The Economic assessment is about setting out:-

•  Our understanding of the current position on the York and North Yorkshire economy;

• How the sub region will earn its living in twenty years time and what we will need to do to get there;

• How we will contribute to the economic recovery over the next few years and identifying what the critical issues are that need to address;

• What might be our opportunities, competitive advantages and how they might be taken forward as drivers for change;

• A set of outcomes which will guide and provide the basis for a future economic strategy; and

•  What it will look like when we get there.

The Assessment also:-

• Draws together opinion and evidence about the local economy from partners in the public, private and voluntary sectors; and

• Creates a consensus on the key opportunities and concerns for the local economy and how they might be addressed. 

This Economic Assessment is being prepared through an iterative approach which draws together opinion and evidence from partners. This ensures the involvement of the widest research base and knowledge of practitioners.   The statutory guidance from Government for the preparation of assessments and detailed guidance work published by IDEA (the Improvement and Development Agency for Local Government) has provided the initial framework and scope for this Economic Assessment.  The preparation of the assessment is supported by resources made available by local partners through their support for the York and North Yorkshire Partnership Unit, Yorkshire Futures and the Regional Improvement and Efficiency Partnership, YoHr Space.

The key components of the work are;

Labour Market Areas (LMAs):

The sub region has been divided into 35 areas in agreement with District Councils, based around local employment centres.

Spatial areas:

The LMAs provide the statistical base to aggregate data to six spatial areas that in the first instance broadly mirror those in the approved Regional Spatial Strategy i.e. Leeds City Region, Vales and Tees Link, etc.

Technical assessment:

A more traditional top down presentation of data against topics such as enterprise and skills etc. It provides data for administrative areas and is the data bank and evidence base for the Economic Assessment.

Think pieces:

Individual think pieces looking at key areas of interest have been commissioned for example the Food and Drink industry within the sub region and self employment and micro businesses.  Data and conclusions from the think pieces are an essential component of the economic, short and technical assessments.

Economic Assessment:

The main Economic Assessment document sets out all the elements of the Assessment. It picks up the key findings from the spatial reports, think pieces and the technical assessment. It will be refreshed in June to form the basis of the Statutory Local Economic Assessment (LEA) for North Yorkshire County and will inform the work on the City of York LEA.

A short summary assessment: 

This will ultimately set out the final conclusions of the Assessment.

Next steps and timetable

The following document is the first draft of the short summary assessment, titled an Interim Summary. This highlights some initial first thoughts as the basis for further discussion with partners before the final draft is produced.  Please click on the following link to download the document.

A draft of the final assessment for York and North Yorkshire is now available using the following link.