To retain its young people and thrive, the city and its wider region need to create interesting, well paid jobs. But the private sector isn’t buying what Liverpool is selling.
Thanks for a challenging and thoughtful article even if it was an uncomfortable read for someone who committed a significant chunk of his life trying to secure and retain investment in Liverpool.
Successful economic development in the City region has always felt like “three steps forward and one step back” rather than the smooth, continuous process we’d all like it to be. But we should recognise that three forwards and one back still constitutes progress. That’s not complacency; it’s a recognition that economic growth is never a linear process but one that responds erratically and sometimes unpredictability to macroeconomic and political forces and stimuli not always in our control.
Think how radically Liverpool’s corporate profile has changed over a comparatively short time. From 1978-86, I was chief economic advisor for Merseyside County Council and in those days, the city’s employment was dominated by a small number of large businesses, many of which had originated in Liverpool, like Royal Insurance, Mersey Docks & Harbour Company, Littlewoods, Liverpool Daily Post and Echo and Bibby. In the suburbs and neighbouring boroughs were massive industrial employers like Ford, Vauxhall, Unilever, Cammell Laird, Plessey, Pilkington Glass and others. Huge food processing companies like Tate and Lyle, Kraft, Cadbury and Birdseye all had major factories in the area as did manufacturing and engineering giants like Dunlop, British Leyland, English Electric, AC Delco, Cross International and many others.
Most (not quite all) of those names have disappeared completely or changed beyond recognition not because of the competence or otherwise of the City Council but because of much greater forces like merger and acquisition activities, globalisation of markets, manufacturing and supply chains, membership of the Common Market changing international trade flows and, latterly, the self-harm of Brexit.
If you’d told me in, say, 1980 that those businesses would have all but disappeared by the year 2000, I’d have feared for the economy. But the conglomerates were replaced with scores of smaller new businesses and whilst there have undoubtedly been policy errors and political own goals, the economy is in better shape than it was when the multinationals dominated. Much of that was and is still public sector driven like the work of the Merseyside County Council and Merseyside Development Corporation in restoring Albert Dock and the South Docks, Liverpool City Challenge’s successful transformation of Queens Square and the swathe of the city centre from Lime Street to the cultural quarter around Hope Street or the City Council’s outstanding work around European Capital of Culture: we should give credit where it’s due. Other quasi public sector businesses have made massive contributions including the universities and Community College who’s growth has underpinned much of the physical renaissance quoted in your piece. Likewise the cultural assets like The Phil, The Tate and the NML’s museums and galleries have helped reinvent the city. So too has the private sector through Grosvenor’s Liverpool One, Bruntwood’s work on The Plaza and Cotton Exchange and huge renovation projects at India Building and The Royal Liver Building, among others. Likewise Peel Group’s stewardship of the Port of Liverpool and its investment in creating Liverpool2 have been positive and their plans for further development on both river banks need to be critiqued and challenged but generally supported, not routinely denigrated.
I recognise the thread of disquiet running through the your article as a constant factor in debates about how well or otherwise the city is governed and throughout my time as CEO of Liverpool Chamber of Commerce (2005-12) I openly questioned why we were not doing much more to create top quality commercial space in the city centre. I believe that is finally understood and being addressed by developers and planners: build it and they will come.
It would be nice to have a decade or two without political scandals but it is possible to exaggerate their negative impact on economic development. The economic fundamentals are still strong and business will respond if the return is good enough.
My good friend and former colleague Mark Basnett is hugely experienced and committed to Liverpool City Region and is as good an economic development professional as we could wish for. He is right to point out that every economy experiences ebbs and flows. But it is also right that the people charged with steering economic growth are scrutinised and articles like this are exactly what is needed. Great start to The Post - keep making us uncomfortable!
My company is based in Kirkdale at a factory we bought and renovated three years ago. Good location, excellent public transport links and it's enabled us to expand, increasing the number of locals we employ.
It took us three years to receive agreement from Liverpool council for us to widen our factory gates to be able to turn an HGV in our yard. Endless calls to the council trying to find the right person to speak to, calls to our councillors asking for help and three site visits by council employees who all agreed that what we were asking for was sensible but needed approval from "someone".
My company exports 1/3rd of our output globally and everywhere I travel overseas on business Liverpool is known and respected, for music, for football, for culture but unless we can get the simple stuff right it we will fail to get the big stuff right.
I've read these arguments about lack of office space many times before, but no one ever addresses the vast number of "grade A" buildings that have never been fully occupied, e.g. St Paul's Square or the Lewis's building. And no mention of Sensor City, which now stands mysteriously mothballed? There's a bigger story here that you don't seem to have grasped.
