Its assigned role in the Leeds City Region partnership recognises the city's importance to regional economic development, and the second phase of High Speed 2 plans to connect Leeds to London via East Midlands Hub and Sheffield Meadowhall.Bede states in the fourteenth chapter of his Ecclesiastical History, in a discussion of an altar surviving from a church erected by Edwin of Northumbria, that it is located in ...regione quae vocatur Loidis (Latin, "the region which is called Loidis").On 1 April 1925, the parish of Leeds was expanded to cover the whole borough.The county borough was abolished on 1 April 1974, and its former area was combined with that of the municipal boroughs of Morley and Pudsey; the urban districts of Aireborough, Horsforth, Otley, Garforth and Rothwell; and parts of the rural districts of Tadcaster, Wetherby, and Wharfedale.It changed from being the name of a small manorial borough in the 13th century, through several incarnations, to being the name attached to the present metropolitan borough.
The economy of Leeds is the most diverse of all the UK's main employment centres, and has seen the fastest rate of private-sector jobs growth of any UK city and has the highest ratio of private to public sector jobs of all the UK's Core Cities, with 77% of its workforce working in the private sector.
Decline in manufacturing during the 1930s was temporarily reversed by a switch to producing military uniforms and munitions during World War II.
However, by the 1970s, the clothing industry was in irreversible decline, facing cheap foreign competition.
In 1866, Leeds and each of the other townships in the borough became civil parishs.
The borough became a county borough in 1889, giving it independence from the newly formed West Riding County Council and it gained city status in 1893.