A MULTI-million pound organisation established to bring new jobs and wealth to York, North and East Yorkshire is struggling to meet key government targets.

Figures released by the Department for Trade and Industry show Yorkshire Forward will have to make great strides over the next nine months to meet its goal for job creation.

The Government-funded regional development agency is charged with attracting or safeguarding 10,500 jobs in the year ending March 2003.

But its figure for the first three months of the year is only 1,262 - which would give a total of 5,048.

Yorkshire Forward's target for attracting new businesses was 700. But in the first three months of this year only 61 new companies were attracted to the region. This puts the agency on course for an end-of- year total of only 244.

Meanwhile, Yorkshire Forward was also struggling with a goal of reclaiming 86 hectares of brownfield land for industrial use.

In the three months to the end of June, it had reclaimed a total of four hectares.

The total number of learning opportunities, such as college places, provided or influenced by the agency also needs to improve significantly by the end of the year.

It has a target of 14,000 - but the current total stands at only 2,408.

Alan Johnson, Minister for the Regions, indicated it was too early to press the panic button.

He said he had been reassured the regional development agencies were "broadly on track" to meet their targets by the end of the year.

Mr Johnson added: "They have been focusing attention on developing partnerships or schemes that are expected to deliver the majority of their results in the latter part of the year."

Tom Riordan, director of strategy and policy at Yorkshire Forward, said: "We have absolute confidence that we will hit all our targets this year and we are actually ahead of schedule of where we planned to be at the moment."

Yorkshire Forward spokesman Keith Crane said: "Watch this space" as work continued throughout Yorkshire.

He said: "It's certainly not as bad as it seems and it's all about how these figures are collated. This was from the first quarter, but the more money we spend over the year, that's when we really start achieving our output and achieving out targets."

Updated: 10:00 Friday, November 22, 2002