Forward thinking required on jobs

Some savings will be easier to identify than others. Hull Council appears to have money to burn, paying two interim managers around 800 a day, while Craven District Council is so financially constrained that a merger with Harrogate was contemplated recently.

Inevitably, Yorkshire's 22 councils will each have their own agenda and priorities. They will, rightly, want to prioritise some specific services – and that is the prerogative of local councillors.

However, they must not look at issues in isolation. As the area's four police forces have shown with the procurement savings that they have achieved by working together, public bodies must not ignore the regional dimension to their decision-making, even more so with Yorkshire Forward being remodelled as a local economic partnership.

It remains to be seen whether this council-led partnership will focus on city-regions like Leeds, Sheffield and Hull, or whether there will be an umbrella body to co-ordinate employment and investment strategies.

Either way, it is imperative that local authorities, and others, put the region's wider interests first. Parochialism will achieve little at a time when the overwhelming priority is the need to create private sector jobs across Yorkshire and streamline public services.

While some have decried Yorkshire Forward, it must be remembered that it was set up to attract investment and it is continuing to play a pivotal role in putting the region at the forefront of the low-carbon economy. Tens of thousands of jobs could be created.

It is difficult to see how so much progress could have been achieved on this, and other issues, if it had been left to local councils pre-occupied with their own differences and rivalries.

Petty differences have to

be put aside when council leaders meet tomorrow to discuss Yorkshire Forward's future. The economic lead must be tackled on a region-wide basis if Yorkshire's recovery is to retain any momentum.