Leeds Digital Festival has returned for another year to highlight the burgeoning digital and tech sector in Leeds.
Leeds has famously been a haven for the professional services industry for years – the City has the country’s most powerful banking centre outside of London and has seen the fastest private sector growth of all UK cities. Now however, the balance is restoring itself and the region is providing equal opportunity for both professional services bodies and those in the digital sphere.
Leeds Digi Fest gives the region a chance to celebrate the quantum leaps that are being made in the City’s tech space, including digitally-driven sustainability, machine learning and chat bots – do you ever truly know if you’re talking to a person or a robot!
The festival spans 10 days and each day is made up of 15+ different seminars, workshops and events that endeavour to share the City’s digital learnings, encourage more people to take up careers or advance their careers in the digital sector and rejoice in Leeds’ technological capabilities. If you’d like to be a part of it, click here.
Successfully running since 2016, the Festival has seen continuous and sustained interest and growth, and the 2018 showcase saw more tech events occurring in Leeds than in San Francisco!
The Region’s digital capabilities haven’t been borne from nowhere, however. It’s taken years of investment and evolution to get to where we are today. Leeds’ has nurtured its talent, offered opportunities for new growth and built a business case that’s difficult to ignore. Through this Leeds now hosts the UK’s highest concentration of internet and telecoms providers and has attracted some of the most high-profile tech-companies in England, including Sky Betting and Gaming and NHS Digital.
The Region even acts as a bedrock for stereotypically non-digital companies to expand upon their services and enter into a new online world.
Take the Yorkshire Building Society as an example. This financial services company has recently gone through a campaign of complete digitalisation, bringing new life to their brand through a series of hackathons and new technology pilots. This has elevated YBS’ offering and allowed them to continue to compete on a national level.
To enable this continued growth, several initiatives run throughout the region to support growing SMEs and already established businesses. Digital Enterprise is part-funded by the European Union and offers vouchers worth between £2,000 and £10,000 to help mid-tier and start-up tech businesses grow by funding their digital investment projects.
Equally, The Leeds City Region Enterprise Partnership (LEP) offers a wide range of business finance, which includes grants of up to £250,000 for companies looking to create new jobs and diversify Leeds’ skillset.
Offering space for digital companies to grow, the Majestic is located at the heart of Leeds City Region and sits comfortably as a Grade A ‘smart’ building. Our building has full access to Leeds’ outstanding fibre infrastructure, tapping into the City’s diverse routes for resilience. Additionally, the high-speed fibre pathways located within the Majestic will give occupiers access to the best internet speeds available. You’ll also be able to make use of the 5G broadband speeds in Leeds, which EE is introducing to the City this year.
To find out more about Leeds’ technology offering, read our previous digitally-focused blog here, or read about the extensive work our engineering team Buro Happold will be doing within the Majestic here.
Our digital future’s looking bright
If you are thinking about relocating your business to Leeds, get in touch with our agents Richard.Thornton@eu.jll.com of JLL or Eamon.Fox@knightfrank.com of Knight Frank to see how we can help you.
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