Govt reveals why Liverpool, Crewe didn’t make new towns cut

Liverpool should’ve said they will build higher to get the units in, even so when I look round North Liverpool there’s acres of room to build, but as ever when our Governments want to sideline Liverpool they find an excuse.
Also if the Government wants to help give Liverpool economic growth how about some Civil Service relocations.

In both cases, it’s rubbish. How many homes can you fit into 2 square miles. Answer far more than 10k. Ultimately, as ever, Whitehall use whichever “guidelines” or “decision matrices” that give them the answers they want. And if they don’t get the right answer, they say they did anyway. Same with HS2, same with the reclassification of what it means to be “deprived”, and same as how they concluded it was right to exclude Liverpool from any civil service relocations and give most of them to Manchester. Because they wanted to.

An own goal really by Liverpool City Council. They height limited their own proposals, thereby reducing the number of homes deliverable. If they permitted buildings as tall as in the Manchester proposal they would get almost the same number of homes.

Odd explanation re. Liverpool North, where regeneration benefits could easily spread out further into Everton, Bootle and Walton even if not fully contiguous. Sounds a lot like civil servants coming up with random rigid criteria and refusing to budge in the face of reality on the ground. And ministers not up to challenging them…
Where is Victoria North supposed to spread into, unless there’s a secret MCC plan to eliminate Harpurhey to make way for North Victoria North?

An absolute joke. The Manchester bias continues under Labour!

So they prefer to build on green fields than regenerate north Liverpool. They will be scratching their heads in a few year wondering why the UK is importing more food stuff. Well done Manchester for ensuring they met the criteria.

Glad Adlington didn’t make the cut. Leave the growth to Manchester, that’s where it belongs.

Liverpool needs to fashion itself as a more elite city, you can drive/train to manchester for business, (for now until it moves on) but live in a more livable city.
The high population of manchester is already a problem many are refusing to see… Its not “vibrant” anymore. 20 to 10 years ago yes. Now. No.
Dont let them do that to Liverpool.
Focus on business that is high profile, creative, not just warehousing … The right people and investments will come

Sorry Anonymous 4.33 am. Labour doesn’t do ‘elite’ cities. Nor does Liverpool city council.

In terms of economic growth the Mancs and Central Government work together as always, decisions are made behind the scenes with the civil servants to shovel jobs and investment into Manchester. In 2022 government announced a civil service relocation of over 2000 posts to be completed by 2025, now they’ve announced 900,000 sq ft of offices to be built to house another 8,000 civil service relocations by 2032. What chance has Liverpool got when one city gets all the favouritism, and this allocation of New Town funding is another example, of which there are many.

Liverpool has been run like a small village for too long. When you have councillors objecting to airport expansion and buildings bigger than a bungalow you know its not serious.

Great news for Manchester again . It’s the huge long term developments like this, The Trafford wharfside masterplan and The crescent masterplan that will keep Manchester growing at pace. Skyscrapers in the city centre will only do so much.These mega projects used to be possible only in London . Money brings money.

Has anything actually changed in Liverpool? You get the odd “Masterplan” but nothing actually happens. Anyone who thinks King Edward Triangle will happen is living in dreamland.

Pathetic to see we still prefer new greenfield development over already established settlements, which in many cases are in dire need of new housing, densification, regeneration, and additional patrons for declining businesses. We are heading in the completely wrong direction if we want to densify out already pretty poorly planned cities in the UK.

It seems to me that Liverpool Council still don’t know how to formulate Government bids. When dealing with Whitehall you have to learn how to play their game, tick their boxes and sometimes stretch delivery targets to suit their criteria. Manchester and Greater Manchester are clearly experts in getting Whitehall to trust them to tick the boxes and above all deliver outcomes. Liverpool Council need to get smarter in how they deal with Whitehall.

Oh dear , conspiracy theorists always come out when Manchester works with whatever government of the day to attract development. It’s called meeting the criteria, no secret handshakes here. Also it’s more like 3500 new civil servant jobs with just under 9000 working at the new hub by 2032.

Liverpool needs to find a growth story and fast. All the talk of MDCs and failed New Town bids are just another excuse to kick delivery down the road.

Don’t vote Labour

It was easy being a Liverpool politician for so long all you needed to say was “Thatcher” and you got elected but now times are changing and people now know that Labour have been a disaster for our city. I don’t like going on about Manchester but thats a proper grown up city thats both competent and ambitious.

So if North Liverpool and Birkenhead could have only create 20k homes in total, thats two deprived areas completely transformed which would have benefited generations to come and created a positive knock on effect to the surrounding areas. The snowball effect would have benefited the whole LCR due to construction work, services, the whole supply chain could have been sourced locally. That in its self would have been worth doing. As others have said taller buildings in those areas such as Liverpool and Wirral Waters, Pumpfields etc would have helped achieve well over 10k homes in each area. Looks like another all talk dressed up idea that in the end wont really have any major impact, and especially for the North West. We need proper intention and action.

All governments are biased towards Manchester but its a result of visionaries like Howard Bernstein and Richard Leese who worked with all governments the last few decades. It’s hard to take Liverpool seriously when you look at the calibre of Politicians they produce most of them haven’t moved on from the 1980s.

Well intentioned I’m sure but Liam Robinson and Steve Rotherham aren’t serious political players.

Govt wants these homes to be delivered quickly, probably so they can have some hope at hitting their 1.5 m homes target (already missed if you ask me!) Getting them delivered in Manchester is easy – they have a pro-development council and a planning infrastructure that processes major proposals quickly. In Liverpool it’d be 2050 before a scheme of this size even passes the planning process – and by that point it’d have had a significant haircut and probably just be a load of bungalows.

With limited resource we need to channel investment into those places that want it and can make the best of it. That means cutting off NIMBY councils – they only have themselves to blame

Blaming Liverpool’s leadership as a self inflicted disaster is just gaslighting. These individuals are merely appointed prefects that represent the national labour party, not the city. Democratic mandate is non existent when fewer than 20 percent of the electorate voted you in. And most of them were fooled into doing so! The problems that hold Liverpool back are indeed structural and wholly national in nature.

Really strange and deluded to think that Manchester isn’t vibrant. Can be too busy at times for some but otherwise it’s the most diverse, dynamic and economically stable city outside of London with loads of new neighborhoods in the city centre alone.

Liverpool South has copious amounts of space. It makes sense to build near a railway station and Aigburth station has plenty of space.

The obvious solution for the failure of the Liverpool/wirral bids is obvious, a joint cross river bid could have been developed. This would have delivered big numbers and you could argue the area is one housing market. This approach was taken by labour during the Housing Market Renewal programme were local authority boundaries were ignored and the wider housing area applied . One other factor is the very poor quality of Liverpool Labour MPs ( except Maria eagle ) who’s role opposing rather than influencing the government is constantly damaging to the city region

Manchester of course.
Nothing changes. Another Newtownstan.

Yes indeed Manchester of course..as it should be when you work with developers and central government so closely you get entirely new areas of the city, like this, or Atom valley to the north or Trafford city or media city or Trafford wharf or…etc etc.