Mark Casci: Leeds and Bradford show how putting aside rivalries is a good tale for two cities

I worked at the local paper and eventually ended up covering business, a fantastic patch to learn the ropes.

The city then, as now, was home to some of the country’s top companies and boasted a population that was both young and ethnically diverse, creating a fertile environment for entrepreneurship that has grown massively over the ensuing years.

While I loved my time there I was always bemused by the attitude that existed in and around the city regarding its place in the wider economy.

At the time the first notions of ‘city regions’ were being mooted and, given its geographical size and economic might, the terminology surrounding ideas for what was going to happen in West Yorkshire inevitably began to reference Leeds as its focal point.

While the official Leeds City Region moniker had yet to be coined and the organisation still some months away from being officially formed, there was a clear antipathy to the idea of Bradford hitching its wagon to Leeds, something I found baffling.

Bradford at the time had more companies in the FTSE100 than Leeds did. It had innovative businesses that were engaged in world-leading technologies and it still had the spectre of its once industrial past to remind it of what it was capable of.

I was living in Farsley, less than two miles from where the Leeds City Council boundary gave way to that of Bradford Metropolitan District Council. I drove to work in Bradford every day in less than 30 minutes. Most days I would go on a run that took me in and out of what technically constituted both Leeds and Bradford.

And while I understood the immense civic pride that Bradfordians have in their unique and vital heritage I failed to understand why they would not want to partner with their neighbouring city.

It is now well over a year since I was appointed business editor of The Yorkshire Post and one of the great joys of covering business again is how much the mindsets of both Leeds and Bradford has altered.

Much of this has been driven by business. Bradford, Leeds and York for that matter all have their individual chambers of commerce but operate under the umbrella of a collective entity.

At MIPIM in Cannes this year, both city’s councils delivered a joint marketing message that informed those not otherwise unaware that, taken together, Leeds and Bradford has a population that exceeds that of Birmingham.

At last year’s excellent Bradford Chamber of Commerce dinner, its president Andy Caton lent his backing to Leeds’s bid for Capital of Culture 2023, a message that replicated from City Hall.

Meanwhile,Leeds has lent its full square backing for Bradford to be included on the HS3 proposition, arguing the clear case for giving a city of its scale and importance its own station on the link between Manchester and Leeds.

Old rivalries die hard but whether anyone likes it or not the world is getting smaller and more interconnected. Bradford needs Leeds and vice versa.

Which brings me on to one of my favourite subjects, devolution. In recent weeks, the settlement for South Yorkshire has begun to fracture while the deal for the rest of the region remains out of sight.

A notion of togetherness and commonality must take over at some stage if we are to compete nationally and internationally.

Am I saying we should sacrifice our individual sense of identity around the region? Of course not, these things can never be taken away or eroded.

But what I am saying is that this region of ours can achieve far more together than as separate entities. Of course we can retain rivalries, but I would rather see these lived out by professional sports teams rather than at the expense of our economy.