West Yorkshire could be said to be undergoing a quiet renaissance. While Manchester and its box office mayor Andy Burnham often grab the media spotlight, God’s Own County has been steadily making its own progress.

In Leeds, the region’s de facto capital, more than 11,000 homes have been built in the past three years, making it the biggest building city authority in the country bar Birmingham – which has a far larger population. Last year Leeds didn’t just out build each of the Manchester authorities. It out built them all by a margin of more than 1,000 homes.

No wonder, then, that the government’s new towns taskforce recommended the city’s South Bank regeneration scheme as a potential new town location – and the government looks set to trust it as one of three sites with front-runner status.

Nick Atkin, chief executive at Leeds-based housing association Yorkshire Housing, and vice chair of the 15-strong West Yorkshire Housing Partnership, says: “You can get stuff done and delivered here. You just have to look at the regeneration of Leeds in recent years – it’s unrecognisable from what it was. I’ve never seen it so optimistic and positive and upbeat.”

Five councils make up the West Yorkshire Combined Authority (WYCA), which is headed by elected Labour mayor Tracy Brabin, and which will have comparable powers to Greater Manchester from April this year. That month, WYCA will receive its first integrated settlement, of £1.96bn covering the four years from this April, to spend on its priorities for transport, infrastructure, skills, business, planning and housing.

But, despite the optimism, there are concerns about viability challenges, and whether the slow expected pace of infrastructure investment will harm investor confidence. Some also ask whether WYCA is as effective as it could be in creating a strong platform for investment.

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