West Yorkshire Local Growth Plan
The Local Growth Plan brings together every mission of the West Yorkshire Plan. It will create good growth and set the region’s direction over the next 10 years.
The Local Growth Plan brings together every mission of the West Yorkshire Plan. It will create good growth and set the region’s direction over the next 10 years.
West Yorkshire is the region I am proud to represent and thrilled to call home. It is an incredible meeting place of diverse people, businesses and communities. A place of practical engineers and pioneering innovators. A place with a rich history and a bright future.
We have some incredible assets. Home to the NHS, world-class universities, research facilities and teaching hospitals. Renowned cultural institutes and conservatoires. Household name businesses. Cutting edge start-ups. Clusters of excellence in areas like financial services and healthtech. But most of all, we are home to more than two million innovative, hard-working people.
My Local Growth Plan sets out how the Combined Authority will help those people, those businesses and those institutions fulfil their potential. It is a combination of big ambitions and a focus on fundamentals – a meeting of ideas just like West Yorkshire itself.
However, like many Northern communities we face significant challenges that are holding us back. We must create a prosperous region where growth is sustainable, and our businesses can excel. We must drive a just transition to net zero by 2038. We must lower the barriers people face in accessing work, childcare, education and culture. We must enable everyone to travel around our region easily and affordably. And we must make sure that everyone shares in the benefits of higher productivity and investment.
But we also embrace huge opportunities. Over the next decade, we have the potential to add £26 billion to the UK economy. We can build a brighter, stronger region. One where people have warm, comfortable, low-carbon homes in places they want to live. Where they have the skills they need to find good work and the connectivity to reach it. A region which is known worldwide for its sector strengths and innovative breakthroughs.
The only way we can achieve growth is through partnership. Our people, our businesses, our education institutes – they rely on each other for expertise, opportunity and insight. The Combined Authority’s role as a convener is to bring them together to learn from each other and create new opportunities.
Above all, our role is to deliver, deliver, deliver. Delivering good growth means putting more money in people’s pockets. It means more opportunities for our young people and businesses. It means celebrating accolades such as Leeds being crowned the best place to live in the UK in 2024. It means healthier, wealthier, more connected communities across our region.
We won’t meet these challenges alone. We are nothing without our local authorities, our businesses, our education providers and our delivery partners. This Local Growth Plan marks the next step in our incredible journey, and I’m excited to take it together. I hope you are too.
Tracy Brabin, Mayor of West Yorkshire
The vision and missions of the West Yorkshire Plan provide a framework for the priorities and actions of the Local Growth Plan. These goals will not be achieved in isolation, or by treating the symptoms. Partnership is at the heart of the Local Growth Plan, with activity devolved to the most appropriate spatial level. Delivery will require the total power of the region, from local authorities and community organisations to private sector businesses and education providers.
The Local Growth Plan builds from the abundance of good practice that exists across local authority areas to strengthen, at scale, public service reform. This is a whole-system, mission-led approach.
If the UK is to achieve its national growth ambitions, it needs West Yorkshire – the fourth largest urban area in the country – to drive up productivity growth. Closing the output gap with the UK average would mean 18,000 additional businesses, 53,000 more people with Level 4 qualifications, 40,000 more jobs, and £3.2 billion more in investment each year in investment. It would mean healthier, wealthier, safer and more connected communities. It would mean more money in people’s pockets and more opportunities for the region’s children.
The Local Growth Plan tackles the key barriers – investment, skills and connectivity – that are holding back growth in the region.
Growth will not be pursued at any cost. Every action and priority in the Local Growth Plan is driven by the principles of inclusion, health and wellbeing and sustainability. This means:
This will involve trade-offs, which will be held in balance by working collaboratively with regional partners to design and develop services and interventions and make investment decisions.
