LEP Question Time 2021

Thank you for your question. We want to make sure communities across West Yorkshire have access to good quality, sustainable, affordable homes. Our aim for housing and regeneration in the region is to deliver 'well-connected neighbourhoods which support inclusive growth with good quality homes, in places where people want to live'.  

We deliver priority projects according to our Spatial Priority Areas, urban centres and growth zones through the West Yorkshire Strategic Housing Pipeline, which aims to meet the needs of communities across our region.  

As a result of the West Yorkshire devolution deal, funding for housing is largely delivered through the Brownfield Housing Fund. The Combined Authority secured £67 million of government funding for housing in the region which will help to build 4500 to 6000 new homes across West Yorkshire over the next four years.   

Affordable and sustainable housing is a key priority for the Mayor, one of her ten Mayoral pledges is to ‘Build 5000 sustainable homes including council houses and affordable homes’. It would be great to discuss community led housing with you further to understand how the approach could help our strategy going forwards – please contact our head of housing Judith.Furlonger@westyorks-ca.gov.uk to discuss this.   

We also work with a wide variety of partners to make our plans a reality – it may be useful to contact them for further information. Our partners include; local housing associations and the West Yorkshire Housing Partnership, the five West Yorkshire Local Authorities, Homes England, MHCLG as well as private developers. The West Yorkshire Housing Partnership represents the affordable housing sector in our region and Homes England also have programmes open on a continuous engagement process for community led initiatives.

Thank you for your question. For questions on Leeds City Council policies please contact the council directly here: general.enquiries@leeds.gov.uk

Thank you for your question. For questions on Leeds City Council policies please contact the council directly at general.enquiries@leeds.gov.uk

Thank you for your question. 

For questions on Leeds City Council policies please contact the council directly at  general.enquiries@leeds.gov.uk

Thank you for your question. For questions on market traders in Wakefield please contact the council here: Welcome to Wakefield - Wakefield Council 

Thank you for your question.

All LEP products and services are available for social enterprises as long as they meet the specific criteria for each project. We have been able to support several social enterprises in the region. We also recently supported the SEYH awards and we are keen to work closely with the sector. 

Please get in touch with our business support team at BusinessSupport@the-lep.com so we can discuss your specific needs.

Thank you for your question.

The LEP is committed to achieving diversity and equality of opportunity in everything we do. The current LEP Board is the most diverse we’ve ever had, with members from a variety of backgrounds in the private sector, including the arts, social enterprise, academia and management consulting. With a total of 18 members, 13 members of the Board are from the private sector and five from the public sector, with equal numbers of men and women. Our latest recruitment campaign for LEP Board members was specifically aimed at ensuring we appointed members from diverse backgrounds that would be representative of the City Region economy. 

The LEP also has a Diversity Champion who leads on ensuring diversity and inclusion is part of all key decisions. The LEP Equality and Diversity Policy recognises the competitive advantage of our diverse economy and we aim to integrate equality into all that we do, and others do on behalf of the Leeds City Region. The LEP is committed to engaging with all stakeholders and to be inclusive and transparent in all communications. Our priorities and objectives mostly deliver an equality impact, for example, by targeting key sectors, priority groups, and local communities.

In addition, we will work with our partners to ensure that all project development, commissioning and tendering procedures support the following principles:
• Advancing equality of opportunity;
• Showing our commitment to support those with a protected characteristic into
enterprise and employment;
• Ensuring the elimination of unlawful discrimination, harassment and
victimisation.
We will ensure barriers to equality are being proactively tackled at delivery level and
in delivering our equality and diversity policy we will:
• Assess the impact on equality as we develop our strategies, policies and
programmes, and consider what actions, if any, may be appropriate to
improve any identified adverse impacts;
• Through West Yorkshire Combined Authority role as the accountable body,
monitor our social, environmental and economic impact and the impact on
equality as we implement our strategies, policies and programmes;
• Be open and transparent and publish all information regarding our progress
on achieving equality and diversity;
• Work in partnership with the range of local, regional, and national
organisations to create new and better actions;
• Provide excellent customer care by ensuring that services are provided by
knowledgeable and well-trained staff who understand the needs of their
communities; and
• Promote best practice.

Thank you for your question. We work across the five West Yorkshire local authorities and bordering areas to improve transport links across the region. We are working to ensure that across boundaries we have agreed routes and approaches to ensure that routes provide key links across boundaries where required.  We’ll be consulting on several schemes over the coming months and years as they come through the pipeline. 

To better understand the picture of bus travel across the region last year we completed a Strategic Bus Network Review which set out a series of interventions, that if delivered could generate patronage growth. You can view the summary of the review here: West Yorkshire Strategic Bus Reviews (amazonaws.com) 

The Review, along with other key reports links into our wider Connectivity Infrastructure Plan which sets out a long-term transport infrastructure investment programme over the next 20 years. The plan aims to ensure all modes of transport are connected across the region and all communities are well connected. It’s really important that we hear your views on our proposals, formal engagement is closed on Connectivity at present, but please contact us here for more information: connectivity@westyorks-ca.gov.uk  

In addition, you may be aware that the Mayor of West Yorkshire has pledged to work towards bringing buses back into public control. The mayor is keen to ensure buses are the first choice for travel in our region - with more choice, better services, simple and affordable fares as well as quicker, more frequent journeys, running where and when people need them. Work is progressing on this key pledge and a paper recommending the start of the process to bring buses back into public control will be discussed at the next Combined Authority meeting on 24 June. The paper is available here. 

We are also working on bus links to locations outside of West Yorkshire through our work on the Bus Service Improvement Plan and Enhanced Bus Partnership. Each of these processes require the Combined Authority to work with neighbouring Local Transport Authorities to understand the cross boundary offer.

Thank you for your question. 

The LEP supported small businesses throughout the pandemic with a suite of support services, including directing people to the Governments income support schemes for the self-employed. Unfortunately, the Digital Resilience Voucher scheme which you may be referring to did have a criteria of ‘businesses with a minimum of two employees’ – this was linked to the Government criteria attached to the funding. 

Help and support remains available through the LEP and its partners. Our gateway team are always available to offer tailored advice to suit your needs, please get in touch with our business support service for more information at BusinessSupport@the-lep.com or 0113 348 1818.  

The LEP FutureGoals incentive provides inspiration and support to help people of all ages choose their career paths, give them the right skills and experience to start work or change career and provide vital links between education and employers. It aims to map current and future areas where there are skills shortages (for example in manufacturing and engineering, construction, digital, health and creative industries) by supporting  young people with a wealth of careers advice covering routes, from apprenticeships to further training, to starting your own business It supports educators and careers advisers with free resources about careers, industries and the skills needed in the region. We encourage employers to #giveanhour to inspire young people about specific industries in the region. FutureGoals also supports career changers encouraging people looking to move career to look into growing industries in the region and areas where there are skills shortages, and working with local colleges to offer free reboot courses to help people looking to retrain/learn new skills. The LEP's Business Support also underpins this work by working with employers in the region to offer apprenticeship support, working with the Government on their Kickstart scheme, through out grant scheme to help regional businesses to grow and flourish and our Invest work which actively makes the case for businesses to locate or have a base in the region.