A BIG plan to lure yet more Government departments and possibly thousands of jobs to York and North Yorkshire is being prepared by the region's new-look investment board.

The opportunity to massively stimulate the regional economy was seized after the Government made it clear last March that it would like to see many of its public service organisations move out of the South East.

They include Ministry departments not only based in London, but also in places like Newbury, Reading and Southampton where the overheated economy means inflated costs.

Frances Done, chief executive of the budding York and North Yorkshire Inward Investment Board, which is formally known as york-england.com, believes that by September, along with local and regional authorities, she will have the facts to prepare a strategy.

That will be in time to be implemented when the investment board's remit formally expands from York into North Yorkshire on October 1.

At that point Mrs Done will hand over to a new chief executive with a budget of about £350,000, funded jointly by Yorkshire Forward, the regional development agency, City of York Council and North Yorkshire County Council.

Mrs Done, who famously headed the organising committee of the hugely-successful Manchester Commonwealth Games last year believes that the region already has a head start in proving its case. She points to the 550 staff employed by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs who work in the 140,000 sq ft Foss-side building in Peasholme Green, York, and the 600 technical, scientific, manual and administrative staff at the Central Science Laboratory, at Sand Hutton.

Updated: 09:23 Tuesday, July 22, 2003