Judith Blake


Judith Vivienne Blake CBE is a British Labour politician and the Leader of Leeds City Council since May 2015. She is also the first woman to hold the position.

Personal life

Blake was born in July 1953 into a Methodist family in Leeds, of which both of her parents were doctors. She attended Leeds Girls High School until 1971 and then studied History at the University of Kent.
After university, she began her career in education and social policy, living in London and then Birmingham in the 1980s. She taught English to refugees whilst living in Birmingham. In 1992, she returned to live in Otley.
Blake has four children. Her youngest child, Olivia Blake was elected as the Member of Parliament for Sheffield Hallam in 2019.

Political career

Blake was elected as an Otley town councillor, and, except for a two-year gap after losing her seat in Weetwood at the 2000 city council election, has been an elected member of Leeds City Council since 1996.
She has twice contested the Leeds North West constituency in 2005 and 2010 as the Labour Party's prospective parliamentary candidate, losing on both occasions to Greg Mulholland.
Blake served as the Deputy Leader of the Council for five years from 2010 to 2015. She was the Executive Cabinet Member for Children & Families during this period, overseeing the city's Children's Services' Ofsted rating change from "inadequate" to "good overall". She has been involved in a number of national legal campaigns, worked with education authorities in Yorkshire to raise school standards in the area, and worked on crises and issues with student grades and school placements throughout her career.
She voted for Yvette Cooper in the 2015 Labour Party leadership election and supported Keir Starmer in the 2020 leadership election.

Leader of Leeds City Council

Blake was elected as the first woman leader of Leeds City Council in May 2015. She currently chairs the Council's Executive Board, having also served on the boards for NHS Leeds and the West Yorkshire Police Authority too. In April 2019, Blake was appointed to the board of Northern Ballet.
In December 2015, she expressed the frustration of city residents in feeling that Prime Minister David Cameron was giving greater attention to more affluent southern counties during a period of severe flooding.
She was awarded a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2017 Birthday Honours.