Seven days, seven stories: A round-up of this week’s Yorkshire news
MORRISONS’ chief executive David Potts has gone straight to work to revive the supermarket giant’s image and popularity.
His first week at work began with the news that celebrity duo Ant & Dec would no longer be celebrity ambassadors for the brand , before the latest Kantar Worldpanel figures showed signs of recovery for rivals Tesco while both Morrisons and Yorkshire rivals ASDA saw a decline in their market share, and ended with Mr Potts spending £1.05m on shares in the Bradford-based supermarket.
Earlier this week on the retail front, we reported that the high streets in Leeds and Yorkshire were still attempting to recover from the Trinity Shopping Centre “hangover” – which comes after recent reports indicated that the Northern high street shops were taking a hit.
Yorkshire received a positive mention in the Chancellor’s Budget statement, when he announced “the great county of Yorkshire” had created more jobs in the past year than the whole of France. An otherwise cautious announcement, 50 days before the general election, included confirmation of a devolution deal for West Yorkshire. However local leaders were left underwhelmed by the details , which fell a long way short of Manchester’s comprehensive arrangement.
The Chancellor also announced that the report into the Transport for the North was imminent and it duly arrived on Friday. £88bn of infrastructure proposals were set out in the report , although the funding must now be agreed.
Business Improvement Districts seem all the rage at the minute with Sheffield voting ‘yes’ to a BID – though the low voter turnout to this (39% of 500 businesses, so fewer than 200 businesses that voted) and the Leeds BID similarly had a 38% turnout.
