Leeds reverse brain drain, says Riordan

Leeds has reversed the brain drain which has seen many regional cities lose graduates to the South of England, Leeds City Council’s Chief Executive has said.

Tom Riordan, speaking at our West Yorkshire Economic Growth Conference, said work carried out to support Leeds’ bid for the Channel Four headquarters had demonstrated the relative youth of the city’s population: ”The Channel Four process has really demonstrated quite powerfully how important and differentiated our growth is compared to virtually every other city in the UK. It’s getting younger because we are attracting more students to universities and more are staying here. We’ve managed to reverse the traditional brain drain where lots of students came to Leeds and then felt they had to leave. We’re now getting a brain gain with people coming to Leeds. It’s a massive advantage for us.”
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He also said that universities are increasingly focusing on building up links with their local economies: ”There was period when universities saw their future as global institutions and businesses in their own right but forgot the basis of the place where they had started and depend on.”

Riordan said that the Leeds city-region’s universities are a ‘massive selling point’ when talking to investors.

Professor Margaret House, Vice Chancellor of Leeds Trinity University, told delegates that 38% of graduates remain in Leeds and 72% within the city region. She also said that Leeds Trinity contributes £20.7m to the Leeds economy and £27.6m into that of the wider city-region. This included ensuring that ‘at least’ half of the construction works carried out by the university would have been completed by local contractors with a total value of £7m.

In addition, House said, the university places planned maintenance of around £1m per annum with local business.

Kelly McAllister, Head of Business Development at Bradford College, discussed the introduction of the government’s apprenticeship levy, which applies to all employers with a wage bill of £3 million-plus. Reflecting the broader national picture, she said that the overall number of apprenticeships starts in the Leeds city-region had fallen by four cent.

But while the number of intermediate apprenticeships had declined by 12%, there had been a four and a 39% rise respectively in the volume of advanced higher level apprenticeship starts.

Professor Lisa Roberts, Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research & Innovation at Leeds University, highlighted its new £100m Sir William Henry Bragg development, which  is due to open in September 2020. The centre, which brings the university’s engineering and physical science activities together into one location, will incorporate the new interdisciplinary Bragg Centre for Materials Research.

Roberts said the university’s new Leeds Engineering Technology Campus, which is located on a 10-acre site near to the West Yorkshire depot for HS2, will include an Institute for High Speed Rail and System Integration.

Colin Booth, Principal & Chief Executive of Leeds City College, said that the further education sector is wrestling with major financial challenges: “Half of all colleges in the country are in some financial difficulties,” he said, pointing to a report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies that showed the money allocated for 16 to 18-year-old college students has dropped 8% since 2010.

But the further education sector struggled for public attention, Booth said: “We’ve have had a problem with technical education for the last 70 years but can’t remain focused on it. Even when the prime minister launches a review of technical education, all the media talks about is student tuition fees.”
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