Fears of an economic downturn are nagging at voters' minds in the northern English city of Leeds before this week's local council elections that are a crucial test for Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
Leeds, a city of 750,000 people, has been transformed in the last decade from a declining industrial centre into a prosperous metropolis thanks to thriving financial services and retail sectors.
The city has created 57,000 jobs in the last 10 years, leading the Labour government to hold up Leeds as evidence of the success of its economic policies since taking power in 1997.
But with Britain's economic growth softening and house prices starting to fall due to the global credit crunch, the Leeds economic miracle faces its greatest test.
Brown's ability to pilot the economy through the storm is also key to how the Labour Party performs in Thursday's local council polls and in a general election due by mid-2010.
Voters in Leeds were worried about the economy, but several said they had not yet been hit personally by the slowdown.
Construction worker Scott Wood, 37, said: "I think we're teetering very close to the edge of a recession."
A lot of people were "very worried and very nervous about spending money", he said.
A woman, who declined to give her name, was concerned about education, health and the upkeep of the town, but not the economy.
"I'm just trying to work out at the moment whether it really is an issue or whether it's just something that being whipped up by the media, because personally we're okay at the moment."
