Looking back at my first four months at the West & North Yorkshire Chamber

• As we head into the Christmas break and I close out my first four months at West & North Yorkshire Chamber of Commerce, it is only now that I am able to reflect on everything that has gone on since I joined.

The nation has been through a rollercoaster of events since my start date of September 1, although I hope that the two are unrelated.

Since I came onboard the country has had three Prime Ministers, countless ministerial shake ups and is still coming to terms with the tragic passing of Her Late Majesty the Queen following 70 years on the throne. As a patron of the British Chamber of Commerce to which my organisation belongs, Queen Elizabeth II’s death marked a solemn moment but also one of gratitude and respect for the incredible service she manifested every day of her 96 years on the planet. All this unfolded as inflation continued to rise and all businesses grappled with the eye-watering rises in their energy bills.

The political chaos would typically come to dominate my first few weeks at the Chamber. Following Liz Truss emerging victorious in the Conservative Party election, there was widespread belief that this was an ideal time to reset the dial on infrastructure in Yorkshire. After the Integrated Rail Plan unwound hopes of high-speed rail connecting Yorkshire cities to the rest of the country, Chamber leadership wished to take the opportunity of lobbying the new PM about the manifold benefits that both HS2 and Northern Powerhouse Rail could bring to the entire country. It was resolved that a letter be written to Liz Truss and secretaries of state with a hand in infrastructure decision making to press the case once again for Yorkshire being given the same connectivity as seen elsewhere in the country.

This, of course, was a laudable plan and one which I took to with gusto, although I could not have foreseen the impending turbulence ahead. We were handed an early doors boost too when she committed to delivering NPR in full, including with the much-needed station in Bradford, meaning we were halfway to achieving our goal already. The idea was struck on to make this letter wider than simply an ask from West & North Yorkshire Chamber of Commerce. It was felt it would be better to have it run with the signatures of the region’s leading employers and in concert with other employer representative organisations. Support came in thick and fast but, as we prepared to put it in an envelope to Number 10, it became clear that Ms Truss’s days at that address were reaching an end.

The mini-Budget speech her chancellor delivered on September 23 laid out a raft of tax cuts which were to be funded by a significant increase in borrowing. Markets reacted poorly and the value of Sterling plunged, leading to the Bank of England needing to intervene to halt the economy plunging into a tailspin. U-turns and sackings followed but by then it was too late, and Ms Truss was forced to resign on October 20 after just 45 days. While her premiership will be regarded poorly by historians, and rightly so, her administration did register one significant achievement in the energy price guarantee which gave thousands of businesses a reprieve from the insurmountable cost of powering their firms. However, this is set to come to an end on March 31 and as a Chamber regionally and nationally, we continue to press relentlessly for clarity as to what will happen when the calendars flip over to April.

Just a few days after she resigned, the man she defeated in the leadership election, Rishi Sunak, was elected Conservative leader and became our third Prime Minister of 2022. As an MP with a Yorkshire constituency, there was again hope that the region may finally get the opportunities it deserved. After some frantic telephone calls we were able to get our chief executive James Mason onto Channel 4 News to react to the news. We also saw our Black and Minority Ethnic committee react to Britain’s first ever person of colour entering the highest office in the land, a hugely significant milestone for the nation. It was Mr Sunak who would eventually receive the letter on rail that the Chamber helped organise. The coverage we received on its contents made the front page of the Saturday edition of The Yorkshire Post among other outlets. While the Sunak Government remains committed to the Integrated Rail Plan we as a Chamber will continue to lobby and campaign to ensure the region gets its fair share.

While the political storm may have calmed down the fact remains that the economy is a tough spot, with further challenging times ahead. Here’s hoping for a calmer 2023 and a climate in which we can refocus on getting back to growth in a measured and well-considered manner.

The other big announcement that came during my first few days at the Chamber concerned the news that we had been successful in securing the contract with the Department for Education to administer two Local Skills Improvement Plans (LSIPs) for both West and North Yorkshire respectively. LSIPs are designed to address any regional mismatches between skill requirements from employers and those being taught by learning providers. A huge amount of work has gone into developing these two plans and leadership groups for both geographies are now in place. It is important to stress two things regarding LSIPs. The first is that they are not designed to compete with existing skills programmes but rather to compliment them, with the second being that they will not see the Chamber drafting education policy. Our role is to be the convening point between employers and learning providers, to bring them together and forge plans as to what can be done.

