WEST YORKSHIRE - Geography and history
West Yorkshire has an area of 2 000 km2 and is a county of contrasts, containing both remote, sparsely populated sections of the Pennine hills and, in the valley of the river Aire that cuts through the Pennines, the West Yorkshire conurbation. It consists of five districts: Leeds, Wakefield, Kirklees, Calderdale and Bradford.
Nearly three-fifths of the county's total population live in the West Yorkshire conurbation, based on Leeds and Bradford. Other towns are Huddersfield and Halifax to the west of Leeds, and Wakefield to the east.
West Yorkshire is connected to London in the south by the M1 motorway, and to the north by the A1 trunk road, which is linked to the M1 at Leeds. The main east to west road is the M62 which connects to Manchester in the west, and continues east to Hull and via the M180 to Scunthorpe and the east coast. Leeds is linked to London by electric inter-city rail services, and other routes connect the county to Manchester and Merseyside in the west and York to the north-east. Leeds/Bradford airport is the largest in the region and serves many UK and European destinations.
A changing economy
The West Yorkshire economy has undergone major restructuring over the last 20 years, with a marked decline in traditional industries of coal, wool textiles, clothing and engineering partly counter-balanced by growth in the service sector. Leeds in particular has benefited from financial, call centre and professional services expansion and is now the largest legal centre outside London. In 2001, of those in employment in Leeds, 1 in 7 were employed in real estate, renting and business activities, the highest proportion of all districts in Yorkshire and the Humber. Significant reductions in the coal industry workforce have continued; the last deep mine in West Yorkshire (the Prince of Wales in Wakefield) closed in September 2002. Although the manufacturing sector has declined its share of employment is still above the average for the UK. The county's unemployment rate was 5.0 per cent in 2001/02, in line with that for the region and the UK.
Tourism is a growth sector, particularly in and around Bradford and Leeds, with the promotion of attractions such as industrial heritage museums, the Brontes at Haworth, the National Film and Photography Museum in Bradford and the West Yorkshire Playhouse and Royal Armouries in Leeds.
West Yorkshire had a population of 2.1 million inhabitants in 2002, which represents an increase of 1 per cent when compared with the population in 1982 The population density, of 1,030 inhabitants per km2, is one of the highest amongst the counties of the United Kingdom.
In 2002, Leeds had a population of 717 thousand people, around a third of the county's total, which makes it, after Birmingham in the West Midlands, the second most populous district in Britain. Leeds is also, along with Bradford, the most densely populated district in the county, both have 1,300 inhabitants per km2, although none of the districts of South Yorkshire are sparsely populated: Calderdale, the least densely settled still has 530 persons per km2.
Differing industrial structure across the county
Significant variations occur in the patterns of employment between the districts of the county. In 2001, in Kirklees, 27 per cent of those employed worked in the energy, manufacturing and water industries, nearly double that in Leeds and in the UK as a whole. In Wakefield, 24 per cent were employed in the wholesale and retail trade industry, compared to only 16 per cent in Calderdale and 17 per cent for the UK as a whole.
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