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ITV Job Cuts in Kirkstall

Responding to the announcement of job cuts at ITV studios in Kirkstall, Leeds today, local MP John Battle, whose constituency includes the closing studios, says:

“This announcement is not totally unexpected and has been in the wind since the Granada/Carlton takeover a couple of years ago. It is deeply disappointing that ITV is abandoning a prime location – Yorkshire – for some of its major successful dramas.

“For nearly five decades, the Yorkshire landscape, urban and rural, has provided a brilliant dramatic backdrop. Centralising production in London and in the North in Manchester (to where Countdown production will move) is par for the course. Most worryingly is the trend away from real locational dramas to cheap reality TV.

“I believe this is a short-term option which will result ultimately in more people just switching off.

“In the meantime we cannot leave those made redundant dismissed as “back-up production staff”. They are people usually with great engineering, electronic and media communication skills. Taking them out will reduce the creative industries’ capacity in our own region just as they are taking off.

“I’m urging our regional development agency, Yorkshire Forward, to work with the smaller film makers and producers in our region, the job centres and those made redundant to make sure their skills are not lost to Leeds.”

©John Battle MP 04 March 2009