When it comes to the essential ingredients for competitive advantage and growth, Leeds City Region is rich in digital, energy and transport connectivity, and our infrastructure is only set to grow in capacity and resilience.
The Leeds City Region's central position in Britain coupled with its international airport, road and mainline rail links offer a well-connected platform for global businesses.
Frequent, high speed train services mean London is only two hours away, while Leeds-Bradford airport flies to London Heathrow Terminal 5 five times daily, with flights taking under an hour.
Some of the country’s highest-capacity strategic motorways and arterial roads also converge here, like the M62, connecting the east and west coasts of Northern England, and the M1 and A1(M) between London, Newcastle and Edinburgh.
Leeds City Region has excellent freight distribution networks to Europe and the rest of the country by road as well as rail.
With access to hard economic facts, case studies from leading companies and business support packages available, find out how we can help you make the case for investing in Leeds City Region. Contact our experts for more information.
Leeds City Region is committed to funding infrastructure investment projects that will ease the flow of goods and people within the city region and improve the economy for the long term. As well as business support, skills and energy improvements, our Local Growth Deal agreed with UK Government will help fund transport projects designed to improve the connectivity across our region and more broadly, to connect the principal cities across the north.
The new high-speed rail link between Leeds, Birmingham and London (HS2) will unlock much-needed capacity and bring a reduced journey time of 82 minutes from Leeds to London. HS2 is forecast to deliver 19,700 potential new jobs and a single economic corridor that will boost the Leeds City Region economy by £7.8 billion a year.
Improved transport will unlock the potential of seven million people across the Leeds City Region. And projects like HS2 are engines of economic growth in themselves - worth over £25 billion in opportunities for businesses in construction, workforce training and infrastructure support services.
Our ambition is for the North to be a dynamic counterweight and complement to the London and south-east economy, a destination of choice for investors, helping rebalance and grow the national economy in the decades ahead.
Leeds City Region has the highest concentration of internet service and telecommunications providers in the UK. York, the UK’s first gigabit city, has the fastest download times in the UK and Leeds also founded the UK’s first mutual Internet exchange, called IXleeds, and pioneered a vision for low-cost, fast and ubiquitous connectivity wherever a business bases itself in the Leeds City Region.
Leeds City Region’s infrastructure and innovation capabilities make it a cost-effective location to host business-critical or sensitive financial data. Our high-speed, reliable digital connectivity is crucial for reinforcing what the Leeds City Region does best: adding value through competitive edge in our core growth sectors.
Data is transforming business like never before, especially in personalised manufacturing, Fintech and healthcare. And our Digital and Information Economy is poised to unleash new opportunities across all these sectors and more with world-class expertise in big data analytics.
Leeds is now a solid member of and contributor to the global internet exchange community, this puts Leeds in a sound position to offer London independent disaster recovery, particularly to the finance sector
CEO and Founder, AQL
The Leeds City Region has a heritage of supplying critical resources to fuel industrial growth on a global scale.
In fact, a sixth of the UK's electricity supply is generated here, and we have the largest manufacturing sector in the country, thanks to a burgeoning demand for low-carbon and alternative energies.
Our region’s long-term ambition is to be an international leader in resource efficiency for businesses. Regional centres of excellence York’s BioVale have been set up to reduce overheads for businesses and drive energy-efficient value chains. Strong links between businesses and energy efficient value chains help new businesses run optimally from day one.