LCR MAYOR STEVE ROTHERAM OUTLINES POST-ELECTION STRATEGIC

Vision To Business Community

Liverpool Chamber, Professional Liverpool and Liverpool Place Partnership were delighted to host a special event with Steve Rotheram, Mayor of the Liverpool City Region, to provide a strategic update on the plans of the Combined Authority, meet with members of the business community and answer their questions on a wide range of topics.

Positioning the General Election result as “a generational opportunity to work with the national government”, Mayor Rotheram shared his enthusiasm for the alignment of local and national political leadership under the same party for the first time since the 1970s.

Responding to questions from representatives of the Future Impact Board and from business representatives in the audience, the Mayor focussed upon several key themes affecting business and economic growth including:

• Maximising the opportunity of the Innovation Zone and Freeport to ensure Liverpool is an attractive destination for UK PLC.

• Maintaining the strength and vitality of the city’s tourism and culture offer, while stimulating other sectors of growth and opportunity to achieve greater balance.

• Boosting inward investment by building capacity, getting deals ‘over the line’ and maximising the LCR assets and ‘brand Liverpool’.

• Stimulating local skills improvement provision and graduate retention by meeting the business and economic needs of the Liverpool City Region through innovative curriculum delivery and lifelong learning support.

• Enabling the city region to become a ‘net exporter’ of green energy and innovation to contribute to the country’s net zero aspirations and boost the regional economy.

• Introducing planning reform to stimulate developments for mixed residential developments and lowering the barriers to home ownership and tackling rough sleeping and homelessness.

• Maximising transport infrastructure to better enable access to a talented workforce and movement of people and freight with – and within – the LCR.

• Improving health and mental health outcomes with focus provided by a new Combined Authority Cabinet Member for Health and a policy ambition to improve health outcomes to tackle worklessness and productivity shortages.

• Focussing upon innovation as a catalyst for economic growth and scaling up of businesses alongside start-up and highgrowth objectives.

• Ensuring the complementarity of Liverpool and Manchester’s wider economies can be fully realised into a stronger economic area to create an increasingly attractive area of development of business and investment.

Issuing a rallying cry to the 70 business representatives in the room, Mayor Rotheram reiterated the critical role of businesses to create the wealth and jobs within the region and encouraged them to contribute to a ‘Team Liverpool’ approach to making the city region one of the best places to start, develop and grow a business in the UK.

Voice of The Chamber:

Mayor Rotheram’s visit was perfectly timed, taking place on the first working day after the declaration of General Election results had resulted in a landslide victory for the Labour Party. The Mayor’s subsequent meeting was around the cabinet table at Number 10, demonstrating the importance and potential of the new relationship with government.

The enthusiasm and energy of the Mayor reflected a tangible opportunity for the city region to align its objectives and goals with that of the national Government. It is encouraging that the conversation with business has begun in earnest to ensure the best opportunity for a private-public sector partnership to be brokered beyond boards and committees.

The Mayor’s third term can be a platform to catalyse developments that have been stimulated into maturity, turning projects such as LCR Connect from a strategic piece of infrastructure into something tangibly beneficial for businesses currently or potentially located here in the city region.

Whilst the Mayor was keen to impart realism into the scale and speed of potential growth and improvement, there is a sense of optimism and freshness to the discourse that must now be aligned with the business base that exists here. The Chamber – along with the other business networks within the city, including Professional Liverpool and Liverpool Place Partnership – will ensure that the role of business is at the forefront of the city region’s aspirations for growth.