Woe will befall any city in the world when the public sector was disconnected to the private sector to the extend that it actually discourages investors. This happens when too many of the democratically elected found themselves out of their depth when called upon and had to rely on the services of the hordes of 'advisers' most of which either have their own agendas or affiliated to entities that do. Those lucratively paid government-appointed commissioners better give the taxpayer's money's worth by sorting these fundamental problems out quickly or we will be wasting even more money promoting Liverpool for one-night-stands like the Eurovision Song contest until the cows come home and nothing will change long term. After nearly a hundred years since Lyne Andrews wrote her novel, I hope there is not going to be a new version of 'The Leaving of Liverpool'.
There is no mention here of the political instability in Liverpool over the years which surely must deter businesses from investing here. And thats been going on for at least 40 years. Wirral Council is a complete (broke) basket case. So not difficult to see why local politics may be acting as a shackle on any efforts to bring employers in and keep them there as well as explaining the absence of decent initiatives. By the way, I was reporting on a Mersey Barrage and a Dee barrage 50 years ago!!
When Heseltine did up the Albert Dock and fobbed the city off with the Garden Festival he was also selling the old London docklands and the communities that had grown up alongside them off to the highest bidder to build “shiny new cathedrals of capitalism”. There’s a brilliant South Bank Show piece on YouTube with Bob Hoskins detailing what was going on back then.
I think a big reason companies have been leaving is simply, and paradoxically, because they haven't been arriving. Who wants to stay in a shrinking market that shows no ambition? Where are the prospects of (legal) profit in that?
Our "wins" especially versus Manchester have been few and far-between. If the winding down of the Liverpool's serious inward investment teams was a mistake it was an unforgivable one.
The city seems populated by organisations like the LEP and BID whose contribution to our well-being I cannot for the life of me pin down. What's more, their own prosperity always seems certain even when ours is far from it. How can that be right?
From the outset, the LEP have had a seat at the table in the combined authority. We've had no say - and can have no say - in that whatsoever, and this is meant to be our top tier of democratic decision making.
Never mind this talk of "playing to our strengths", just to wait for them to be whittled away elsewhere. Where is our MIDAS looking at our gaps, and creating strategies to fill them??
The LEPs grandiose website does not seem to reflect the results we are seeing on the ground. When our inward investment levels are rivaled by the likes of Barnsley, I would like to know what sort of metrics justify their continued occupation of such a vital space.
Thanks for a challenging and thoughtful article even if it was an uncomfortable read for someone who committed a significant chunk of his life trying to secure and retain investment in Liverpool.
Successful economic development in the City region has always felt like “three steps forward and one step back” rather than the smooth, continuous process we’d all like it to be. But we should recognise that three forwards and one back still constitutes progress. That’s not complacency; it’s a recognition that economic growth is never a linear process but one that responds erratically and sometimes unpredictability to macroeconomic and political forces and stimuli not always in our control.
Think how radically Liverpool’s corporate profile has changed over a comparatively short time. From 1978-86, I was chief economic advisor for Merseyside County Council and in those days, the city’s employment was dominated by a small number of large businesses, many of which had originated in Liverpool, like Royal Insurance, Mersey Docks & Harbour Company, Littlewoods, Liverpool Daily Post and Echo and Bibby. In the suburbs and neighbouring boroughs were massive industrial employers like Ford, Vauxhall, Unilever, Cammell Laird, Plessey, Pilkington Glass and others. Huge food processing companies like Tate and Lyle, Kraft, Cadbury and Birdseye all had major factories in the area as did manufacturing and engineering giants like Dunlop, British Leyland, English Electric, AC Delco, Cross International and many others.
Most (not quite all) of those names have disappeared completely or changed beyond recognition not because of the competence or otherwise of the City Council but because of much greater forces like merger and acquisition activities, globalisation of markets, manufacturing and supply chains, membership of the Common Market changing international trade flows and, latterly, the self-harm of Brexit.
If you’d told me in, say, 1980 that those businesses would have all but disappeared by the year 2000, I’d have feared for the economy. But the conglomerates were replaced with scores of smaller new businesses and whilst there have undoubtedly been policy errors and political own goals, the economy is in better shape than it was when the multinationals dominated. Much of that was and is still public sector driven like the work of the Merseyside County Council and Merseyside Development Corporation in restoring Albert Dock and the South Docks, Liverpool City Challenge’s successful transformation of Queens Square and the swathe of the city centre from Lime Street to the cultural quarter around Hope Street or the City Council’s outstanding work around European Capital of Culture: we should give credit where it’s due. Other quasi public sector businesses have made massive contributions including the universities and Community College who’s growth has underpinned much of the physical renaissance quoted in your piece. Likewise the cultural assets like The Phil, The Tate and the NML’s museums and galleries have helped reinvent the city. So too has the private sector through Grosvenor’s Liverpool One, Bruntwood’s work on The Plaza and Cotton Exchange and huge renovation projects at India Building and The Royal Liver Building, among others. Likewise Peel Group’s stewardship of the Port of Liverpool and its investment in creating Liverpool2 have been positive and their plans for further development on both river banks need to be critiqued and challenged but generally supported, not routinely denigrated.
