West Yorkshire Economic Recovery Board

The West Yorkshire Economic Recovery Board brings together local authority leadership, public partners, trade unions and the private and third sectors to develop robust plans for the region’s economic recovery and to help build an inclusive and sustainable economy for the future.You can find its terms of reference here.

It has produced a draft plan setting out actions for a locally-led recovery that builds on the region’s strengths and puts in place measures to support jobs. The draft plan was endorsed by the Combined Authority at its meeting on 4 September. As an evolving document, the draft plan has the scope to be updated to reflect the changing situation.

The Board’s vision for recovery is to grow a more inclusive, resilient and sustainable economy with more productive businesses, better levels of skills and entrepreneurialism, less inequality, and better environmental sustainability:

• A recovery that produces resilient and thriving businesses, boosted by innovation, high skills and entrepreneurialism
• A clean growth recovery that grasps the opportunity to deliver sustainability across all our places
• A recovery that delivers inclusive growth and a decent standard of living, where good work and well-being allow as many as possible to contribute to, and benefit from the region’s economy.

West Yorkshire propositions

The draft plan identifies four distinctive West Yorkshire propositions that can deliver not just for the region’s recovery, but also make a significant contribution to the UK economy as a whole. Each proposition includes both an offer and ask to Government:

• Health innovation (£60 million) – building on the region’s strengths in devices, data and diagnostics, unlocking industry collaboration, skills and a globally positioned Act Early institution on disease prevention.
• Lives transformed by digital tech (£159 million) – ensure no one is left behind in a digital-enabled future, by driving infrastructure, digital skills and Made Smarter investment to support digital adoption in manufacturing.
• Transition to Net Zero Carbon Resilient Economy (£192 million) – supporting our net zero 2038 target, with unique industry strengths in low carbon transport, clean agri-tech, construction and circular economy, delivering critical green and blue infrastructure, up to 71,300 jobs and skills and training to help people into low carbon opportunities.
• Entrepreneurship (£340 million) – focussed on our diverse communities, existing scale-up performance and our MIT REAP programme for high growth pre-starts, unleash an entrepreneurial revolution, transforming empty properties and supporting high-growth potential start-ups.