Our Senior Manager in Trade & Investment David Ryden reports from a successful collaboration at UKREiiF 2023.
If the key to attracting investment into a region is collaboration, then I can confidently say we did a great job at the recent UK Real Estate Investment & Infrastructure Forum (UKREiiF) in Leeds.
Although only in its second year, visitor numbers leapt from 4000 in 2022 to around 7500 for the 2023 event at Royal Armouries. It was massively encouraging to see so many people from around the UK, coming together at an event which aims to link the private sector with regional authorities, all in the name of doing business.
Under the banner of Invest in York & North Yorkshire, we as the LEP, joined forces with inward investment colleagues from City of York Council and North Yorkshire Council, to welcome a constant stream of visitors to our stand.
So, what were the conversations we experienced with those who visited our stand? There appeared to be a real interest in our region’s future - people genuinely wanted to know about the recent restructuring of the county and what a Mayoral Combined Authority (MCA) would look like for us.
Most encouraging was that talk of a York & North Yorkshire MCA led to questions about how this would open up investment potential for the region. Both developers and investors said they were keen to engage early on to develop opportunities with us and, interestingly, with planning authorities as a key function. This was seen as an area where we could make a real difference, and conversations about how we could achieve this were really useful.
When devolution comes it will give us unprecedented levels of control and decision making over how we spend money on driving our economy. Mayors in neighbouring authorities, like Ben Houchen and Tracy Brabin are really delivering investment, jobs and wider benefits for their regions having a clear vision and strategy in place and strong leadership that promotes this.
I saw the potential for this in the team we assembled to represent our region to the world at UKREiiF 2023. Our mission now must be to put York & North Yorkshire on the global investment map and in the minds of foreign and UK investors.
To learn more about what we do, head to our Invest In York & North Yorkshire web page or contact me by email at David.Ryden@ynylep.com