Super cabinet a super idea - if carried out correctly
It is always satisfying for a lobbying group when ideas and policies that it has articulated and campaigned for are adopted by decision makers and governing agencies.
Since the establishment of Downtown Liverpool in Business (DLIB) four years ago, we have been successful in persuading the public sector to introduce - or indeed abandon - a number of initiatives that have been important to our membership, and the wider business community.
We successfully argued for the scrapping of a 'tall buildings' policy in Liverpool; we asked for the appointment of a 'business champion' on Liverpool City Council, and Warren Bradley was appointed to that position two years ago; we called for the streamlining of agencies involved in managing the city, and the merger of three organisations, Liverpool Vision, Liverpool Land Development Company and Business Liverpool, followed.
And, for well over twelve months, DLIB has suggested that a better working relationship and governance arrangements across the city region's local authority boundaries needed to be adopted.
So, I was pleased when council leaders announced last week that a 'super cabinet' covering Liverpool, Knowsley, Sefton, Wirral, St Helens and Halton had been formed, with the objective of driving forward the region's economic growth agenda.
However, I am disappointed in equal measure, as the collective local authority leadership of Merseyside have deemed the 'super cabinet' a closed shop, excluding the very people who will be responsible for moving the Liverpool City Region from a twentieth century basket case that can only survive on government grants and hand outs to a twenty first century power house, boasting a thriving enterprise culture and bursting with new and growing businesses.
The absence of business leaders and entrepreneurs from this 'super cabinet' is short sighted, and demonstrates how Liverpool's public sector still believes that it, rather than private investors and risk takers, are best placed to exclusively manage the local economy.
So, we have a situation where, despite central government calls for more engagement with the private sector, and more participation from business leaders, the public sector leaders of Merseyside believe they are better qualified to strategically plot and manage our economic agenda than Sir Terry Leahy, Tony Caldeira, Len Collinson, or the hundreds of other successful businessmen and woman who would, if asked, be only too happy to contribute their ideas and their time to making the Liverpool City region a more dynamic and business-friendly place.
Hopefully, the current arrangements will only be temporary, and the membership of the 'super cabinet' will be expanded to include private sector talents. I can feel another DLIB campaign in the offing!
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Frank McKenna
Frank Mckenna is the founder of Downtown Liverpool in Business, the successful networking group which aims to give business professionals a voice in the city.
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The people who run "Greater Liverpool" (i.e. Merseyside) still betray a breathtaking lack of ambition. In the 1960s Liverpool seemed on the point of waking up and reasserting its rightful place as one of the big four city-regions of England. Whereas, instead, over the last 40 years, it has simply slithered down the pecking order, permitting cities like Leeds, Newcastle, Sheffield and Bristol - (each one of which languished far behind Liverpool at the time) - to overhaul it.
Over the same period Leeds has transformed itself out of all recognition, largely by extending its boundaries to such an extent that the city is now viewed up and down this country as virtually synonymous with the enormous expanse that is West Yorkshire... Newcastle too - (a city whose modest population remained virtually undiminished throughout the 20th Century) - has done much the same, firmly establishing its dominance along both sides of the Tyne, and reaping its just reward as the region's undisputed metropolis. While Liverpool, by contrast - (then with almost three times as many people as the 'Toon) - has not only yielded up every commercial regional advantage to Manchester, but has also unprotestingly sat back and watched the Wirral abandon its formerly universal "L" for Liverpool postcoding in favour of "CH" for Cheshire...!!!
What has happened to the great city on the Mersey that used to boast a world-famous commuter ferry system, opened an overhead railway around the same time as New York, an underground one about the same time as London and built the Liver Building - (the first true steel-framed, high-rise office building in Europe)...? I'll tell you what's happened - a big fat ZERO...! And now it can't even build itself a tram system...!