Labour eyes transport, housing and small businesses in North Yorkshire pitch for mayor

Mr Skaith will be up against 28-year-old Tory candidate Keane Duncan to lead the newly-created combined authority after a devolution deal was agreed with the Government last year.

He told The Yorkshire Post that many local politicians organisations are all in agreement on what the region needs.

“A lot of us are singing from the same hymn sheet,” he said. “We really need to get hold of transport, in particular, and the whole infrastructure around that.

“That's not just in North Yorkshire, but when you're going into other areas of the region, everything's connected.

“A lot of our transport in North Yorkshire in York isn't up to scratch, it hasn't been working very well.”

“We know we need to look at housebuilding, not just building new houses, but retrofitting older ones.”

However, he said that the main thing that set him apart from his Conservative opponent in next year’s mayoral race is his own background in business.

“That's particularly something that I'm very focused on, those small local enterprises and local businesses.

“North Yorkshire is full of these great market towns and during Covid they bounced back really well, generally speaking, and after Covid because you had a lot of people working from home, they were shopping locally, they're staying in their local communities.

“We want to build on that.”

Mr Skaith said that his manifesto for the mayoralty is underway but will operate as an “open door” working with communities and businesses and “work collectively”.

He said that he doesn’t see the role as a “traditional political position” such as an MP, but that he sees himself as an “enabler” by bringing in the funding to allow local areas to get their own projects running.

One idea that he has been working on with the York MP Rachel Maskell is to get school leavers into a premises in order for them to develop their own business ideas, giving them access to legal advice, business plans, applying for funding and finding a location for their work.

He added that the key to getting the next generation of businesses and entrepreneurs to stay in their local areas such as Scarborough comes from solving issues such as transport, connectivity and building affordable housing.

In addition, this joined-up approach to keep things local could stretch to farming, as he eyes up involving local farmers and food producers providing food for public buildings and council offices.

His own path into politics was not one that started from a young age, he said.

“I was very late into politics, I didn’t grow up in a political household whatsoever. We never had a conversation about politics growing up with my family and friends. It was just not on my agenda at all.

However he said that his family working in teaching, the NHS and having children made him more aware of things that “you don’t like and want to change”.