LEP and Vision agree Liverpool marketing plan

The Liverpool City Region Local Enterprise Partnership and Liverpool Vision have reached an agreement in principle for a place marketing strategy.

Liverpool Vision's new Marketing Liverpool body will have responsibility for place marketing activity, and will ensure global opportunities such as the International Festival for Business 2014 offer maximum economic return for the region.

The LEP board will retain overall responsibility for the strategic development of the city region visitor economy, and other key growth sectors.

Responsibility for marketing the destination will rest with Marketing Liverpool.

The agreement is likely to see the creation of a marketing board for the city region, accountable to the main board of the LEP.

Robert Hough, chairman of Liverpool LEP, said: "This agreement results from detailed discussions over how existing structures and delivery mechanisms can be remodelled to eliminate duplication of effort and provide clarity in the market place.

"The creation of the Marketing Liverpool body within Liverpool Vision allows the LEP and its partners to commission delivery of a range of marketing activities required to maximise the potential we have identified for growth in the key sectors of our economy by promoting the city region as a great place to live, work, invest, study and visit."

Cllr Joe Anderson, Mayor of Liverpool, said: "With this agreement Marketing Liverpool has a mandate to think of the best ways to promote the Liverpool brand more effectively to compete on the world stage."

Max Steinberg, chief executive of Liverpool Vision, said: "The key to this will be creating effective private and public sector partnership arrangements to ensure that, under Marketing Liverpool, we can promote ourselves through a combination of our new and traditional strengths and assets."

The functions to be delivered Marketing Liverpool under the proposed agreement include:

• Management of the Visit Liverpool website and associated activity
• Overseas and domestic marketing
• Events and festivals Marketing
• Convention bureau activity
• Membership activity including sales and recruitment

A service level agreement between the LEP and Marketing Liverpool will set the new roles and responsibilities of each party. This proposed agreement will run for up to two years.

Jeanette Kehoe-Perkinson, a private sector LEP board member, has been appointed chairman of a management implementation group to oversee the roll-out of the new structure. This group will evolve into a marketing board for the Liverpool City region, which will report to the main LEP Board.

Liverpool City region LEP is the only body of its kind in the country with a membership base. Almost 400 businesses and other bodies active in the visitor economy pay membership fees to fund activity.

The new agreement allows for financial contributions from tourism partners to continue to remain in the LEP, with appropriate resources then delegated to Marketing Liverpool in line with an agreed delivery schedule of activity. No other membership arrangement will be created during the term of the agreement.

A member of the visitor economy committee will join the management implementation group, discussed at a meeting on 29 January.

The LEP is currently bidding for a £2m allocation of European funds to be allocated to place marketing activity for the region. If successful, part of the cash will be put towards initial activity commissioned from Marketing Liverpool.

The Liverpool City Region LEP is a private sector led Board with political leaders representing the six local authority areas of Halton, Knowsley, Liverpool, Sefton, St Helens and Wirral.

Liverpool Vision is the city's economic development company established during the city's urban and economic renewal.