UKREiiF | Q&A with David Skaith
Place Yorkshire caught up with the Mayor of York and North Yorkshire for a quick chat about what he’ll be championing at the event.
The Great North has been launched on the eve of UKREiiF – it’s clearly a great venture, but why do you think it will be different or add more to the devolved powers that the North already has?
I think it’s going to add more because it’s that collective work, and all the Mayors coming together. Obviously, now we have our own unique opportunities in our patch, for that collective voice of all the Mayors.
If we want to see the economic growth, the opportunities, those housing numbers, particularly that we want to see being delivered in in this country, so much of that is going to have to happen in the North.
As northern Mayors, we’re coming together to say, actually, we have so much going on there, so much opportunity, that we can really shift the dial on a lot of the challenges that we face nationally, that we’re putting ourselves on that front foot.
If you come and invest in the North, it’s going to help all of us.
And in terms of York and North Yorkshire specifically, what is the what are you really driving forward for your region?
Well, for us, we have a very unique region. We are heavily rural, one of the first that really came online in terms of devolution, as a very strong rural area. We want to showcase that devolution can be living away from a city region.
Having a heavily rural and coastal landscape is really key for us, but then actually the work we can do around agriculture, and the food and farmers sector, and improving food resilience and food security, we can really champion that in our Northern future.
In terms of UKREiiF – what are you most looking forward to promoting and talking about?
I think, again, it is an opportunity to show to people that it’s not just about always the city regions – as a rural area, we’ve got a huge amount of investment opportunities.
We’ve got real positivity around the housing numbers that we can deliver.
It’s an opportunity to put North Yorkshire on the map, and being able to do that in our area as well, which is the largest [part of Yorkshire]: we have an opportunity to really showcase how you can bring in opportunities and investment.
