference to the infrastructure and fabric of a city region or a constituency."

The ambassadorial role is the latest post in Burton’s impressive career for some of the country’s largest financial institutions.

Originally from the North-East, Burton says he got into banking “almost by mistake”.

"At my local rugby club there were a lot of kids whose dads seemed to have their own businesses. I got a curiosity about how businesses make money and ended up in a bank on the relationship and corporate banking side of things.

"I very quickly realised just how difficult it is and how hard a small business owner has to work and the things that can and do go wrong. That really fuelled the fire of wanting to double down into corporate banking because done properly relationship banking can really help make a difference to businesses of all shapes and sizes.

"You meet such interesting people from different walks of life, everyone has got a story to tell and you get compelled to want to try and help them.”

He started with Barclays in 1997 on their regional graduate scheme and followed a well-worn path from beginning in his native Newcastle before progressing to roles based in Leeds and then London.

After a decade there, he joined Royal Bank of Scotland in 2007 to initially run their division dealing with large corporates in Yorkshire, leading his family to move to York, where they are still based today.

His time at the bank swiftly coincided with the global financial crisis which included the collapse of RBS’s share price and the Government stepping in with several multi-billion bailouts using taxpayer cash.

Burton reflects: "You had a lot of staff who had worked there for their entire careers and built up a lot of shares and overnight lost their entire nest egg. These individuals had done nothing wrong and done nothing but help customers their entire career and then they were having to lean in and support clients who were not very happy with the banks. It was a tough time.”

He joined Lloyds in 2011 as regional managing director for the North, based in Leeds and with a focus on helping mid-market clients with revenues of £25m and above to develop and grow their businesses.

Burton reflects: "It was fantastic. Lloyds is quite a young corporate bank but I knew every time we tried to win a client from Lloyds in my previous roles, the loyalty from the client to Lloyds was really strong. The deeper I dug, the more I saw a brand with real integrity that does what it says it is going to do.”

He did the role for three years before taking on a similar post covering London and the South but says he looks back with particular fondness on his Northern post.

"You can be so focused on the horizon and what’s next you don’t actually enjoy the moment. It was a really enjoyable time and I probably didn’t appreciate it enough.”

If he wasn’t busy enough with his various roles at Lloyds, Burton is also a non-executive director for Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust which he says has been a “grounding” experience.

"You can think your day job is busy and challenging but it is nothing compared to what our great NHS staff do on a day-to-day basis, from the exec leadership of the trust all the way down the institution.”

He says one of the best parts of his various roles is gaining an insight into the inner workings of different sectors.

"It is everything from being at the Labour Party conference, linking that through to the importance of higher education in a city region and then how does business connect with higher education and combined authorities. That’s where Lloyds has a really important role to play because we sort of deal with everybody so we can act as that convener to get people together.

"We don’t just talk about it, it is about making tangible stuff happen.”