THE BUILDING where award-winning businesswoman Jan Fletcher chooses to base herself is a reflection of Ms Fletcher herself.

The headquarters of her Montpellier Estates development empire is cool and elegant, displaying great taste, and the interior exudes the kind of calm, collected confidence which is perhaps the secret of her enduring business success.

It's a grand place but it doesn't stand out from the properties that surround it and it preserves a degree of anonymity. Again, that could well be a reflection of Ms Fletcher herself – although she adopted a higher media profile than had been the case for some years when she took the chair of Leeds's destination marketing organisation, Marketing Leeds.

The organisation endured a difficult birth – problems with its first chief executive generated a lot of negative publicity at a time when it was desperately trying to accentuate the positive.

Having put its troubles behind it, the organisation is now starting to flourish under the more grounded leadership of former lawyer Deborah Green. Ironically, Ms Fletcher is now stepping down from the Marketing Leeds chair and its board – citing the need to devote more time to her own business interests.

But, she says, she'll always be there for the city if it needs her. "I'm too passionate and involved in the city to leave it behind. I was born in Yorkshire, I am fiercely proud of Yorkshire and Leeds. I'll be continuing to shout for Leeds all over the world."

Of her decision to step down she admits: "It is a wrench. It has taken a lot of putting together. We had a big job to do. The city didn't have a lot of joined-up thinking. We had to work very closely with all the groups and agencies in the city to try and build the trust and respect to all work together.

"There is a great deal of collaboration now and everyone works together much better than four or five years ago.

"It's always been a challenge from a budget point of view. In the early days, the (Leeds] council and Yorkshire Forward gave us their support but we needed to build up our Champions as well, and that was a challenge when there wasn't an awful lot for them to latch onto."

The Champions are companies happy to put money into Marketing Leeds because they understand the "big picture".

She continues: "Now we have 60 Champions who put between £2,500 and £20,000 a year into promoting the city because they see the benefit of that for themselves and that it helps build the economy of the city and the region."

She says promoting the city remains a big challenge as Leeds still doesn't have the budget of other major UK cities. "Manchester has something like £7.5m; Birmingham, I believe, has around £11m or £12m – that's an awful lot of money. What we have had to do is on a tiny budget by comparison. But, at the end of the day, it's about how smart you use your budget."

She says that once she had taken the decision to stand down as chairman of Marketing Leeds she felt it was right that she left its board, arguing that to stay would not have been fair to the incoming chairman (senior Leeds lawyer Nigel McClea, head of office at Pinsent Masons) or the rest of the board. But she says she will always be available as a "sounding board".

Of her successor, she adds: "Nigel McClea has a great deal of respect in the city and is equally as passionate about the city. Marketing Leeds is going into a very safe pair of hands."

She is proud of what the organisation has achieved since its tricky first few months. "We have achieved an awful lot in a short space of time – albeit the public can't always see all the hard work that is going on.

"We have built up our brand – Leeds. Live It. Love It. – and it is very visible now. A lot of the businesses and professions are using it, as are the universities. Everyone seems to have bought in to using the branding.

"The branding belongs to the city and it is something we should all be proud of. Our website is getting 200,000 hits every month which is very encouraging. We have a great platform going forward."

Funding, she concedes, remains vitally important.

"We are working with Yorkshire Forward and Leeds City Council and, clearly, we would like Leeds City Council to look at the budget they put into Marketing Leeds, aligned with what we can offer them and what we can do for the city."

As someone with a business interest in the development of the city – a possible Sweet Street site for the Leeds arena is on the doorstep of her £500m City One development project – she is adamant her decision to stand down has not been brought about by any potential conflict of interest, rather that she needs to concentrate on her own empire, particularly BHM Group which specialises in natural health products and which is expanding rapidly in the Far East.

Conflicts of interests, she argues, are in any case part and parcel of the business world. "As a chairman of any company you have to be very professional. Honesty and integrity is very important and it is certainly number one on my list.

"You have always got to do what's right for the business you are chairman of – which is what I have always done since I have been chairman of Marketing Leeds. Sometimes it can be detrimental to one's own business.

"There's always conflicts of interests. I don't care who you are. If you are in business, or in the professions, you occasionally have conflicts of interest.

"As long as you deal with them honestly and with integrity, and you declare your interest, then that's fair.

"I haven't stepped down because of that at all. It's because I don't feel I can devote as much time to it. But, also, I've done four and a bit years; it's just the timing that's right.

"It is a wrench. We've done a lot of the hard work. Marketing Leeds now is poised to do a lot things which the public will see and I'm not going to be there to lead that. But one has to do what one thinks is right for the city and one's own business."

The organisation's teething troubles are now firmly behind it, she says. "It's an unfortunate hiccup that can often happen in any new business. It was very difficult. A decision had to be made.

"Sometimes one has to take very difficult decisions in business and we took that tough decision.

"I was determined, having had that experience, that we wouldn't bring anybody on board unless I thought they were absolutely the right person – which is why it took us so long to find Debbie Green.

"In Debbie, I think we have found the right person. Time is proving that. She has all the qualities and is working like hell and is passionate about the city."

Ms Fletcher is hopeful the citizens and business of Leeds will feel a lot more comfortable with what Marketing Leeds is trying to achieve going forward. "It's up to Marketing Leeds now to demonstrate what benefits it is giving to the city and the region.

"Hopefully, Yorkshire Forward and the council will see those benefits, too, and give us the support and funding that we deserve."

FACTFILE

Jan Fletcher

Jan Fletcher is an international businesswoman with major interests in property investment and development (Montpellier Estates), natural health products (BHM Group), motor retailing, pharmaceutical and restaurants.

She was named Veuve Clicquot UK Business Woman of the Year in 1994 and Yorkshire Woman of the Year in 1995.

In 1997 she was awarded an OBE for services to industry.