A MINIMUM of 30,000 people in West Yorkshire are likely to lose their jobs in 2020, a report has revealed.

West Yorkshire Combined Authority today discussed its Covid 19 recovery plan, with members heard that the collection of local Councils will be asking Government for as much as £1.1 Billion to help the region's recovery.

A report to members highlighted different scenarios depending on how long the current Covid crisis lasts.

Under even the most positive scenario, there are likely to be 30,000 jobs lost in 2020 with the local job market returning to its pre-crisis employment level by mid-2022.

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The most pessimistic scenario would see up to 58,000 jobs potentially lost this year, with the local job market not returning to pre-Covid employment level by 2025.

The Authority's recovery plan focuses on three areas:

-Good Jobs and Resilient Businesses

- Skills and training

- Accelerated infrastructure

The Authority heard that the recovery plan will look to "establish a number of distinctive West Yorkshire propositions that can deliver not just for the region’s recovery, but also make a significant contribution to the UK economy as a whole."

The Government is likely to announce a raft of measures to get the UK economy going again in the coming months, and the Combined Authority will ask for:

- £50m to boost local health innovation "building on the region’s world-leading strengths in devices, data and diagnostics, unlocking industry collaboration, skills and a globally positioned Act Early institution on disease prevention."

- £158m for Lives transformed by digital tech to "ensure no one is left behind in a digital and tech enabled future from the basis of the fastest growing digital sector in the UK, driving broadband infrastructure, digital skills and Made Smarter investment to support digital adoption in manufacturing."

- £191.98m to Transition to Net Zero Carbon Resilient Economy "supporting our net zero 2038 target, with unique industry strengths in low carbon transport, clean agri-tech, construction and circular economy, delivering a pipeline of critical green and blue infrastructure, up to 71,300 jobs and skills and training to help people retrain into low carbon opportunities."

- £60m towards entrepreneurship – "focussed on the diversity of our communities, our existing scale-up performance and our MIT REAP programme for high growth pre-starts, unleashing an entrepreneurial revolution, transforming empty properties and providing accelerator funding for high-growth potential start-ups."