Liverpool’s office market bounces back from dismal Q2

It’s encouraging to see a much needed improvement in take up in Liverpool’s office core but there is a desperate need to see some Grade A development not just to stimulate potential new occupation but to retain the ever dwindling corporates in the city. An initiative needs to be put in place by the City Council to bridge the viability gap for some speculative development if the city is to survive as a place for business and much needed employment. As I haven’t seen AY’s full report as yet, I would hope that the necessary accreditation has been given to the Liverpool Office Agent Forum (LOAF) for their collective effort in producing the data, assuming this is the source?

It’s a nonsense to say it’s bounced back just as much as it’s a nonsense to call low figures as implying low demand.

The local market is totally broken and utterly destabilised by the government’s Manchester project coupled with its deliberate and continuing neglect of our own city.

What is being allowed to persist, our own Labour council saying and doing nothing, is a disgrace.

By the Government’s Manchester project. Which Government? Labour?..Tory? What is this and how long has it been going on for? I’d be fascinated to know truly I would.

The only overt government “project” was their help in putting Liverpool Council council back on its feet after it was put in special measures and supporting the city over decades through a multitude of very well funded regeneration schemes of which Merseyside / Liverpool City Region has been amongst the biggest beneficiaries.

If you compare commercial development in Liverpool against other cities with similar sized markets such as Sheffield or Nottingham or even over the water in Birkenhead it’s clear that the city’s problems are substantially local in origin.

We need some civil jobs relocating, as has been happening in Manchester for some years now, and I read recently the goverment will need 800,000 sq ft of offices built in Mcr for some new relocations.
Both Tory and Labour have ignored Liverpool, Labour especially since the Militant days and then when the Liberals were in power locally. Recently Labour said they were going to turbo charge Liverpool but if that’s just the £56m they’ve given to Peel then that’s not going to bring us jobs or new offices.

One British politician is much the same as the next as far as Liverpool is concerned. But what really matters are the civil servants – and these have absolutely no time for us whatsoever.

The biggest thing this government can do right now is agree funding for the new Astra Zeneca vaccine plant. That’s the biggest investment in the city for decades and is nationally significant. The government criticised the levelling up agenda of the Tories now its time to walk the walk.

@Jeff: ‘Civil servants hate us!!’

The article notes that the biggest deal is in fact the Home Office! Liverpool’s problem was never that it didn’t have enough public sector jobs but that it has too much (proportionally). Indeed the civil service were always one of the largest employers in Liverpool in recent decades.

Merseyside had nearly £2.5 billion of Objective 1 monies over two decades plus other UK regeneration monies – those responsible clearly did not use those monies to rebuild an economy that could sustain a viable office market. Howard Bernstein and the politicians in Manchester on the other hand, with probably a tenth of that amount of grant, did. Conclusion – it is all about Leadership.

Welcome but Poor figures really ,, two things city council need to gap fund pall and the city regions 20 labour MPs need to get themselves organised and demand resources for this area . It’s a disgrace that the MPs have failed to deliver for this region .

the Liverpool rental levels compared to Manchester are laughable and reflect very poorly on the work of LCC and the Combined Authority in developing attractive products that attract the development market to build offices for private sector tenants. Civic leadership at all levels is still pretty weak and lack of real development activity in central Liverpool demonstrates this.

Rental levels is what it comes down to at its most basic level. If developers can’t make a profit on their investment because rent levels are too low then they won’t invest. This, not some cross-party, cross-generational conspiracy, is the reason Liverpool lags behind Manchester. If you’re a commercial developer and your choice is developing an office building in Manchester and renting it out at £30/psqft or building one in Liverpool and getting around half that…. the choice is obvious.

It’s the same in the residential market too. Manchester has the demand and the values to support many thousands of new BTR homes in the pipeline, while Liverpool doesn’t yet.

Kurt, you are well aware that Manchester has had much larger sums of regeneration money, and Liverpool far less than you have stated.

Which is frankly by the by, when what is plainly needed is market intervention by government to restablise the region, repairing the damage they have done.

I just don’t get the comment on the need for more Civil Service support. Only the other week Homes England secured £55m for Central Docks, the city region is awash with Freeport and Investment Zone money and the Combined Authority seems to grow every week in terms of staff numbers. Time for LCC to wake up and engage in a meaningful way with the private sector.

Jeff states that “Manchester has had much larger sums of regeneration money”. That is factually wrong (and by a country mile). Merseyside had the benefit of Objective 1 Status for nearly 30 years. The amount of grant available and the grant rates allowable were significantly higher than the Objective 2 status that Greater Manchester had during the same time. This source of EU money for both economies was meant to help reposition the two areas.

Jeff: Merseyside Objective 1 status secured the following – in 1994 £700m of funding was allocated under the Objective 1 programme; In 2000 another £928m followed; between 2007 and 2013 another £700m; and £450m for Merseyside between 2014 and 2020. All at a 90

Liverpool may have had Objective 1 money for a long period but I can’t think of many major infrastructure projects that it produced. We could have had trams and a better more comprehensive Merseyrail but we haven’t. Meanwhile areas in Europe, like the Basque Country , have marvellous rail and urban transport systems.

The Sunak government categorised Manchester for investment, the same as Milton Keynes and Oxford. It has done better than Liverpool for transport investment though, over the last two decades. Both cities have been woefully neglected in the grand scheme of things, compared to the gifts showered on the South East, however. The total catastrophe, that is intercity trains up here is evident to anyone with eyes.