Channel 4 News will not be co-anchored from the Majestic when presented in Leeds

As part of the station's operations in the West Yorkshire city, where it launched a year ago, it has previously committed to some of its its news show being broadcast from the region.

However, this will not take place at the Majestic, the flagship building on City Square that Channel 4 employees are due to move into from 2021.

In an interview with The Yorkshire Post, the broadcaster's managing director of nations and regions, Sinéad Rocks, said other locations were being considered.

She said: "It definitely won't be in the Majestic and that's to do with space and the weight of equipment and our desire to actually get more staff in.

"Also, we're wanting to find a studio space that has really good views that look out over something that really feels like you're seeing Leeds from it.

"It's ITN who are our news provider and I know that they were looking at a lot of buildings just before lockdown.

"I haven't heard an update - I wonder if it's just become slightly more difficult to look at real estate in the current climate.

"But the commitment to having Channel 4 News regularly co-anchored from Leeds is absolutely still there."

The Majestic, also known as the Majestyk, is a former cinema and nightclub which was gutted by a fire in 2014.

Ms Rocks spoke to the Post as the broadcaster marked its first year in Leeds by unveiling 4Skills, a new programme of measure to address skills shortages outside of London.

She praised the "brilliant partnerships" that had been developed between Channel 4 and Screen Yorkshire, Leeds City Region Enterprise Partnership and other broadcasters locally.

Ms Rocks said: "We know collectively that when we work together we can achieve much more and we also know that there is little point in us duplicating effort and, actually, if we share our plans and then put our energies into the bits that are missing, we seem to get better results.

"There is a very big sense of collaboration when it comes to training and skills here in Yorkshire and that's a great model for us to try and replicate in the other parts of the country that we're in."

She said that the pandemic had brought an overnight change in how the broadcaster works, with video conferencing now becoming the norm.

"And it's fair to say there was a little bit of resistance to that at the start of the year just because the technology was very nascent and it was a bit of a pain for people to get their heads round," she said.

"So I became like chief Channel 4 nagger, trying to get the guys in London to really make sure that they could master it so that the teams outside of London would still feel included."

She added: "In a sense I think the pandemic has probably changed how we work forever. It's clear now that remote working can be successful.

"So I suspect that we will become a more flexible workforce. However within all of that we're fully committed to our out-of-London bases - totally excited about moving into the Majestic and just continuing to really turbo-charge what we're trying to do with the production sector outside of London.

"During the pandemic, so many of the Yorkshire companies did really really well.

"Candour Productions [based in Farsley] made some fast-turnaround content that was just outstanding.

"True North [based in Leeds] had one of the surprise hits of the pandemic for us with their Devon and Cornwall series, which had been made for More 4 and because we had so many gaps in our Channel 4 schedule we decided to give it a repeat, and it became one of our biggest eight o'clock programmes bar Bake Off, ever.

"So it's building on those kinds of things regardless of where we're at with coronavirus, and hopefully now 4Skills adds some extra support to all of that and gives us a sharper focus and enables us to really deliver on some of the things that we said we were going to deliver."