One of the great joys of the new job is being able to be based in so many places. Having been Leeds-based for so many years it has been wonderful to spend a great deal of time at the Chamber’s head office in Bradford’s Little Germany. The city has changed a lot in the (gulps) 15 years since I left the T&A, with exciting plans afoot for further regeneration. Similarly spending so much time in York has been wonderful, taking me back to my youth when I used to visit the city for day trips with my parents.

It is in the latter where there has been a huge amount of work going on behind the scenes to establish a Hospitality Forum. The forum will serve as a convening point to bring together solutions to the key challenges it faces. This will launch in earnest in the new year. The sector is both crucial to York and North Yorkshire and one which has endured a torrid few years. After the enforced shutdowns due to the pandemic, it had barely been getting back on its feet when the cost-of-living crisis loomed into view. Many of these ideas were kicked around at a highly informative roundtable event I attended one cold Friday evening in the warmth and comfort of York’s wonder Greys Court Hotel at which Rachael Maskell and Julian Sturdy attended. As well as being instructive, the cross-party willingness to work together between the two MPs was palpable and came at a time when trust in politics was at a low ebb. If only the public saw more of this behaviour.

Staying with North Yorkshire, devolution has moved at pace for the region and myself and Chamber colleagues attended a York & North Yorkshire LEP Business Summit on October 21 when the consultation for the devolution proposal was launched to the public.

Since I joined there have been six Leadership Group meetings, two for Bradford, two for Leeds and two for York & North Yorkshire, with the same volume of meetings for the three Chambers’ respective property forums. I have learned a great deal at all of them on matters varying from plans for a new super stadium development at Odsal in Bradford, the ongoing redevelopment around the iconic York Minster and the looming Leeds 2023 celebration of culture in and around Yorkshire’s biggest city.

Having covered numerous photocalls over my nearly 20 years in journalism I had the tables turned on me in mid-November at Bradford’s St James Market alongside shadow rail minister Lou Haigh, Bradford Council leader Susan Hinchliffe and my good friend, the Northern Powerhouse Partnership’s Henri Murison .

I presented the Chamber’s Quarterly Economic Survey to a group in Horbury near Wakefield and to an audience of circa 100 at the magnificent campus of Bradford University, the latter being alongside the Bank of England. I have also just completed work on the QES for the final three months of the year, with the document due to be published early in the new year.

We had a very successful AGM at the Park Plaza Hotel in Leeds and our Bradford Chamber of Commerce Annual Dinner at Bradford's Midland Hotel was a hugely upbeat event. More on this to come in 2023!

And none of that includes the whirlwind of roundtables, media requests, proactive engagement and document drafting that consumes the policy team on a daily basis.

As I type this, I am on a train back home after a day in York with Alice Ingram . Alice joined us from Ad:Venture in October as our Business Engagement Manager for York & North Yorkshire. She has really hit the ground running and is already proving a massive asset as we seek to grow the work we do in the county.

?It has also been a pleasure working alongside Mike Cartwright . I knew Mike well during my time at the T&A and he has been a solid guide into Chamber life for myself. I am extremely grateful to him and the wider Chamber team for making me feel so welcome since coming on board.

Next year is going to be a tough one. The recession will cause many of us pain and lead to difficult decisions. However, we have been here before and know what to do. Economies grow and contract, everyone is aware of this. And while the deep shocks of the pandemic, the turbulence in Westminster, the passing of Queen Elizabeth II and the economic chaos of the last 12 months have taken its toll, they cannot shake the foundations of Yorkshire’s world-class, resilient and every adapting economy. There is so much potential in this region and, were it to be unleashed, our nation’s economy would be so much the better for it. As I have said countless times, Yorkshire and the North is the solution to the country’s problems. If only it would be recognised as such by those who sit inside the M25.

I finish tomorrow until the New Year. This year marks the first time since I was a child when I will not be working over the festive break at some point. I intend to soak up every minute of this previous and uninterrupted time with my wife, daughters, extended family and friends. If I get lucky with the weather I may well even get out on my bike for a few hours if the weather permits. Here’s hoping.

Merry Christmas to all of you and thank you for reading. 2022 is a year I won’t forget in a hurry and I have a hunch 2023 will be no different.

Here’s to a better tomorrow.

Best wishes,

Mark