Leeds City Council Confirms £15m Funding for Two Cultural Projects 

Sadie Kendall on 17 February 2025

Leeds City Council have today confirmed plans for two new cultural projects, funded by £15m from central government funding. 

Of the £15m, £10m is being provided by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) to turn Holbeck’s historic Temple Works building into the home of a new British Library North.

The Deputy Prime minister, Angela Rayner, visited the Temple Works building alongside mayor Tracey Brabin last week. 

A further £5m has been confirmed will aid plans to create a National Poetry Centre at the landmark Trinity St David’s Church on Woodhouse Lane.

In a statement from Leeds City Council, Councillor James Lewis, leader of Leeds City Council, said:

“The British Library North project aims to create a world-class space for learning, research, exhibitions and events that would unlock the huge potential of Temple Works and boost the ongoing regeneration of the wider Holbeck and South Bank areas.

“It is therefore really welcome news that the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government has confirmed that, following a consultation, this £10m of funding is now in place to support the process of bringing the Temple Works building into public ownership and back into use.

“We have worked hard in recent months with partners, including the West Yorkshire Combined Authority, Homes England and the British Library itself, to make the case for this funding”

However, the announcement of new funding sits with a broader context of spending cuts from Leeds City Council, with the 2025/26 budget detailing the need to save £103.8m overall across the city. 

Leeds City Council have also detailed they need to make £273.7m in further savings over the next five financial years.

In a previous statement, Councillor James Lewis welcomed new funding for the city, but also detailed the “significant ongoing challenges” in delivering the savings required. 

The 2025/26 budget plans for the city include plans to close Abbey House Museum in Kirkstall, job cuts, and council tax increases. Plans have also been announced that Leeds’ Child Bereavement Support Service is set to cease at the end of February as part of Council budget cuts. 

The financial pressures on the council have been cited as a result of significantly increased costs to provide services and rising demand, especially in social care for vulnerable children and adults.

Wakefield family auctioning home to fund son’s medical treatment abroad

Camila Ramos on 22 September 2022

Ben Binks, 36, and his family are giving away their four-bedroom house in Ossett Wakefield, their seven-seater Range Rover Sport and Kawasaki Ninja Superbike in order to fund their move to Spain where they hope to treat his four-year-old’s brittle bones. 

Brittle bones or Osteogenesis Imperfecta occurs when there is a mutation in the gene that produces collagen. Children could inherit the mutation from a parent or it could just happen early in the pregnancy when the baby is first forming. Since these children do not have enough collagen in their bones or the collagen they have does not function properly their bones are weaker and more brittle. Sometimes it leads to abnormally shaped bones. 

The family stated Spain offers a better treatment and an exposure to natural sunlight that could help his son. On the contrary, the cold weather in the UK does not help, since in his four years of life the child has already broken his bones eight times, “one leg three times, his other leg, his arm, his ankle” – stated Ben in an interview with the Yorkshire Evening Post a few days ago. The Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children (2020) corroborates that vitamin D, whose main source is sunlight, strengthens the children’s bones. 

He also commented another reason they decided to go for a giveaway as a funding method is because the house they are auctioning became theirs that way as well. Claire Reynolds and Ben Binks bought 100 raffle tickets at £1 each during the 2020 lockdown, which paid off when they won the Tate’s family auction. The auction included the house they are now auctioning, it has been revamped since then, and a 2017 Volvo XC90 Hybrid car, the occasion being relocating Kathy and Dale’s family to Australia in September of that year.  

Binks explained that the aforementioned auction changed their lives and hopes he can do the same for someone else. Binks and Reynolds lived apart before winning the house in 2020 due to the lack of space in her previous home. They stated back in 2020 to the Wakefield Express that winning was a “dream come true” and that they would “really want to be able to help someone else […] maybe offer a car to someone or some money”.

Two years later, while improving their son’s quality of life they might also change someone else’s lives with their auction, including other children who also suffer from the same disease. The 36-year-old father added that any additional money that they collect from the auction and will not be used for their move will go to the Brittle Bones Society, the national charity for the condition that his son suffers from.

Those wishing to participate in the raffle can find the link for the Raffall website on their instagram under the handle @winourhomecarandbike, where tickets can be found at £2. The auction finalises on the 30th of September. Currently, there have been around 300,000 tickets sold.