I recognise the thread of disquiet running through the your article as a constant factor in debates about how well or otherwise the city is governed and throughout my time as CEO of Liverpool Chamber of Commerce (2005-12) I openly questioned why we were not doing much more to create top quality commercial space in the city centre. I believe that is finally understood and being addressed by developers and planners: build it and they will come.
It would be nice to have a decade or two without political scandals but it is possible to exaggerate their negative impact on economic development. The economic fundamentals are still strong and business will respond if the return is good enough.
My good friend and former colleague Mark Basnett is hugely experienced and committed to Liverpool City Region and is as good an economic development professional as we could wish for. He is right to point out that every economy experiences ebbs and flows. But it is also right that the people charged with steering economic growth are scrutinised and articles like this are exactly what is needed. Great start to The Post - keep making us uncomfortable!
My company is based in Kirkdale at a factory we bought and renovated three years ago. Good location, excellent public transport links and it's enabled us to expand, increasing the number of locals we employ.
It took us three years to receive agreement from Liverpool council for us to widen our factory gates to be able to turn an HGV in our yard. Endless calls to the council trying to find the right person to speak to, calls to our councillors asking for help and three site visits by council employees who all agreed that what we were asking for was sensible but needed approval from "someone".
My company exports 1/3rd of our output globally and everywhere I travel overseas on business Liverpool is known and respected, for music, for football, for culture but unless we can get the simple stuff right it we will fail to get the big stuff right.
I've read these arguments about lack of office space many times before, but no one ever addresses the vast number of "grade A" buildings that have never been fully occupied, e.g. St Paul's Square or the Lewis's building. And no mention of Sensor City, which now stands mysteriously mothballed? There's a bigger story here that you don't seem to have grasped.
Doesn’t make good reading that…Our city and our future generations being let down again and again
Didn't want it end.
Fascinating insights (interestingly mostly the anonymous ones)
Possibly some uncomfortable truths. But all solvable.
Woe will befall any city in the world when the public sector was disconnected to the private sector to the extend that it actually discourages investors. This happens when too many of the democratically elected found themselves out of their depth when called upon and had to rely on the services of the hordes of 'advisers' most of which either have their own agendas or affiliated to entities that do. Those lucratively paid government-appointed commissioners better give the taxpayer's money's worth by sorting these fundamental problems out quickly or we will be wasting even more money promoting Liverpool for one-night-stands like the Eurovision Song contest until the cows come home and nothing will change long term. After nearly a hundred years since Lyne Andrews wrote her novel, I hope there is not going to be a new version of 'The Leaving of Liverpool'.
Excellent piece.
There is no mention here of the political instability in Liverpool over the years which surely must deter businesses from investing here. And thats been going on for at least 40 years. Wirral Council is a complete (broke) basket case. So not difficult to see why local politics may be acting as a shackle on any efforts to bring employers in and keep them there as well as explaining the absence of decent initiatives. By the way, I was reporting on a Mersey Barrage and a Dee barrage 50 years ago!!
When Heseltine did up the Albert Dock and fobbed the city off with the Garden Festival he was also selling the old London docklands and the communities that had grown up alongside them off to the highest bidder to build “shiny new cathedrals of capitalism”. There’s a brilliant South Bank Show piece on YouTube with Bob Hoskins detailing what was going on back then.
I think a big reason companies have been leaving is simply, and paradoxically, because they haven't been arriving. Who wants to stay in a shrinking market that shows no ambition? Where are the prospects of (legal) profit in that?
Our "wins" especially versus Manchester have been few and far-between. If the winding down of the Liverpool's serious inward investment teams was a mistake it was an unforgivable one.
The city seems populated by organisations like the LEP and BID whose contribution to our well-being I cannot for the life of me pin down. What's more, their own prosperity always seems certain even when ours is far from it. How can that be right?
From the outset, the LEP have had a seat at the table in the combined authority. We've had no say - and can have no say - in that whatsoever, and this is meant to be our top tier of democratic decision making.
Never mind this talk of "playing to our strengths", just to wait for them to be whittled away elsewhere. Where is our MIDAS looking at our gaps, and creating strategies to fill them??
The LEPs grandiose website does not seem to reflect the results we are seeing on the ground. When our inward investment levels are rivaled by the likes of Barnsley, I would like to know what sort of metrics justify their continued occupation of such a vital space.