Business
In the past two decades the region has suffered from the decline of traditional industries with substantial job losses in coal mining, steel, engineering and textiles. This has been offset by growth in public administration and the service sector. Leeds is now the second largest legal and financial centre outside London.
York has built a reputation as a Science City and a major tourist destination.
Tourism across the region is worth around £2bn annually, and estimated to support some 140,000 jobs in the region.
The business structure has a greater focus on traditional low value-added industries than the England average and a below average number of higher value-added industries. Manufacturing still accounts for nearly 16% of employment and 21% of Gross Value Added (GVA).
Regional GVA at current basic prices in 2003 was £71.2 billion (7.5% of the UK total). GVA per head was £14,200 (89.0% of the UK average), the eighth lowest of the nine English regions..
Spend on Research and Development in the region (R&D) is four times lower than the UK average. 48% of R&D expenditure in the region takes place in the higher education sector compared to a UK average of 22%. Only 7% of businesses in the region have R&D links to universities.
Business start up rates in Yorkshire and The Humber as indicated by VAT registrations are among the lowest in England. Three-year business survival rates are comparable to most other English regions.
VAT registrations in 2003 averaged 34 per 10,000 resident adults in Yorkshire and The Humber, compared to a UK rate of 40. There were 129, 645 businesses registered for VAT in Yorkshire and The Humber at the start of 2004. This represented 7.2% of VAT registered businesses in the UK and 8.4% of the England.
Infrastructure
The strategic road transport network is generally effective (M1/M62/A1/A19). Transport performance remains better than in most English regions. Traffic volumes are growing and the use of public transport is falling. In the last ten years road traffic on major roads in the region has grown by over 20%.
The rate of usage (3,500 vehicle flows per day) is below the England average (3,800). Traffic levels on major roads increased by 19% between 1993 and 2002. The region has the 4th lowest levels of road traffic of the English regions.
Congestion is a growing problem around Leeds and Sheffield. There are bottlenecks on the strategic network in South and West Yorkshire and through Hull. The AI is being upgraded to motorway standard between Yorkshire and the North East.
Key rail links are the East Coast Main Line (London - Edinburgh), the Midland Main Line (St Pancras - Sheffield) and the Transpennine route (Newcastle/Hull - Manchester/Liverpool). Doncaster and York are strategic nodes. Leeds is the busiest rail station outside London.
The Humber ports complex (Grimsby/Immingham, Hull and Goole) is the UK's largest in terms of goods handled. It accounts for around 14% of UK sea freight traffic.
Airports are relatively small. Scheduled flights are currently available from Leeds/Bradford and Humberside airports, which handled around 2.8m passengers last year. Robin Hood Doncaster Sheffield International Airport (the former RAF base at Finningley) is under development with flights to European destinations to start in spring 2005.
House price growth in the region increased significantly in 2004. Some price gaps with London and the South East have narrowed. However there is great variation across the region.
There are problems of low demand and abandonment - particularly in Hull and South Yorkshire. Across the region, 476,000 homes are at risk of low demand and abandonment.
In high demand areas like North Yorkshire, parts of West Yorkshire and East Riding - an average terraced house costs over four times the average annual salary.
81,000 council homes in Yorkshire and The Humber (22% of the total stock) are currently at risk of not achieving the national decency standard, together with 130,000 private sector homes.
Environment
The region’s natural environment is one of its principal assets. It has almost a third of the total area of National Parks in England (the North Yorks Moors, most of the Yorkshire Dales and part of the Peak District) covering a fifth of the region’s land area.
The region also contains many other important landscapes and habitats, including two Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (the Howardian Hills and Nidderdale in North Yorkshire), three sections of Heritage coast and nearly 400 Sites of Special Scientific Interest . The Humber Estuary is of national and international conservation value and contains a number of important habitats.
River and bathing water quality has improved significantly over recent years in both chemical and biological quality. 90% of the region’s total river length is of good or fair chemical quality.
In 2003 air quality in the major regional centres of Leeds, Sheffield and Bradford was better than the England average. Emissions from industry continue to reduce as a result of regulation and cleaner technologies. Road and air traffic are increasing and these are now the main threat to air quality in the region.
Progress is being made towards achieving waste recycling targets but the amount of waste generated per person in the region is increasing. The region had the second lowest per capita household waste production of the English regions in 2002/03. The region is seventh of the nine regions in terms of the weight of household waste recycled per person per year.
Education and Skills
The region continues to perform below the England average for attainment at primary Key Stage 2. Recent improvement has been greatest in local education authorities (LEAs) where attainment has historically been low. The gap between the best and worst performing LEAs is narrowing.
GCSE results remain below the England average. The gap closed in 2004 with rates of improvement across the region increasing faster than the national average.
Provisional results for 2004 show 47% of pupils in Yorkshire and The Humber gained five or more GCSEs or equivalent at grades A-C. This was the lowest performance of the nine English regions.
In 2004 Hull had the lowest GCSE performance– regionally and nationally – with 34.1%. North Yorkshire was the best regionally with 60.3%. The proportion of pupils in Yorkshire and The Humber with no graded results was 4.9% (England 4.0%).
Trends in education and skills are moving in the right direction. Regional level qualifications at 16 are poor. But by 19, young people have caught up on attainment at Level 2 to rank 4th of nine English regions and perform better than the England average. There are problems with a lack of basic skills in about a quarter of all adults in the region and a shortage of people with higher-level skills.
The region has nine universities and 44 Further Education colleges.
Quality of Life
The percentage of children in low income households, working age people in workless households without qualifications and the percentage of households experiencing fuel poverty are all well above the national average.
Unemployment levels have continued to fall across the region in line with the national trend and are now below the UK average. There are still hotspots throughout the region. For some groups of people, unemployment levels are well above the average for the population as a whole.
In 2004 over 675,000 people were recorded as being economically inactive or ‘workless’ - a fifth of the working age population. Economic inactivity has not fallen in line with strong employment growth over the last decade.
Average gross weekly earnings for employees in the region were £354 in 2003 - only 88% of the national average. 11.2% of households in the Yorkshire and The Humber have a total income of less than £5,000 and 6.5% of households in the region earn over £50,000 annually.
The Index of Multiple Deprivation shows that 29.6% of all Super Output Areas (SOAs) in the region fall within the country’s 20% most deprived – the third highest of the nine English regions. SOAs are geographical data areas below ward level. Most are within the major towns and cities in the region, concentrated in West and South Yorkshire, Hull and North East Lincolnshire.
Life expectancy in the region is very slightly lower than the England averages, at 75.4 for males (England 76) and 80.2 for females (England 80.6).
Yorkshire and the Humber has the second highest rate of recorded crime in the English regions (second only to London). Rates of recorded burglary and vehicle crime are the highest of any region.
Governance and Civic Participation
Civic participation is about making a contribution to the public sphere of society. In terms of voting and volunteering Yorkshire and The Humber levels are just below the England average. In 200/01 only 36% of people in the region participated in civic affairs, compared to the England average of 38%. In 2004, local election turnout ranged from 35% in Hull to 55% in Harrogate.
Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA) was introduced by the Government in 2002 as a way of supporting local councils in delivering services to local people. The Audit Commission’s third Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA), published December 2004, showed an overall improvement in the performance of local authorities in the region.
Of the 15 single tier / county council authorities four moved up a performance category. Eleven were rated ‘Good’ or ‘Excellent’. Two were rated ‘Fair’, one ‘Weak’ and one (Hull) remained ‘Poor’ – the only council in England in this category.
