July 29: How HS2 can be fast track to future growth

THE HS2 project offers the prospect of a substantial economic boost for Yorkshire, but if the region is to benefit fully the Government should heed the wise counsel of the business community.

The insistence by the Leeds, Bradford and York chambers of commerce that there should not be two rail stations in Leeds, but a single, integrated exchange, serving both the existing lines and the new HS2 link is entirely justified.

Besides the inconvenience for passengers of building an HS2 station a quarter of a mile from the city’s central station, proceeding on such a basis would undermine a key benefit the new high-speed link offers – the chance to create an integrated transport network.

The chambers are right in rejecting the idea of two stations, and absolutely correct in asserting that a seamless network is the way forward if the region is to capitalise on HS2.

Yorkshire deserves no less. It is a mark of the region’s success that capacity at Leeds Station is already stretched as passenger numbers have grown, and significant work will be needed in the coming years to accommodate existing 
rail services.

It is an entirely logical step that when such improvements are carried out, they should be expanded to bring HS2 into the same central destination.

This is likely to present financial and engineering challenges, as the chambers acknowledge, but the Government’s own case for HS2 provides the justification for additional investment.

The high-speed line will be a key driver for Yorkshire’s prosperity for many decades to come. This is one of the biggest, and most promising, developments the region has ever seen.

Cutting corners instead of investing in a strategic, long-term, integrated rail hub is not an option.

Hopeful signs

Encouraging economic signs

THERE is much encouragement to be drawn from the new figures on economic growth, not least that gross domestic product per head has caught up with the levels of 2008, before the financial crisis.

That is a significant psychological milestone for both the business community and ordinary hard-working people, underlining as it does that the dark and worrying days of the slump are now firmly behind us.

There have now been 10 consecutive quarters of sustained economic growth, and within those figures there is another positive sign. The latest increase of 0.7 per cent represents an improvement on the previous period of 0.4 per cent.

The Government can rightly point to this upward trend as justification for its economic policies, but within the overall encouraging picture, there are some areas of concern.

Manufacturing shrank during the quarter, and the construction industry remains flat. Both need to recover before the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s claim that the economy is motoring once more can be accepted without a degree of caution.

The question of when interest rates will rise will now occupy the minds of many, not just in business, but amongst savers and those with mortgages.

The national picture is reflected in Yorkshire. But there is good news in the region’s service sector, with Leeds displaying particular buoyancy and an 11-year high in business confidence.

Such confidence is essential to the region’s continuing progress towards complete recovery from the effects of the downturn, and its existence is a heartening sign.

Fishy business

Hands off a seaside icon

COULD there be a more iconic symbol of fresh air and fun by the seaside than the Jolly Fisherman of Skegness?

At 107, he is as sprightly as the day he first appeared on a poster beckoning holidaymakers aboard a train to the bracing air of the east coast.

The suggestion by an animal rights group that he should be replaced by a cartoon plaice has more holes in its argument than the Jolly Fisherman’s nets, and has quite rightly been given short shrift by the people of Skegness. Town councillors who toasted “Jolly” along with guests from Germany on his birthday this week say there is no chance he will be ditched.

He remains, as he always has been, not a figure remotely connected with the ill-treatment of animals, but the embodiment of seaside holidays.

The Jolly Fisherman 
is as much a part of Skegness as the beaches and breakers. Long may he continue to skip along the sands.