BBC changes the script to recognise vital role of region's writers

At the end of the first day of a two-day festival on television writing, Peter Salmon, director of BBC North, stood in front of the assembled group – which included writers like Tony Jordan, Toby Whithouse, Jack Thorne and Paula Milne – and asked all to raise a glass.

The toast was loud and clear: to Alan Plater and his legacy.

"He'll be looking down on us, cigarette in his hand, and saying 'look at what people like me have created'," said Salmon.

Plater, one of his generation's greatest TV writers and a proud son of Hull, called television "the people's theatre" and it would have no doubt pleased him to hear the first Television Writers Festival, organised by BBC writersroom, was held in Yorkshire.

The scheme, which celebrates a decade in existence this year, is led by Kate Rowland and was created to seek out new writers. Rowland's team has unearthed some genuine talent and many of them gathered under one roof at Leeds College of Music to share their thoughts on writing drama and the state of the industry at last week's festival.

Lectures from Tony Marchant, Jed Mercurio, Peter Bowker and Kay Mellor sat alongside masterclasses from BBC executives and producers.

Marchant is the man behind shows like Mark of Cain and Holding On. Mercurio created Bodies, Bowker wrote Occupation, Desperate Romantics, and a TV version of Wuthering Heights, Yorkshire writer Kay Mellor is the woman behind Band of Gold and the BBC success A Passionate Woman.

That this kind of calibre was on show in Leeds is a testament to the commitment the BBC has to the regions.

While the London-centric nature of most creative industries is often spoken out against, for years it has felt like easy lip service to quieten the provinces.

Time was when a writer would have had no reason to break the circle of the M25 and when the BBC announced it was building a whole "media city" in Salford and moving five key departments north next year, some wondered whether it would be a white elephant.

Holding the first TV Writers' Festival in the North was in part a sign the BBC is genuinely committed to reaching above Watford Gap.

Rowland said: "Writers are the lifeblood of any broadcaster and their imagination and ability to translate ideas into groundbreaking scripts form the basis of all great programming. What makes our work in writersroom exceptional is the collaboration with writers at the top of their game who believe in supporting a new generation of talent."

Hugo Heppell, head of production at Screen Yorkshire, which helped to organise the event, added his own support for the festival.

He said: "The fact that BBC writersroom organised the

first ever TV Writers' Festival in Leeds clearly illustrates how important drama is to Yorkshire and how important Yorkshire is to drama."

Heppell's claims are backed up by the fact that so much drama has been filmed in the county in recent years – A Passionate Woman, Red Riding, Unforgiven, Five Days and The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister were all shot and many originated, here. The hope now is there will be more writers emerging from the North who can pick up where the likes of Plater left off.

Tony Marchant, talking at the launch session, said: "Alan was one of us. He showed us that we can write with insight and tell the truth, whether it be in a series or a serials, or a single drama.

"But above all everything he did, he did with passion."

Passion was something of a recurring theme and for many of the writers the festival was recognition of their own hard work.

Lisa Holdsworth, a Leeds-based writer who has written on shows such as Emmerdale, Robin Hood, Waterloo Road and New Tricks, regularly travels to London for BBC meetings. To have the corporation come to writers like her in the North was, she says, a significant step.

"The festival was a real treat, doubly so because it was in my home town," she said. "To have writers of such great calibre only a number 16 bus ride away for two inspirational days was just brilliant."

And for the BBC a further commitment to finding the next generation to carry Plater's torch.