UKREiiF 2024: How we worked to attract more investment for Kirklees

Last week we attended the UK’s biggest event showcasing national investment opportunities – to try and encourage more investment in Kirklees from further afield and build more great partnerships with organizations across the UK and beyond.

Our Business Kirklees team, who look after business, economy and growth in Kirklees, have been working hard to make connections that will benefit the regeneration and economic growth of Kirklees for years to come.

What is the event?

The UK Infrastructure and Investment Forum (UKREiiF) is an annual event dedicated to driving economic growth and investment in the UK. Organizations and businesses from across the UK and beyond flock to UKREiiF and showcase current investment opportunities.

The relationships we build through events like UKREiiF could help us attract more potential investors, development partners and businesses looking to relocate in the coming years – and with so many regeneration projects taking off in Kirklees right now is the perfect time to showcase our beautiful neighborhood.

All this work will help support our big development plans and boost our economy for years to come.

What did I present?

As well as showcasing our large-scale transformational projects right in Kirklees – including our cultural heart, big connectivity plans and projects such as the Transpennine Route Upgrade – we also held our own fringe event focused on the future of healthcare innovation in Huddersfield, working with the University of Huddersfield and Huddersfield Unlimited.

We’ve had some fantastic developments for local health innovation in the last six months alone, with the government announcing a new investment zone for West Yorkshire. For Kirklees, this work will focus on the area between the John Smith’s Stadium and Huddersfield Station – our ‘Station to Stadium Enterprise Corridor’.

This area covers the university’s upcoming National Health Innovation Campus (NHIC), which will transform local health education, and our flagship business center, the Glass Box, from which we operate our new small business incubator called Thrive. While the new campus is set to offer a combination of world-class research, teaching and public health facilities, Thrive will help innovative businesses and entrepreneurs deliver great new products and ideas.

The new West Yorkshire Investment Zone has been a hot topic in UKREiiF this year, not just from us but also from the other local authorities in West Yorkshire. What we are doing now will build strong links with other hotspots for health innovation such as Leeds and Bradford.

Projects supported by this investment could make huge waves in global healthcare – such as local company Paxman Scalp Cooling, whose technology has already changed the game in helping chemotherapy patients struggling with hair loss. And as our local reputation for healthcare innovation, training and research grows, attracting more and more fantastic healthcare workers to be based in Kirklees could have a knock-on effect on Kirklees’ local healthcare offering .

What happens next?

Our Business Kirklees team will continue to work with the new contacts they have made at UKREiiF to engage new partners in exciting regeneration projects and bring more new businesses to Kirklees to support our local economy.

Meanwhile, the West Yorkshire Government Investment Zone is speeding up work on the NHIC (which you can see off the Huddersfield Ring Road, just opposite the Glass Box) and is also helping us bring other sites forward for potential investment – great for businesses and investors who could benefit from links to the campus, our support for local businesses through Business Kirklees and all that Kirklees has to offer.