Advisory panel reports on Liverpool's future - IPM summary
The Liverpool Strategic Futures Advisory Panel, which was setup to plan for Liverpool's revival as a city following a series of critical reports into the city council’s governance and operations in 2021, has released its initial findings in an interim report, following six months of engagement with more than 300 stakeholders.
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The advisory panel, which is chaired by Liverpool City Region Mayor Steve Rotheram and is supported by two major local government figures in Baroness Judith Blake (Leader of Leeds City Council, 2015-2021) and Sir Howard Bernstein (Chief Executive of Manchester City Council, 1998-2017), was tasked with advising on the long-term strategic plan for the city, in order to build resilience beyond the government’s temporary intervention measures.
To begin this process, the Panel undertook a wide range of engagement exercises across the Liverpool City Region over a six-month period, which included one-to-one interviews with place leaders and workshops with public, private and third sector stakeholders on subjects across a variety of different themes.
Speaking about the outcome of the report, CEO of Liverpool BID Company, Bill Addy, who contributed to the Panel’s stakeholder discussions, said:
"To achieve real and lasting change you have to be able to talk about uncomfortable truths, and while Liverpool is a city of great opportunity, to match our ambition we have to address what needs to be done.”
“With a strategic focus, we will be able to better identify our key strengths and what we need to work on. We need to be able to work better together, in the public and private sector, to be in tandem to revitalise the city. To attract investment, the knowledge and experience of the private sector can be better utilised. The past two decades have illustrated the commitment of the business community to Liverpool's future, and collaboration helps us to deliver our ambition more comprehensively. For example the task force we have argued for on the waterfront gives a good benchmark for regeneration, incorporating the voice and ability of business and the private sector who are valuable stakeholders in the city.
To enhance how we live in the city, to enable the city to thrive, we have to have a shared goal and shared ambition, and a way of working that brings all our strengths and experience to the table. Successful cities don't rewrite the rulebook every time an opportunity comes to the door, they have a recognised way of shared working and collaboration that pools their talent together".
Whilst a more comprehensive analysis of priority areas for the city’s economic strategy will be set out in the Panel’s final report, a set of three practical policy programmes emerged, highlighting initial areas of action which the Panel considers necessary to kickstart growth and catalyse a cycle of success in Liverpool.
Priority 1: Rebooting Liverpool’s regeneration
The Panel recommends the establishment of a new regeneration partnership to bring the city’s growth back to life, following a “chilling” fall in investor activity prompted by the results of the Best Value inspection in 2021.
The mission of the partnership would be to restore market confidence in the city, aligned to long-term economic outcomes, and unlock regeneration opportunities, in partnership with the council. The initial focus would be on the city centre and the Waterfront, creating links into nearby economic assets, such as the Knowledge Quarter.
Priority 2: 21st century public service reform
The panel proposes that a radical programme of public service reform should be a cornerstone of Liverpool’s future economic development. This should be based on a holistic understanding of the drivers of poor socio-economic outcomes and underpinned by a place-based delivery approach through local neighbourhoods.
In too many areas, the panel notes, services are designed to respond to the most obvious, manifestations of problems, which are often also the costliest, rather than tackling the deeper drivers of need. As such, the report states, there is an urgent need to move towards a system which can better identify risk factors affecting communities and invest in protective factors which reduce future harm.
Strengthening collaboration between delivery partners to act meaningfully on analytical insights is recommended, as is giving local communities the ability to determine their own priorities. Top-down imposition, the report notes, “cannot succeed without the meaningful and sustained support of the individuals and communities most affected” with solutions needing to be “co-designed” based on a communities’ unique assets and lived experience.
As a first step towards achieving this place-based, citizen-centred model, the Panel asks for Liverpool City Council, the Combined Authority and key public service partners, including the NHS and Police, to undertake a prototype project to demonstrate what can be achieved by re-imagining the delivery of services along neighbourhood focused, multi-agency lines.
Priority 3: Turbocharging the innovation economy
The panel notes that Liverpool City Region’s Investment Zone programme presents an opportunity to accelerate the growth of the city’s recognised scientific strengths, creating the space for future job creation beyond the city’s more recent growth concentration in low paying, low value-added sectors.
The Panel state that they are strongly supportive of this work and are clear that successful final agreement of the Investment Zone is a priority for Liverpool in planting the seeds of future growth in health and life sciences, and the wider innovation economy, whilst also spreading these benefits more inclusively across communities, by capitalising on the strong engagement of partners from the private and higher education sectors.
Strengthening local place leadership
A common thread that runs throughout the entirety of the report, is the importance of strong and effective place leadership, which the panel describes as being “the capacity of civic institutions to set a strong vision for the type of place Liverpool wants to become and shape plans by acting in concert with other actors so that activities and investments across the city are working towards common outcomes.”
This view aligns with the IPM’s recent findings in a report on the subject of Place Leadership in English Local Authorities, which identified that effective place leaders utilise both formal and informal power, by drawing key people and organisations together to influence change on a strategic level. As such, successful place leaders are those that effectively convene people, develop partnerships and utilise local authority systems and functions.
Previous examples of good place leadership in Liverpool which were identified by the Panel, include, among other examples, the work of the Merseyside Development Corporation in the 1980s to catalyse the regeneration of derelict and disused parts of Liverpool; the work of Liverpool Vision in the early 2000s to pave the way for higher growth of the city centre; and the transformational impact of European Capital of Culture 2008 which revitalised the city’s reputation as an international visitor and cultural destination.
The report notes that, over a more recent period of time, the “partnerships and networks that characterise strong place leadership are demonstrably less developed in Liverpool than is desirable” and that “the shared vision, energy and collaboration which characterised previous turnaround moments in the city’s history need to become the norm” with “good practice scaled up and systematised by the civic leaders”.
Restoring this effective place leadership will be fundamental to whether Liverpool succeeds in delivering on the mission set out within this report. Our own research findings on the subject of place leadership would underline the need to avoid an overly paternalistic organisational culture, an over-reliance on masterplanning and external consultants, and too much of a focus on the failures of the past.
Instead, it will be important for the politicians and people of Liverpool to collaborate on delivering a place-first approach, which is based on a shared set of common values to move the city forward. As the report states, while Liverpool possesses a strong array of strategic assets in the built environment – from its rivers and docks to its railways and airport – its most important asset is its people.